242 



SEPULCHRAL CAVE- 



common pottery. They adorn the shields of the 

 Otaheitans, the fishing-instruments of the Esquimaux, 

 the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the 

 vases of Magna Graecia. 



" We opened, to the great concern of our guides, 

 several mapires, for the purpose of attentively ex- 

 amining the form of the sculls. They all presented 

 the characters of the American race, — 'two or three 

 only approached the Caucasian form. We took 

 several sculls, the skeleton of a child of six or seven 

 years, and those of two full-grown men, of the na- 

 tion of the Atures. All these bones, some painted 

 red, others covered with odorous resins, were placed 

 in the mapires or baskets already described. They 

 formed nearly the whole lading of a mule ; and, as 

 we were aware of the superstitious aversion which 

 the natives show towards dead bodies, after they 

 have given them burial, we carefully covered the 

 baskets with new mats. Unfortunately for us, the 

 penetration of the Indians, and the extreme delicacy 

 of their organs of smell, rendered our precautions 

 useless. Wherever we stopped, — in the Carib mis- 

 sions, in the midst of the llanos, between Angos- 

 tura and New-Barcelona, — the natives collected 

 around our mules to admire the monkeys which we 

 had brought from the Orinoco. These good people 

 had scarcely touched our baggage when they pre- 

 dicted the approaching death of the beast of burden 

 4 that carried the dead.' In vain we told them that 

 they were deceived in their conjectures, that the 

 panniers contained bones of crocodiles and laman- 

 tins ; they persisted in repeating that they smelt the 

 resin which surrounded the skeletons, and that 1 they 

 were some of their old relatives.' 



" We departed in silence from the cave of Ata- 

 ruipe. It was one of those calm and serene nights 

 which are so common in the torrid zone. The stars 

 shone with a mild and planetary light ; their scintil- 

 lation was scarcely perceptible at the horizon, which 



