MEASUREMENTS.
| Supposed age. | Twelve years. | Fifteen years. | Sixteen years. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ft. | in. | 10th. | ft. | in. | 10th. | ft. | in. | 10th. | |
| Height of figure | 4 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Circumference of pelvis | 2 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 5 |
| Length of hand | 0 | 6 | 7 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 6 |
| Breadth of ditto | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
I still postpone the notice of the Carib tribes. The western extremity, however, of their area leads to the following geographical subsection, viz. that of the Indians of the Upper and Middle Orinoco.
The most eastern of these are:
SALIVA.
Divisions.—1. Saliva Proper. 2. Atures. 3. Quaquas (Mapoye)(?). 4. Macos (Piaroas).
Area.—The rivers Vichada, Guaiare, Meta, Ventuari, and other feeders of the Orinoco.
The Maco (Piaroa) at the mission of Canichana, have unlearned their vernacular language, and speak (or rather have been taught by the Missionaries) the Maypure instead.
The Atures, now extinct, give their name to the Atures cataracts of the Orinoco. It is also the Atures whose mode of sepulture and burial-cavern is thus described by Humboldt:—"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 Ataruipé opens itself. 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. We soon reckoned in this tomb of a whole extinct tribe, nearly six hundred skeletons, well preserved, and so regularly placed that it would have been difficult to make an error in their number. 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 sizes are proportioned to the age of the dead; there are some for infants cut off the moment of their birth: we saw them from ten inches to three feet 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 arnotto, a colouring matter extracted from the bixa orellana; or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconea, or the plantain tree. The Indians related to us, that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground in order that the flesh remaining on the bones may be scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guyana 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 three feet high, and five feet and a half long. Their colour is greenish grey, and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye. The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles, or serpents; the edge is bordered with meanders, labyrinths, and real grecques, in straight lines variously combined."