Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Shall Attempt To Describe This Cavern, So Celebrated
Among The Natives.
We climbed with difficulty, and not without some danger, a steep rock
of granite, entirely bare.
It would have been almost impossible to fix
the foot on its smooth and sloping surface, if large crystals of
feldspar, resisting decomposition, did not stand out from the rock,
and furnish points of support. Scarcely had we attained the summit of
the mountain when we beheld with astonishment the singular aspect of
the surrounding country. The foamy bed of the waters is filled with an
archipelago of islands covered with palm-trees. Westward, on the left
bank of the Orinoco, the wide-stretching savannahs of the Meta and the
Casanare resembled a sea of verdure. The setting sun seemed like a
globe of fire suspended over the plain, and the solitary Peak of
Uniana, which appeared more lofty from being wrapped in vapours which
softened its outline, all contributed to augment the majesty of the
scene. Immediately below us lay a deep valley, enclosed on every side.
Birds of prey and goatsuckers winged their lonely flight in this
inaccessible circus. We found a pleasure in following with the eye
their fleeting shadows, as they glided slowly over the flanks of the
rock.
A narrow ridge led us to a neighbouring mountain, the rounded summit
of which supported immense blocks of granite. These masses are more
than forty or fifty feet in diameter; and their form is so perfectly
spherical, that, as they appear to touch the soil only by a small
number of points, it might be supposed, at the least shock of an
earthquake, they would roll into the abyss. I do not remember to have
seen anywhere else a similar phenomenon, amid the decompositions of
granitic soils. If the balls rested on a rock of a different nature,
as in the blocks of Jura, we might suppose that they had been rounded
by the action of water, or thrown out by the force of an elastic
fluid; but their position on the summit of a hill alike granitic,
makes it more probable that they owe their origin to the progressive
decomposition of the rock.
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 Ataruipe opens to the view. 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.* (*
I saw no vein, no hole (four) filled with crystals. The decomposition
of granitic rocks, and their separation into large masses, dispersed
in the plains and valleys in the form of blocks and balls with
concentric layers, appear to favour the enlarging of these natural
excavations, which resemble real caverns.) In this tomb of a whole
extinct tribe we soon counted nearly six hundred skeletons well
preserved, and regularly placed. 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 bag. Their size is
proportioned to the age of the dead; there are some for infants cut
off at 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 anoto,
or, like mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in
leaves of the heliconia or of the plantain-tree. The Indians informed
us that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, that the flesh may
be consumed by degrees; some months afterwards it is taken out, and
the flesh remaining on the bones is scraped off with sharp stones.
Several hordes in Guiana 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 five feet high, and three feet three inches long.
Their colour is greenish-grey, and their oval form is pleasing to the
eye. The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents; the
edges are bordered with painted meanders, labyrinths, and grecques, in
rows variously combined. Such designs are found in every zone among
nations the farthest removed from each other, either with respect to
their respective positions on the globe, or to the degree of
civilization which they have attained. They still adorn the common
pottery made by the inhabitants of the little mission of Maypures;
they ornament the bucklers of the Otaheitans, the fishing-implements
of the Esquimaux, the walls of the Mexican palace of Mitla, and the
vases of ancient Greece.
We could not acquire any precise idea of the period to which the
origin of the mapires and the painted vases, contained in the
bone-cavern of Ataruipe, can be traced. The greater part seemed not to
be more than a century old; but it may be supposed that, sheltered
from all humidity under the influence of a uniform temperature, the
preservation of these articles would be no less perfect if their
origin dated from a period far more remote. A tradition circulates
among the Guahibos, that the warlike Atures, pursued by the Caribs,
escaped to the rocks that rise in the middle of the Great Cataracts;
and there that nation, heretofore so numerous, became gradually
extinct, as well as its language. The last families of the Atures
still existed in 1767, in the time of the missionary Gili. At the
period of our voyage an old parrot was shown at Maypures, of which the
inhabitants said, and the fact is worthy of observation, that they did
not understand what it said, because it spoke the language of the
Atures.
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