134 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



near six hundred skeletons, well preserved, and so regularly placed, that it would 

 have been difficult to make an error in their number. Every skeleton reposes 

 in a sort of basket made of the petioles of the palm-tree. These baskets, which 

 the natives call mapires^ have the form of a square bag. Their sizes are 

 proportioned to the age of the dead ; there are some for infants cut off the moment 

 of their birth. We saw them from ten inches to three feet four inches long, the 

 skeletons in them being bent together. They are all ranged near each other, and 

 are so entire, that not a rib, or a phalanx is wanting. 



The bones have been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in 

 the air and the sun ; dyed red with onoto, a coloring matter extracted from the 

 bixa orellana; or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and 

 enveloped in leaves of the heliconea or the plantain tree. The Indians related 

 to us, that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh may 

 be consumed by degrees ; some months after, it is taken out, and the flesh remaining 

 on the bones is scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guyana still 

 observe this custom. Earthen vases, half baked, are found near the mapires^ or 

 baskets. They appear to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of 

 these vases, or funeral urns are three feet high, and five feet and a half long. 

 Their color is greenish gray, and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye. 

 The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles, or serpents, the edge is bordered 

 with meanders, labyrinths, and real grecques^ in straight lines variously combined. 

 Such paintings are found in every zone, among nations the most remote from 

 each other either with respect to the spot which they occupy on the globe, or to 

 the degree of civilisation which they have attained. The inhabitants of the little 

 mission of Maypures still execute them on their commonest pottery ; they decorate 

 the bucklers of the Otaheiteans, the fishing implements of the Eskimoes, the 

 walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the vases of ancient Greece. Every 

 where a rhythmic repetition of the same forms flatters the eye, as the cadenced 

 repetition of sounds soothes the ear. Analogies founded on the internal nature of 

 our feelings, on the natural dispositions of our intellect, are not calculated to throw 

 light on the affiliation and the ancient connection of nations. We could not 

 acquire any precise idea of the period to which the origin of the mapires and the 

 painted vases, contained in the ossuary cavern of Ataruipe, can be traced. The 

 greater part seemed not to be more than a century old, but it may be supposed, 

 that, sheltered from all humidity, under the influence of an uniform temperature, 

 the preservation of these articles would be no less perfect, if it dated from a period 

 far more remote. A tradition circulates among the Guahiboes, that the wariike 



