627 



millions of franks. No trace of the precious 

 metals has been found in the caverns, which 

 have served the natives of Guyana for ages as 

 sepulchres. This circumstance proves, that, 

 even at the period when the Caribbees, and other 

 travelling nations, made incursions to the south- 

 west, gold had flowed in very small quantities 

 from the mountains of Peru toward the eastern 

 plains. 



Wherever the granitic rocks do not furnish 

 any of those large cavities, that are owing to 

 their decomposition, or an accumulation of their 

 blocks, the Indians confide the dead to the earth 

 itself. The hammock (chinchorro), a kind of 

 net in which the deceased had reposed during his 

 life, serves him for a coffin. This net is fastened 

 tight around the body, a hole is dug in the hut^ 

 and there the dead is laid. This is the most 

 usual method, according to the report of the 

 missionary Gili, and what I myself learned from 

 Father Zea. I do not believe, that there exists 

 one tumulus in Guyana, not even in the plains of 

 the Cassiquiare and the Essequibo. Some how- 

 ever are to be met with in the savannahs of 



1592, into the treasury (Caxas reales) of Truxillo. The 

 registers have been preserved. In Persia, in Upper Asia, 

 and in Egypt, where the tombs have been searched at very 

 different periods, no such immense treasures, I believe, 

 have ever been found. 



2 s 2 



