Near the southern entrance of the Raudal of Atures, on the right bank of the river, lies the cavern of Ataruipe, so celebrated among the Indians. The surrounding scenery has a grand and solemn character, which seems to mark it as a national burial-place. With difficulty, and not without danger of being precipitated into the depths below, we clambered a steep and perfectly bare granite rock, on whose smooth surface it would be hardly possible to keep one’s footing were it not for large crystals of feldspar, which, defying the action of weather, project an inch or more from the mass. On gaining the summit, a wide prospect of the surrounding country astonishes the beholder. From the foaming bed of the river rise hills richly crowned with woods, while beyond its western bank the eye rests on the boundless Savannah of the Meta. On the horizon loom like threatening clouds the mountains of Uniama. Such is the distant view; but immediately around all is desolate and contracted. In the deep ravines of the valley moves no living thing save where the vulture and the whirring goat-sucker wing their lonely way, their heavy shadows gleaming fitfully past the barren rock. The cauldron-shaped valley is encompassed by mountains, whose rounded summits bear huge granite boulders, measuring from 40 to more than 50 feet in diameter. They appear poised on only a single point of their surface, as if the slightest shock of the earth would hurl them down. The further side of this rocky valley is thickly wooded. It is in this shady spot that the cave of the Ataruipe is situated; properly speaking, however, it is not a cave, but a vault formed by a far projecting and overhanging cliff,—a kind of bay hollowed out by the waters when formerly at this high level. This spot is the grave of an extinct tribe[63]. We counted about six hundred well-preserved skeletons, placed in as many baskets, formed of the stalks of palm-leaves. These baskets, called by the Indians _mapires_, are a kind of square sack varying in size according to the age of the deceased. Even new-born children have each their own mapire. These skeletons are so perfect, that not a rib or a finger is wanting. The bones are prepared in three different ways: some are bleached, some dyed red with onoto, the pigment of the _Bixa Orellana_; others like mummies, are anointed with fragrant resin and wrapped in banana leaves.