67 



the ravine of San Juanillo, two enormous fe- 

 moral bones, four feet long, which weighed 

 more than thirty pounds. The Indians ima- 

 gined, as the common people of Europe still do, 

 that these were giants' bones ; while the half- 

 learned sages of the country, who assume the 

 right of explaining every thing, gravely assert- 

 ed, that they were sports of nature, little wor- 

 thy of attention. They founded their opinion 

 on the circumstance, that human bones decay 

 rapidly in the soil of Cumanacoa In order to 

 decorate their churches on the festival of the 

 dead, they take skulls from the cemeteries on 

 the coast, where the earth is impregnated with 

 saline substances. These pretended thigh bones 

 of giants were carried to the Port of Cumana, 

 where I sought for them in vain ; but from the 

 analogy of some fossil bones, which I brought 

 from other parts of South America, and which 

 have been carefully examined by Mr. Cuvier % 

 it is probable, that the gigantic femoral bones of 

 Cumanacoa belonged to elephants of a species 

 now lost. It may appear surprising, that they 

 were found in a place so little elevated above 

 the actual level of the waters ; since it is a re- 

 markable fact, that the fragments of the masto- 

 dontes and fossil elephants, which I brought 

 from the equinoctial regions of Mexico, New 



* Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles, T. 2 (Elephans 

 fossiles), p. 57. 



F 2 



