Lurking, like murderous reptiles, under a canopy of verdure, the current carries them towards the unsuspecting objects of their stratagem, and they send forth the poisoned dart ere the enemy is aware of their approach. How happy might all these nations be if they would but apply to the arts of peace and improvement, the intelligence they waste upon the purposes of war! Where the hordes are so small and the causes of destruction so great, it cannot be wondered at that whole tribes die away like single families, and come to be numbered among the beings of the past. Thus the Atures, who gave their name to the far-famed cataracts of the Upper Orinoco, are now no more, and, strange to say, the last words of their language were heard from the lips not of the last survivor of their race, but from those of a parrot. The Atures are also interesting from their careful mode of sepulture, in a burial cavern thus described by Humboldt: ‘The most remote part of the valley is covered by a thick forest. In this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of a steep mountain, the cavern of Atariupe opens itself. It is less a cavern than a jutting rock in which the waters have scooped a vast hollow; when, in the ancient revolutions of our planet, they attained that height. We soon reckoned in the tomb of a whole extinct tribe nearly 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 _mapurès_, have the form of a square bag; 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 long, the skeletons in them being bent together. The bones, not one of which is wanting, have been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in the air and the sun, or dyed red with arnatto, or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia or plantain tree. The Indians related to us that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh remaining on the bone may be scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guiana still observe this custom. Earthern vases, half-baked, are found near the mapurès or baskets; they appear to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of the vases, or funeral urns, are three feet high and five feet and a half long. Their colour is greenish-grey, and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye, The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents; the edge is ornamented with meanders, labyrinths, and straight lines variously combined.’ When the reverence paid to the dead thus called forth the first germs of art, there surely must have been affectionate feelings of regret and sorrow, which raised the Atures above the level of mere callous savages, and