626 



Some tribes, for instance the Tamanacs, are 

 accustomed to lay waste the fields of the deceas- 

 ed, and cut down the trees which he has planted. 

 They say, 66 that the sight of objects, which 

 belonged to their relations, makes them melan- 

 choly." They like better to efface than to pre- 

 serve remembrances. These effects of Indian 

 sensibility are very detrimental to agriculture, 

 and the monks oppose with energy these super- 

 stitious practices, to which the natives converted 

 to Christianity still adhere in the missions. 



The tombs of the Indians of the Oroonoko 

 have not been sufficiently examined, because 

 they do not contain valuable articles like those 

 of Peru ; and even on the spot no faith is now 

 lent to the chimerical ideas, which were hereto- 

 fore formed of the wealth of the ancient inhabi- 

 tants of Dorado. The thirst of gold every where 

 precedes the desire of instruction, and a taste for 

 researches into antiquity ; in all the mountain- 

 ous part of South America, from Merida and 

 Santa Marta to the table-lands of Quito and 

 Upper Peru, the labours of absolute mining have 

 been undertaken to discover tombs, or, a» the 

 Creoles say, employing a word altered from the 

 language of the Incas, guacas. When in Peru, 

 at Mancichi, I went into the guaca of Toledo, 

 from which masses of gold were extracted, of 

 the value, in the sixteenth century*, of five 



* I found this calculation on the fifth paid in 1576, and 



