The Indians assured me that the corpse was buried during several months in a moist earth, which gradually destroyed the flesh; and that after being disinterred, any particles of flesh still adhering to the bones were scraped off with sharp stones. This practice is still continued among many tribes of Guiana. Besides these baskets or mapires, we saw many urns of half-burnt clay, which appear to contain the bones of whole families. The largest of these urns are upwards of three feet in height and nearly six feet in length, of an elegant oval form, and greenish colour; with handles shaped like crocodiles and serpents, and the rims bordered with flowing scrolls and labyrinthine figures. These ornaments are precisely similar to those which cover the walls of the Mexican palace at Mitla. They are found in every clime and every stage of human culture,—among the Greeks and Romans, no less than on the shields of Otaheitans, and other South Sea islanders,—in all regions where a rhythmical repetition of regular forms delights the eye. The causes of these resemblances, as I have explained elsewhere, are rather to be referred to psychical conditions, and to the inner nature of our mental qualifications, than as affording evidence in favour of a common origin and the ancient intercourse of nations.[IA] Our interpreters could give us no certain information regarding the age of these vessels; but that of the skeletons did not in general appear to exceed a hundred years. There is a legend amongst the Guareke Indians, that the brave Atures, when closely pursued by the cannibal Caribs, took refuge on the rocks of the cataracts,—a mournful place of abode, in which this oppressed race perished, together with its language![64] In the most inaccessible portion of the Raudal other graves of the same character are met with; indeed it is probable that the last descendants of the Atures did not become extinct until a much more recent period. There still lives and it is a singular fact, an old parrot in Maypures which cannot be understood, because, as the natives assert, it speaks the language of the Atures! We left the cave at nightfall, after having collected, to the extreme annoyance of our Indian guides, several skulls and the perfect skeleton of an aged man. One of these skulls has been delineated by Blumenbach in his admirable craniological work;[IB] but the skeleton, together with a large portion of our natural history collections, especially the entomological, was lost by shipwreck off the coast of Africa on the same occasion when our friend and former travelling companion, the young Franciscan monk, Juan Gonzalez, lost his life.