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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Perhaps Fugitive Mestizos Of The Missions Of The Meta And
Apure May Have Come And Settled Near The Cataracts, Marrying Women Of
The Tribe Of The Atures.
Such mixed marriages sometimes take place in
this zone, though they are more rare than in Canada, and in the whole
of North America, where hunters of European origin unite themselves
with savages, assume their habits, and sometimes acquire great
political influence.
We took several skulls, the skeleton of a child of six or seven years
old, and two of full-grown men of the nation of the Atures, from the
cavern of Ataruipe. All these bones, partly painted red, partly
varnished with odoriferous resins, were placed in the baskets (mapires
or canastos) which we have just described. They made almost the whole
load of a mule; and as we knew the superstitious feelings of the
Indians in reference to the remains of the dead after burial, we
carefully enveloped the canastos in mats recently woven. Unfortunately
for us, the penetration of the Indians, and the extreme quickness of
their sense of smelling, rendered all our precautions useless.
Wherever we stopped, in the missions of the Caribbees, amid the
Llanos, between Angostura and Nueva Barcelona, the natives assembled
round our mules to admire the monkeys which we had purchased at the
Orinoco. These good people had scarcely touched our baggage, when they
announced the approaching death of the beast of burden that carried
the dead. In vain we told them that they were deceived in their
conjectures; and that the baskets contained the bones of crocodiles
and manatees; they persisted in repeating that they smelt the resin
that surrounded the skeletons, and that they were their old relations.
We were obliged to request that the monks would interpose their
authority, to overcome the aversion of the natives, and procure for us
a change of mules.
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