A French archaeologist, traveling among the Andes in search of knowledge and specimens, had a great desire to explore some of the caves in the sides of the precipices. They were doubtless ancient tombs and would probably yield him a treasure. He selected a favorable spot therefore, rigged a sort of chair or seat between two leather cords, and engaged two Indians to let him down from the brow of the precipice. “A descent of 300 feet made in this way,” he tells us, “is extraordinarily long.” However, he reached the cave in safety, and on forcing a passage into it was rewarded by finding two skulls and a mummy–”thoroughly dry,” he says, “and pretty solid.” He passed a string through the eyeholes of the skulls and attached them to his belt. Then he took the mummy in his arms and signaled to the Indians to draw him up. With his heels he defended himself against the jutting rocks and in a few minutes was almost on a level with the top. The Indians knew nothing about his load. Just then the yellow skull of one of their ancestors appeared before their eyes and the idiots gave a start of surprise. The Frenchman thought they must have let go the cord.
“It was the affair of a second,” he writes. “What passes in the brain of a man at such an instant is indescribable. I did not drop a yard, but I experienced all the horror of a man in rapidly falling through space. My hands let go the mummy, and while covered with a cold sweat, I was helped over the edge of the cliff by the Indians the mummy bounded from rock to rock and landed in bits at the bottom of the chasm.”
He overwhelmed the Indians with invectives, but to no purpose. Such dead men, they assured him, if disturbed in their sepulchers, had the habit of kissing the Indians, who perished infallibly under their deadly breath. One of the two declared that his own father had died in that way. The other assured the Frenchman that at the moment when the head of the mummy showed above the edge of the rocks it opened its mouth. If it had not luckily fallen into the abyss it would have cursed them forever.
[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]