18 



diminution became from year to year more sen* 

 sible. He showed us, that in the space of 

 thirty-two months only one marriage had been 

 entered in the registers of the parish church. 

 Two others had been contracted by uncatechized 

 natives, and celebrated before the Indian Gover- 

 nador, to certify, as we say in Europe, the civil 

 condition. At the first foundation of the mis- 

 sion, the Atures, Maypures, Meyepures, Aba- 

 nis, and Quirupas, had been assembled together. 

 Instead of these tribes we found only Guahi- 

 boes, and a few families of the nation of Macoes. 

 The Atures * have almost entirely disappeared ; 

 they are no longer known, except by the tombs 

 in the cavern of Ataruipe, which recall to mind 

 the sepulchres of the Guanches at TenerifF. We 

 learnt on the spot, that the Atures, as well as 

 the Quaquas, and the Macoes or Piaroas, be- 

 longed to the great stock of the Saliva nations ; 

 while the Maypures, the Abanis, the Parenis, 

 and the Guaypunnaves, are of the same race as 



* " Already in my time/' says Gili the missionary, " there 

 did not exist above a score of Atures in the raudal of this 

 name. We thought this nation almost extinct, there being 

 no longer any of these Indians in the forest. Since this 

 period, the military of the expedition of the boundaries assert, 

 that they discovered a tribe of Atures on the east of the Es- 

 meralda, between the rivers Padamo and Ocamu." (Gili, 

 vol. i, p. 334. See also the map of Surville made for the 

 works of Father Caulin.) 



