SEPULCHRAL CAVE. 279 
nature, as is the case with the blocks of Jura, it 
might be supposed that they had been rounded by 
the action of water, or projected by the force of an 
elastic fluid ; but their position on the summit of a 
hill of the same nature, renders it more probable 
that they owe their origin to a gradual decomposi- 
tion of the rock. 
«The most remote part of the valley is covered 
by a dense forest. In this shady and solitary place, 
on the declivity of a steep mountain, opens the cave 
of Ataruipe. It is less a cave than a projecting 
rock, in which the waters have scooped a great 
hollow, when, in the ancient revolutions of our 
planet, they had reached to that height. In this 
tomb of a whole extinct tribe we soon counted nearly 
600 skeletons in good preservation, and arranged so 
regularly that it would have been difficult to make 
an error in numbering them. Each skeleton rests 
upon a kind of basket formed of the petioles of 
palms. These baskets, which the natives call ma- 
ptres, have the form of a square bag. Their size is 
proportional to the age of the dead; and there 
are even some for infants which had died at the 
moment of birth. We saw them from ten inches 
and a half to three feet six inches and a half in 
length. All the skeletons are bent, and so entire 
that not a rib or a bone of the fingers or toes is 
wanting. The bones have been prepared in three 
different ways,—whitened in the air and sun, dyed 
red with onoto, a colouring matter obtained from 
the Biza orellana ; or, like mummies, covered with 
odorous resins, and enveloped in leaves of heliconia 
and banana. The Indians related to us that the 
corpse is first placed in the humid earth, that the 
