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, u 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 mininghave 

 been undertaken to dicover tombs, or, as 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 



