358 STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



or read. Of these people, those that dwell upon the branches 

 of Orinoko, called Capuri and Macureo, are for the most 

 part carpenters of canoes, for they make the most and fairest 

 houses, and sell them into Guiana for gold, and into Trinidado 

 for tobacco, in the excessive taking whereof they exceed all 

 nations. When their commanders die they use great lamen- 

 tation, and when they think the flesh of their bodies is putri- 

 fied, and fallen from the bones, then they take up the carcase 

 again, and hang it in the cassique's house that died, and deck 

 his skull with feathers of all colours, and hang all his gold 

 plates about the bones of his arms, thighs, and legs. Those 

 nations which are called Arwacas, which dwell on the south 

 of Orinoko (of which place and nation our Indian pilot was), 

 are dispersed in many other places, and do use to beat the 

 bones of their lords into powder, and their wives and friends 

 drink It all in their several sorts of drinks. After we departed 

 from the port of these Ciawani, we passed up the river with 

 the flood, and anchored the ebb, and in this sort we went on- 

 ward. 



" That night we came to an anchor at the parting of three 

 goodly rivers (the one was the river of Amana, by which we 

 came from the north, and ran athwart toward the south, the 

 other two were of Orinoko, which crossed from the west, and 

 ran to sea toward the east) and landed upon a fair sand, where 

 we found thousands of tortoises' eggs, which are very whole- 



