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 bones of entire families. The larger of these urns were about three feet high and nearly six feet long, of a pleasing oval form and greenish colour, having handles shaped like snakes and crocodiles, and meandering or labyrinthine ornaments round the upper margin. These ornaments are quite similar to those which cover the walls of the Mexican Palace at Mitla. They are found in all countries and climates, and in the most different stages of human cultivation,--among the Greeks and Romans, as well as on the shields of the natives of Tahiti and other islands of the South Sea,--wherever the eye is gratified by the rhythmical recurrence of regular forms. These similarities, as I have elsewhere remarked in more detail, are rather to be ascribed to psychological causes, or to such as belong inherently to our mental constitution, than to be viewed as evidences of kindred descent or ancient intercourse between different nations. Our interpreters could give us no certain information as to the age of these vessels; that of the skeletons appeared for the most part not to exceed a century. It is reported among the Guareca Indians, that the brave Atures, being pressed upon by cannibal Caribs, withdrew to the rocks of the Cataracts; a melancholy refuge and dwelling-place, in which the distressed tribe finally perished, and with them their language. In the most inaccessible parts of the Raudal there are cavities and recesses which have served like the cave of Ataruipe as burying-places. It is even probable that the last family of the Atures may not have been long deceased, for (a singular fact,) there is still in Maypures an old parrot of whom the natives affirm that he is not understood because he speaks the Ature language. We left the cave at nightfall, after having collected, to the great displeasure of our Indian guides, several skulls and the entire skeleton of a man. One of these skulls has been figured by Blumenbach in his excellent craniological work, but the skeleton (together with a large part of our natural history collections, especially the entomological) was lost in a shipwreck on the coast of Africa, in which our friend and former travelling companion, the young Franciscan monk Juan Gonzalez, perished.