The Thirst Of Gold Everywhere Precedes The Desire Of Instruction, And A Taste For Researches Into Antiquity; In All The

Mountainous part of South America, from Merida and Santa Martha to the table-lands of Quito and Upper Peru, the

Labours of absolute mining have been undertaken to discover tombs, or, as the Creoles say, employing a word altered from the Inca language, guacas. When in Peru, at Mancichi, I went into the guaca from which, in the sixteenth century, masses of gold of great value were extracted. No trace of the precious metals has been found in the caverns which have served the natives of Guiana for ages as sepulchres. This circumstance proves that even at the period when the Caribs, and other travelling nations, made incursions to the south-west, gold had flowed in very small quantities from the mountains of Peru towards the eastern plains.

Wherever the granitic rocks do not present any of those large cavities caused by their decomposition, or by an accumulation of their blocks, the Indians deposit their dead in the earth. The hammock (chinchorro), a kind of net in which the deceased had reposed during his life, serves for a coffin. This net is fastened tight round the body, a hole is dug in the hut, and there the body is laid. This is the most usual method, according to the account of the missionary Gili, and it accords with what I myself learned from Father Zea. I do not believe that there exists one tumulus in Guiana, not even in the plains of the Cassiquiare and the Essequibo.

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