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attachment to burial-places. 
tombs, or, as the Creoles say, employing a word altered 
from the Inca language, g-uacas. When in Peru, at Man- 
cichi, I went into the guaca, from which, in the sixteenth 
century, masses of gold of great value were extracted. 
trace of the precious metals has been found in the caverns 
which have served the natives of Guiana for ages as sepul- 
chres. This circumstance proves, that, even at the period 
when the Caribs, and other travelling nations, made incur- 
sions to the south-west, gold had flowed in very small quan- 
tities from the mountains of Peru towards the eastern plains. 
Wherever the granitic rocks do not present any of those 
large cavities caused by their decomposition, or by an accu- 
mulation of their blocks, the Indians deposit their dead in 
the earth. The hammock (chinchorro), a kind of net in 
which the deceased had reposed druing his life, serves for 
a coffin. This net is fastened tight round the body, a hole 
is dug in the hut, and there the body is laid. This is the 
most usual method, according to the account of the mis- 
sionary Gili, and it accords with what I myself learned from 
Father Zea. I do not believe that there exists one tumulus 
in Guiana, not even in the plains of the Cassiquiare and 
the Essequibo. Some, however, are to he met with in the 
savannahs of Various, as in Canada, to the west of the 
Alleghanies* It seems remarkable enough that, notwith- 
standing the extreme abundance of wood in those countries, 
the natives of the Orinoco were as little accustomed as 
the ancient Scythians to Irani the dead. Sometimes they 
formed funeral pdes for that purpose ; hut only after a 
battle, when the number of the dead was considerable. In 
1748, the Pareeas burned not only the bodies of their 
enemies, the Tamanacs, but also those of their own 
people who fell on the field of battle. The Indians of 
South America, like all nations in a state of nature, are 
strongly attached to the spots where the bones of their 
fathers repose. This feeling, which a great writer has 
beautifully painted in the episode of Atala, is cherished 
in all its primitive ardour by the Chinese. These people, 
* Mummies and skeletons contained in baskets were recently discovered 
in a cavern in the United Slates. It is believed, they belong to a race of 
men analogous to that of the Sandwich Islands. The description of thest 
tombs has some similitude with that of the tombs of Ataruipe. 
