near six hundred skeletons, well preserved, and so regularly placed, that it would
have been difficult to make an error in their number. Every skeleton reposes
in a sort of basket made of the petioles of the palm-tree. These baskets, which
the natives call mapires, have the form of a square hag. Their sizes are
proportioned to the age of the dead; there are some for infants cut off the moment
of their birth. We saw'them from ten inches to three feet four inches long, the
skeletons in them being bent together. They are all ranged near each other, and
are so entire, that not a rib, or a phalanx is wanting.
The bones have been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in
the air and the sun; dyed red with onoto, a coloring matter extracted from the
bixa orellana; or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and
enveloped in leaves of the heliconea or the plantain tree. The Indians related
to us, that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh may
be consumed by degrees; some months after, it is taken out, and the flesh remaining
on the bones is scraped off with sharp stones.. Several hordes in Guyana still
observe this custom. Earthen vases, half baked, are found near the mapires, or
baskets. They appear to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of
these vases, or funeral urns are three feet high, and five feet and a half long.
Their color is greenish gray, and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye.
The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles, or serpents, the edge is bordered
with meanders, labyrinths, and real grecques, in straight lines variously combined.
Such paintings are found in every zone, among nations the most remote from
each other either with respect to the spot which they occupy on the globe, or to
the degree of civilisation which they have attained. The inhabitants of the little
mission of Maypures still execute them on their commonest pottery ; they decorate
the bucklers of the Otaheiteans, the fishing implements of the Eskimoes, the
walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the vases of ancient Greece. Every
where a rhythmic repetition of thefsame forms flatters the eye, as the cadenced
repetition of sounds soothes the ear. Analogies founded on the internal nature of
our feelings, on the natural dispositions of our intellect, are not calculated to throw
light on the affiliation and the ancient connection of nations. We could not
acquire any precise idea of the period to which the origin of the mapires and the
painted vases, contained in the ossuary cavern of Ataruipe, can be traced. The
greater part seemed not to be more than a century old, but it niay be supposed,
that, sheltered from all humidity, under the influence of an uniform temperature,
the preservation of these articles would be no less perfect, if it dated from a period
far more remote. A tradition circulates among the Guahiboes, that the warlike