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Show 184 CATARACTS OF TilE ORINOCO. and striking prospect. From the foaming river-bed arise woodcrowned hills, while beyond the western shore of the Orinoco the eye rests on the boundless grassy plain of the Meta, uninterrupted save where at one part of the horizon the mountain of Uniama rises like a threatening cloud. Such is the distance; the nearer prospect is desolate, and closely hemmed in by high and barren rocks. All is motionless, save where the vulture or the hoarse goat-sucker hover solitary in mid-air, or, as they wing their flight through the deepsunk ravine, their silent shadows are seen gliding along the face of the bare rocky precipice until they vanish from the eye. This precipitous valley is bounded by mountains on whose rounded summits are enormous detached granite spheres of more than 40 to 50 feet diameter: they appear to touch the base on which they rest only in a single point, as if the slightest movement, such as that of a faint earthquake shock, must cause them to roll down. The farther part of the valley is densely wooded, and it is in this shady po~tion that the cave of Ataruipe is situated. It is not properly speaking a cave, but rather a vaulted roof formed by a far over-hanging cliff, the cavity having apparently been formed by the waters when at their ancient level. This place is the vault or cemetery of an extinct nation (11). We counted about 600 wellpreserved skeletons placed in as many baskets woven from the stalks of palm leaves. These baskets, which the Indians call "mapires," are shaped like square sacks, differing in size according to the age of the deceased. Even new-born children had each its own mapire. The skeletons are so perfect that not a bone or a joint is wanting. The bones had been prepared in three different ways; some bleached, some colored red with onoto, the pigment of the Bixa Orellana; and some like mummies closely enveloped in sweetsmelling resin and plantain leaves. The Indians assured us that the custom had been to bury the fresh corpses for some months in damp earth, which gradually consumed the flesh; they were then dug up, and any remaining flesh scraped away with sharp stones. This the Indians said was still the practice of several tribes in Guiana. Besides the mapires or baskets, we found urns of half burnt clay, which appeared to contain the |
