617 



would roll into the abyss. I do not remember 

 to have seen any where else a similar phenome- 

 non, amid the decompositions of granitic soils. 

 If the balls rested on a rock of a different na- 

 ture, as it happens in the blocks of Jura, we 

 might suppose, that they had been rounded by 

 the action of water, or thrown out by the force 

 of an elastic fluid ; but their position on the 

 summit of a hill alike granitic makes it more 

 probable, that they owe their origin to the pro- 

 gressive decomposition of the rock. 



The most remote part of the valley is covered 

 by a thick forest. In this shady and solitary 

 spot, on the declivity of a steep mountain, the 

 cavern of Ataruipe opens itself; it is less a 

 cavern than a jutting rock, in which the waters 

 have scooped a vast hollow, when, in the ancient 

 revolutions of our planet, they attained that 

 height*. We soon reckoned in this tomb of 

 a whole extinct tribe near six hundred skeletons 

 well preserved, and so regularly placed, that it 

 would have been difficult to make an error in 

 their number. Every skeleton reposes in a sort 

 of basket, made of the petioles of the palm-tree. 



* I saw no vein, no four filled with crystal. (See vol. 

 iii, p. 138.) The decomposition of granitic rocks, and 

 their separation into large masses, dispersed in the plains 

 and valleys under the form of blocks and of balls with concen- 

 tric layers, appear to favor the enlarging of these natural 

 excavations, which resemble real caverns. 



