CHAPTER 2.21.

RAUDAL OF GARCITA.

MAYPURES.

CATARACTS OF QUITUNA.

MOUTH OF THE VICHADA AND THE ZAMA.

ROCK OF ARICAGUA.

SIQUITA.

We directed our course to the Puerto de arriba, above the cataract of

Atures, opposite the mouth of the Rio Cataniapo, where our boat was to

be ready for us. In the narrow path that leads to the embarcadero we

beheld for the last time the peak of Uniana. It appeared like a cloud

rising above the horizon of the plains. The Guahibos wander at the

foot of the mountains, and extend their course as far as the banks of

the Vichada. We were shown at a distance, on the right of the river,

the rocks that surround the cavern of Ataruipe; but we had not time to

visit that cemetery of the destroyed tribe of the Atures. Father Zea

had repeatedly described to us this extraordinary cavern, the

skeletons painted with anoto, the large vases of baked earth, in which

the bones of separate families appear to be collected; and many other

curious objects, which we proposed to examine on our return from the

Rio Negro. "You will scarcely believe," said the missionaries, "that

these skeletons, these painted vases, things which we believed were

unknown to the rest of the world, have brought trouble upon me and my

neighbour, the missionary of Carichana. You have seen the misery in

which I live in the raudales. Though devoured by mosquitos, and often

in want of plantains and cassava, yet I have found envious people even

in this country! A white man, who inhabits the pastures between the

Meta and the Apure, denounced me recently in the Audencia of Caracas,

as concealing a treasure I had discovered, jointly with the missionary

of Carichana, amid the tombs of the Indians. It is asserted that the

Jesuits of Santa Fe de Bogota were apprised beforehand of the

destruction of their company; and that, in order to save the riches

they possessed in money and precious vases, they sent them, either by

the Rio Meta or the Vichada, to the Orinoco, with orders to have them

hidden in the islets amid the raudales. These treasures I am supposed

to have appropriated unknown to my superiors. The Audencia of Caracas

brought a complaint before the governor of Guiana, and we were ordered

to appear in person. We uselessly performed a journey of one hundred

and fifty leagues; and, although we declared that we had found in the

cavern only human bones, and dried bats and polecats, commissioners

were gravely nominated to come hither and search on the spot for the

supposed treasures of the Jesuits. We shall wait long for these

commissioners. When they have gone up the Orinoco as far as San Borja,

the fear of the mosquitos will prevent them from going farther. The

cloud of flies which envelopes us in the raudales is a good defence."

The account given by the missionary was entirely conformable to what

we afterwards learned at Angostura from the governor himself.

Fortuitous circumstances had given rise to the strangest suspicions.

In the caverns where the mummies and skeletons of the nation of the

Atures are found, even in the midst of the cataracts, and in the most

inaccessible islets, the Indians long ago discovered boxes bound with

iron, containing various European tools, remnants of clothes,

rosaries, and glass trinkets. These objects are thought to have

belonged to Portuguese traders of the Rio Negro and Grand Para, who,

before the establishment of the Jesuits on the banks of the Orinoco,

went up to Atures by the portages and interior communications of

rivers, to trade with the natives. It is supposed that these men sunk

beneath the epidemic maladies so common in the raudales, and that

their chests became the property of the Indians, the wealthiest of

whom were usually buried with all they possessed most valuable during

their lives. From these very uncertain traditions the tale of hidden

treasures has been fabricated. As in the Andes of Quito every ruined

building, not excepting the foundations of the pyramids erected by the

French savans for the measurement of the meridian, is regarded as Inga

pilca,* that is, the work of the Inca (* Pilca (properly in Quichua

pirca), wall of the Inca.); so on the Orinoco every hidden treasure

can belong only to the Jesuits, an order which, no doubt, governed the

missions better than the Capuchins and the monks of the Observance,

but whose riches and success in the civilization of the Indians have

been much exaggerated. When the Jesuits of Santa Fe were arrested,

those heaps of piastres, those emeralds of Muzo, those bars of gold of

Choco, which the enemies of the company supposed they possessed, were

not found in their dwellings. I can cite a respectable testimony,

which proves incontestibly, that the viceroy of New Granada had not

warned the Jesuits of Santa Fe of the danger with which they were

menaced. Don Vicente Orosco, an engineer officer in the Spanish army,

related to me that, being arrived at Angostura, with Don Manuel

Centurion, to arrest the missionaries of Carichana, he met an Indian

boat that was going down the Rio Meta. The boat being manned with

Indians who could speak none of the tongues of the country, gave rise

to suspicions. After useless researches, a bottle was at length

discovered, containing a letter, in which the Superior of the company

residing at Santa Fe informed the missionaries of the Orinoco of the

persecutions to which the Jesuits were exposed in New Grenada. This

letter recommended no measure of precaution; it was short, without

ambiguity, and respectful towards the government, whose orders were

executed with useless and unreasonable severity.

Eight Indians of Atures had conducted our boat through the raudales,

and seemed well satisfied with the slight recompence we gave them.

They gain little by this employment; and in order to give a just idea

of the poverty and want of commerce in the missions of the Orinoco, I

shall observe that during three years, with the exception of the boats

sent annually to Angostura by the commander of San Carlos de Rio

Negro, to fetch the pay of the soldiers, the missionary had seen but

five canoes of the Upper Orinoco pass the cataract, which were bound

for the harvest of turtles' eggs, and eight boats laden with

merchandize.

About eleven on the morning of the 17th of April we reached our boat.

Father Zea caused to be embarked, with our instruments, the small

store of provisions he had been able to procure for the voyage, on

which he was to accompany us; these provisions consisted of a few

bunches of plantains, some cassava, and fowls. Leaving the

embarcadero, we immediately passed the mouth of the Cataniapo, a small

river, the banks of which are inhabited by the Macos, or Piaroas, who

belong to the great family of the Salive nations.

Besides the Piaroas of Cataniapo, who pierce their ears, and wear as

ear-ornaments the teeth of caymans and peccaries, three other tribes

of Macos are known: one, on the Ventuari, above the Rio Mariata; the

second, on the Padamo, north of the mountains of Maraguaca; and the

third, near the Guaharibos, towards the sources of the Orinoco, above

the Rio Gehette. This last tribe bears the name of Macos-Macos. I

collected the following words from a young Maco of the banks of the

Cataniapo, whom we met near the embarcadero, and who wore in his ears,

instead of a tusk of the peccary, a large wooden cylinder.* (* This

custom is observed among the Cabres, the Maypures, and the Pevas of

the Amazon. These last, described by La Condamine, stretch their ears

by weights of a considerable size.)

Plantain, Paruru (in Tamanac also, paruru).

Cassava, Elente (in Maco, cahig).

Maize, Niarne.

The sun, Jama (in Salive, mume-seke-cocco).

The moon, Jama (in Salive, vexio).

Water, Ahia (in Salive, cagua).

One, Nianti.

Two, Tajus.

Three, Percotahuja.

Four, Imontegroa.

The young man could not reckon as far as five, which certainly is no

proof that the word five does not exist in the Maco tongue. I know not

whether this tongue be a dialect of the Salive, as is pretty generally

asserted; for idioms derived from one another, sometimes furnish words

utterly different for the most common and most important things.* (*

The great family of the Esthonian (or Tschoudi) languages, and of the

Samoiede languages, affords numerous examples of these differences.)

But in discussions on mother-tongues and derivative languages, it is

not the sounds, the roots only, that are decisive; but rather the

interior structure and grammatical forms. In the American idioms,

which are notwithstanding rich, the moon is commonly enough called the

sun of night or even the sun of sleep; but the moon and sun very

rarely bear the same name, as among the Macos. I know only a few

examples in the most northerly part of America, among the Woccons, the

Ojibbeways, the Muskogulges, and the Mohawks.* (* Nipia-kisathwa in

the Shawanese (the idiom of Canada), from nippi, to sleep, and

kisathwa, the sun.) Our missionary asserted that jama, in Maco,

indicated at the same time the Supreme Being, and the great orbs of

night and day; while many other American tongues, for instance the

Tamanac, and the Caribbee, have distinct words to denote God, the

Moon, and the Sun. We shall soon see how anxious the missionaries of

the Orinoco are not to employ, in their translations of the prayers of

the church, the native words which denote the Divinity, the Creator

(Amanene), the Great Spirit who animates all nature. They choose

rather to Indianize the Spanish word Dios, converting it, according to

the differences of pronunciation, and the genius of the different

dialects, into Dioso, Tiosu, or Piosu.

When we again embarked on the Orinoco, we found the river free from

shoals. After a few hours we passed the Raudal of Garcita, the rapids

of which are easy of ascent, when the waters are high. To the eastward

is seen a small chain of mountains called the chain of Cumadaminari,

consisting of gneiss, and not of stratified granite. We were struck

with a succession of great holes at more than one hundred and eighty

feet above the present level of the Orinoco, yet which,

notwithstanding, appear to be the effects of the erosion of the

waters. We shall see hereafter, that this phenomenon occurs again

nearly at the same height, both in the rocks that border the cataracts

of Maypures, and fifty leagues to the east, near the mouth of the Rio

Jao. We slept in the open air, on the left bank of the river, below

the island of Tomo. The night was beautiful and serene, but the

torment of the mosquitos was so great near the ground, that I could

not succeed in levelling the artificial horizon; consequently I lost

the opportunity of making an observation.

On the 18th we set out at three in the morning, to be more sure of

arriving before the close of the day at the cataract known by the name

of the Raudal de los Guahibos. We stopped at the mouth of the Rio

Tomo. The Indians went on shore, to prepare their food, and take some

repose. When we reached the foot of the raudal, it was near five in

the afternoon. It was extremely difficult to go up the current against

a mass of water, precipitated from a bank of gneiss several feet high.

An Indian threw himself into the water, to reach, by swimming, the

rock that divides the cataract into two parts. A rope was fastened to

the point of this rock, and when the canoe was hauled near enough, our

instruments, our dry plants, and the provision we had collected at

Atures, were landed in the raudal itself. We remarked with surprise,

that the natural damn over which the river is precipitated, presents a

dry space of considerable extent; where we stopped to see the boat go

up.

The rock of gneiss exhibits circular holes, the largest of which are

four feet deep, and eighteen inches wide. These funnels contain quartz

pebbles, and appear to have been formed by the friction of masses

rolled along by the impulse of the waters. Our situation, in the midst

of the cataract, was singular enough, but unattended by the smallest

danger. The missionary, who accompanied us, had his fever-fit on him.

In order to quench the thirst by which he was tormented, the idea

suggested itself to us of preparing a refreshing beverage for him in

one of the excavations of the rock. We had taken on board at Atures an

Indian basket called a mapire, filled with sugar, limes, and those

grenadillas, or fruits of the passion-flower, to which the Spaniards

give the name of parchas. As we were absolutely destitute of large

vessels for holding and mixing liquids, we poured the water of the

river, by means of a calabash, into one of the holes of the rock: to

this we added sugar and lime-juice. In a few minutes we had an

excellent beverage, which is almost a refinement of luxury, in that

wild spot; but our wants rendered us every day more and more

ingenious.

After an hour of expectation, we saw the boat arrive above the raudal,

and we were soon ready to depart. After quitting the rock, our passage

was not exempt from danger. The river is eight hundred toises broad,

and must be crossed obliquely, above the cataract, at the point where

the waters, impelled by the slope of their bed, rush with extreme

violence toward the ledge from which they are precipitated. We were

overtaken by a storm, accompanied happily by no wind, but the rain

fell in torrents. After rowing for twenty minutes, the pilot declared

that, far from gaining upon the current, we were again approaching the

raudal. These moments of uncertainty appeared to us very long: the

Indians spoke only in whispers, as they do always when they think

their situation perilous. They redoubled their efforts, and we arrived

at nightfall, without any accident, in the port of Maypures.

Storms within the tropics are as short as they are violent. The

lightning had fallen twice near our boat, and had no doubt struck the

surface of the water. I mention this phenomenon, because it is pretty

generally believed in those countries that the clouds, the surface of

which is charged with electricity, are at so great a height that the

lightning reaches the ground more rarely than in Europe. The night was

extremely dark, and we could not in less than two hours reach the

village of Maypures. We were wet to the skin. In proportion as the

rain ceased, the zancudos reappeared, with that voracity which

tipulary insects always display immediately after a storm. My

fellow-travellers were uncertain whether it would be best to stop in

the port or proceed on our way on foot, in spite of the darkness of

the night. Father Zea was determined to reach his home. He had given

directions for the construction of a large house of two stories, which

was to be begun by the Indians of the mission. "You will there find,"

said he gravely, "the same conveniences as in the open air; I have

neither a bench nor a table, but you will not suffer so much from the

flies, which are less troublesome in the mission than on the banks of

the river." We followed the counsel if the missionary, who caused

torches of copal to be lighted. These torches are tubes made of bark,

three inches in diameter, and filled with copal resin. We walked at

first over beds of rock, which were bare and slippery, and then we

entered a thick grove of palm trees. We were twice obliged to pass a

stream on trunks of trees hewn down. The torches had already ceased to

give light. Being formed on a strange principle, the woody substance

which resembles the wick surrounding the resin, they emit more smoke

than light, and are easily extinguished. The Indian pilot, who

expressed himself with some facility in Spanish, told us of snakes,

water-serpents, and tigers, by which we might be attacked. Such

conversations may be expected as matters of course, by persons who

travel at night with the natives. By intimidating the European

traveller, the Indians imagine they render themselves more necessary,

and gain the confidence of the stranger. The rudest inhabitant of the

missions fully understands the deceptions which everywhere arise from

the relations between men of unequal fortune and civilization. Under

the absolute and sometimes vexatious government of the monks, the

Indian seeks to ameliorate his condition by those little artifices

which are the weapons of physical and intellectual weakness.

Having arrived during the night at San Jose de Maypures we were

forcibly struck by the solitude of the place; the Indians were plunged

in profound sleep, and nothing was heard but the cries of nocturnal

birds, and the distant sound of the cataract. In the calm of the

night, amid the deep repose of nature, the monotonous sound of a fall

of water has in it something sad and solemn. We remained three days at

Maypures, a small village founded by Don Jose Solano at the time of

the expedition of the boundaries, the situation of which is more

picturesque, it might be said still more admirable, than that of

Atures.

The raudal of Maypures, called by the Indians Quituna, is formed, as

all cataracts are, by the resistance which the river encounters in its

way across a ridge of rocks, or a chain of mountains. The lofty

mountains of Cunavami and Calitamini, between the sources of the

rivers Cataniapo and Ventuari, stretch toward the west in a chain of

granitic hills. From this chain flow three small rivers, which embrace

in some sort the cataract of Maypures. There are, on the eastern bank,

the Sanariapo, and on the western, the Cameji and the Toparo. Opposite

the village of Maypures, the mountains fall back in an arch, and, like

a rocky coast, form a gulf open to the south-east. The irruption of

the river is effected between the mouths of the Toparo and the

Sanariapo, at the western extremity of this majestic amphitheatre.

The waters of the Orinoco now roll at the foot of the eastern chain of

the mountains, and have receded from the west, where, in a deep

valley, the ancient shore is easily recognized. A savannah, scarcely

raised thirty feet above the mean level of the river, extends from

this valley as far as the cataracts. There the small church of

Maypures has been constructed. It is built of trunks of palm-trees,

and is surrounded by seven or eight huts. The dry valley, which runs

in a straight line from south to north, from the Cameji to the Toparo,

is filled with granitic and solitary mounds, all resembling those

found in the shape of islands and shoals in the present bed of the

river. I was struck with this analogy of form, on comparing the rocks

of Keri and Oco, situated in the deserted bed of the river, west of

Maypures, with the islets of Ouivitari and Caminitamini, which rise

like old castles amid the cataracts to the east of the mission. The

geological aspect of these scenes, the insular form of the elevations

farthest from the present shore of the Orinoco, the cavities which the

waves appear to have hollowed in the rock Oco, and which are precisely

on the same level (twenty-five or thirty toises high) as the

excavations perceived opposite to them in the isle of Ouivitari; all

these appearances prove that the whole of this bay, now dry, was

formerly covered by water. Those waters probably formed a lake, the

northern dike preventing their running out: but, when this dike was

broken down, the savannah that surrounds the mission appeared at first

like a very low island, bounded by two arms of the same river. It may

be supposed that the Orinoco continued for some time to fill the

ravine, which we shall call the valley of Keri, because it contains

the rock of that name; and that the waters retired wholly toward the

eastern chain, leaving dry the western arm of the river, only as they

gradually diminished. Coloured stripes, which no doubt owe their black

tint to the oxides of iron and manganese, seem to justify this

conjecture. They are found on all the stones, far from the mission,

and indicate the former abode of the waters. In going up the river,

all merchandise is discharged at the confluence of the Rio Toparo and

the Orinoco. The boats are entrusted to the natives, who have so

perfect a knowledge of the raudal, that they have a particular name

for every step. They conduct the boats as far as the mouth of the

Cameji, where the danger is considered as past.

I will here describe the cataract of Quituna or Maypures as it

appeared at the two periods when I examined it, in going down and up

the river. It is formed, like that of Mapara or Atures, by an

archipelago of islands, which, to the length of three thousand toises,

fill the bed of the river, and by rocky dikes, which join the islands

together. The most remarkable of these dikes, or natural dams, are

Purimarimi, Manimi, and the Leap of the Sardine (Salto de la Sardina).

I name them in the order in which I saw them in succession from south

to north. The last of these three stages is near nine feet high, and

forms by its breadth a magnificent cascade. I must here repeat,

however, that the turbulent shock of the precipitated and broken

waters depends not so much on the absolute height of each step or

dike, as upon the multitude of counter-currents, the grouping of the

islands and shoals, that lie at the foot of the raudalitos or partial

cascades, and the contraction of the channels, which often do not

leave a free navigable passage of twenty or thirty feet. The eastern

part of the cataract of Maypures is much more dangerous than the

western; and therefore the Indian pilots prefer the left bank of the

river to conduct the boats down or up. Unfortunately, in the season of

low waters, this bank remains partly dry, and recourse must be had to

the process of portage; that is, the boats are obliged to be dragged

on cylinders, or round logs.

To command a comprehensive view of these stupendous scenes, the

spectator must be stationed on the little mountain of Manimi, a

granitic ridge, which rises from the savannah, north of the church of

the mission, and is itself only a continuation of the ridges of which

the raudalito of Manimi is composed. We often visited this mountain,

for we were never weary of gazing on this astonishing spectacle. From

the summit of the rock is descried a sheet of foam, extending the

length of a whole mile. Enormous masses of stone, black as iron, issue

from its bosom. Some are paps grouped in pairs, like basaltic hills;

others resemble towers, fortified castles, and ruined buildings. Their

gloomy tint contrasts with the silvery splendour of the foam. Every

rock, every islet is covered with vigorous trees, collected in

clusters. At the foot of those paps, far as the eye can reach, a thick

vapour is suspended over the river, and through this whitish fog the

tops of the lofty palm-trees shoot up. What name shall we give to

these majestic plants? I suppose them to be the vadgiai, a new species

of the genus Oreodoxa, the trunk of which is more than eighty feet

high. The feathery leaves of this palm-tree have a brilliant lustre,

and rise almost straight toward the sky. At every hour of the day the

sheet of foam displays different aspects. Sometimes the hilly islands

and the palm-trees project their broad shadows; sometimes the rays of

the setting sun are refracted in the cloud that hangs over the

cataract, and coloured arcs are formed which vanish and appear

alternately.

Such is the character of the landscape discovered from the top of the

mountain of Manimi, which no traveller has yet described. I do not

hesitate to repeat, that neither time, nor the view of the

Cordilleras, nor any abode in the temperate valleys of Mexico, has

effaced from my mind the powerful impression of the aspect of the

cataracts. When I read a description of those places in India that are

embellished by running waters and a vigorous vegetation, my

imagination retraces a sea of foam and palm-trees, the tops of which

rise above a stratum of vapour. The majestic scenes of nature, like

the sublime works of poetry and the arts, leave remembrances that are

incessantly awakening, and which, through the whole of life, mingle

with all our feelings of what is grand and beautiful.

The calm of the atmosphere, and the tumultuous movement of the waters,

produce a contrast peculiar to this zone. Here no breath of wind ever

agitates the foliage, no cloud veils the splendour of the azure vault

of heaven; a great mass of light is diffused in the air, on the earth

strewn with plants with glossy leaves, and on the bed of the river,

which extends as far as the eye can reach. This appearance surprises

the traveller born in the north of Europe. The idea of wild scenery,

of a torrent rushing from rock to rock, is linked in his imagination

with that of a climate where the noise of the tempest is mingled with

the sound of the cataract; and where, in a gloomy and misty day,

sweeping clouds seem to descend into the valley, and to rest upon the

tops of the pines. The landscape of the tropics in the low regions of

the continents has a peculiar physiognomy, something of greatness and

repose, which it preserves even where one of the elements is

struggling with invincible obstacles. Near the equator, hurricanes and

tempests belong to islands only, to deserts destitute of plants, and

to those spots where parts of the atmosphere repose upon surfaces from

which the radiation of heat is very unequal.

The mountain of Manimi forms the eastern limit of a plain which

furnishes for the history of vegetation, that is, for its progressive

development in bare and desert places, the same phenomena which we

have described above in speaking of the raudal of Atures. During the

rainy season, the waters heap vegetable earth upon the granitic rock,

the bare shelves of which extend horizontally. These islands of mould,

decorated with beautiful and odoriferous plants, resemble the blocks

of granite covered with flowers, which the inhabitants of the Alps

call gardens or courtils, and which pierce the glaciers of

Switzerland.

In a place where we had bathed the day before, at the foot of the rock

of Manimi, the Indians killed a serpent seven feet and a half long.

The Macos called it a camudu. Its back displayed, upon a yellow

ground, transverse bands, partly black, and partly inclining to a

brown green: under the belly the bands were blue, and united in

rhombic spots. This animal, which is not venomous, is said by the

natives to attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at

first, that the camudu was a boa; but I saw with surprise, that the

scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It was therefore a

viper (coluber); perhaps a python of the New Continent: I say perhaps,

for great naturalists appear to admit that all the pythons belong to

the Old, and all the boas to the New World. As the boa of Pliny was a

serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have been well

if the boas of America had been named pythons, and the pythons of

India been called boas. The first notions of an enormous reptile

capable of seizing man, and even the great quadrupeds, came to us from

India and the coast of Guinea. However indifferent names may be, we

can scarcely admit the idea, that the hemisphere in which Virgil

described the agonies of Laocoon (a fable which the Greeks of Asia

borrowed from much more southern nations) does not possess the

boa-constrictor. I will not augment the confusion of zoological

nomenclature by proposing new changes, and shall confine myself to

observing that at least the missionaries and the latinized Indians of

the missions, if not the planters of Guiana, clearly distinguish the

traga-venados (real boas, with simple anal plates) from the culebras

de agua, or water-snakes, like the camudu (pythons with double anal

scales). The traga-venados have no transverse bands on the back, but a

chain of rhombic or hexagonal spots. Some species prefer the driest

places; others love the water, as the pythons, or culebras de agua.

Advancing towards the west, we find the hills or islets in the

deserted branch of the Orinoco crowned with the same palm-trees that

rise on the rocks of the cataracts. One of these hills, called Keri,

is celebrated in the country on account of a white spot which shines

from afar, and in which the natives profess to see the image of the

full moon. I could not climb this steep rock, but I believe the white

spot to be a large nodule of quartz, formed by the union of several of

those veins so common in granites passing into gneiss. Opposite Keri,

or the Rock of the Moon, on the twin mountain Ouivitari, which is an

islet in the midst of the cataracts, the Indians point out with

mysterious awe a similar white spot. It has the form of a disc; and

they say this is the image of the sun (Camosi). Perhaps the

geographical situation of these two objects has contributed to their

having received these names. Keri is on the side of the setting,

Camosi on that of the rising sun. Languages being the most ancient

historical monuments of nations, some learned men have been singularly

struck by the analogy between the American word camosi and camosch,

which seems to have signified originally, the sun, in one of the

Semitic dialects. This analogy has given rise to hypotheses which

appear to me at least very problematical. The god of the Moabites,

Chemosh, or Camosch, who has so wearied the patience of the learned;

Apollo Chomens, cited by Strabo and by Ammianus Marcellinus;

Belphegor; Amun or Hamon; and Adonis: all, without doubt, represent

the sun in the winter solstice; but what can we conclude from a

solitary and fortuitous resemblance of sounds in languages that have

nothing besides in common?

The Maypure tongue is still spoken at Atures, although the mission is

inhabited only by Guahibos and Macos. At Maypures the Guareken and

Pareni tongues only are now spoken. From the Rio Anaveni, which falls

into the Orinoco north of Atures, as far as beyond Jao, and to the

mouth of the Guaviare (between the fourth and sixth degrees of

latitude), we everywhere find rivers, the termination of which, veni,*

(* Anaveni, Mataveni, Maraveni, etc.) recalls to mind the extent to

which the Maypure tongue heretofore prevailed. Veni, or weni,

signifies water, or a river. The words camosi and keri, which we have

just cited, are of the idiom of the Pareni Indians,* (* Or Parenas,

who must not be confounded either with the Paravenes of the Rio Caura

(Caulin page 69), or with the Parecas, whose language belongs to the

great family of the Tamanac tongues. A young Indian of Maypures, who

called himself a Paragini, answered my questions almost in the same

words that M. Bonpland heard from a Pareni. I have indicated the

differences in the table, see below.) who, I think I have heard from

the natives, lived originally on the banks of the Mataveni.* (* South

of the Rio Zama. We slept in the open air near the mouth of the

Mataveni on the 28th day of May, in our return from the Rio Negro.)

The Abbe Gili considers the Pareni as a simple dialect of the Maypure.

This question cannot be solved by a comparison of the roots merely.

Being totally ignorant of the grammatical structure of the Pareni, I

can raise but feeble doubts against the opinion of the Italian

missionary. The Pareni is perhaps a mixture of two tongues that belong

to different families; like the Maquiritari, which is composed of the

Maypure and the Caribbee; or, to cite an example better known, the

modern Persian, which is allied at the same time to the Sanscrit and

to the Semitic tongues. The following are Pareni words, which I

carefully compared with Maypure words.*

TABLE OF PARENI AND MAYPURE WORDS COMPARED.

COLUMN 1 : WORD.

COLUMN 2 : PARENI WORD.

COLUMN 3 : MAYPURE WORD. (* The words of the Maypure language have

been taken from the works of Gili and Hervas. I collected the words

placed between parentheses from a young Maco Indian, who understood

the Maypure language.)

The sun : Camosi : Kie (Kiepurig).

The moon : Keri : Kejapi (Cagijapi).

A star : Ouipo : Urrupu.

The devil : Amethami : Vasuri.

Water : Oneui (ut) : Oueni.

Fire : Casi : Catti.

Lightning : Eno : Eno-ima.* (* I am ignorant of what ima signifies in

this compound word. Eno means in Maypure the sky and thunder. Ina

signifies mother.)

The head : Ossipo : Nuchibucu.* (* The syllables no and nu, joined to

the words that designate parts of the body, might have been

suppressed; they answer to the possessive pronoun my.)

The hair : Nomao.

The eyes : Nopurizi : Nupuriki.

The nose : Nosivi : Nukirri.

The mouth : Nonoma : Nunumacu.

The teeth : Nasi : Nati.

The tongue : Notate : Nuare.

The ear : Notasine : Nuakini.

The cheek : Nocaco.

The neck : Nono : Noinu.

The arm : Nocano : Nuana.

The hand : Nucavi : Nucapi.

The breast : Notoroni.

The back : Notoli.

The thigh : Nocazo.

The nipples : Nocini.

The foot : Nocizi : Nukii.

The toes : Nociziriani.

The calf of the leg : Nocavua.

A crocodile : Cazuiti : Amana.

A fish : Cimasi : Timaki.

Maize : Cana : Jomuki.

Plantain : Paratana (Teot)* : Arata.

(* We may be surprised to find the word teot denote the eminently

nutritive substance that supplies the place of corn (the gift of a

beneficent divinity), and on which the subsistence of man within the

tropics depends. I may here mention, that the word Teo, or Teot, which

in Aztec signifies God (Teotl, properly Teo, for tl is only a

termination), is found in the language of the Betoi of the Rio Meta.

The name of the moon, in this language so remarkable for the

complication of its grammatical structure, is Teo-ro. The name of the

sun is Teo-umasoi. The particle ro designates a woman, umasoi a man.

Among the Betoi, the Maypures, and so many other nations of both

continents, the moon is believed to be the wife of the sun. But what

is this root Teo? It appears to me very doubtful, that Teo-ro should

signify God-woman, for Memelu is the name of the All-powerful Being in

the Betoi langnage.)

Cacao : Cacavua* (* Has this word been introduced from a communication

with Europeans? It is almost identical with the Mexican (Aztec) word

cacava.).

Tobacco : Jema : Jema.

Pimento : (Pumake).

Mimosa inga : (Caraba).

Cecropia peltata : (Jocovi).

Agaric : (Cajuli).

Agaric : Puziana (Pagiana) : Papeta (Popetas).

Agaric : Sinapa (Achinafe) : Avanume (Avanome).

Agaric : Meteuba (Meuteufafa) : Apekiva (Pejiiveji).

Agaric : Puriana vacavi : (Jaliva).

Agaric : Puriana vacavi uschanite.

Agaric : Puriassima vacavi : (Javiji).

This comparison seems to prove that the analogies observed in the

roots of the Pareni and the Maypure tongues are not to be neglected;

they are, however, scarcely more frequent than those that have been

observed between the Maypure of the Upper Orinoco and the language of

the Moxos, which is spoken on the banks of the Marmora, from 15 to 20

degrees of south latitude. The Parenis have in their pronunciation the

English th, or tsa of the Arabians, as I clearly heard in the word

Amethami (devil, evil spirit). I need not again notice the origin of

the word camosi. Solitary resemblances of sounds are as little proof

of communication between nations as the dissimilitude of a few roots

furnishes evidence against the affiliation of the German from the

Persian and the Greek. It is remarkable, however, that the names of

the sun and moon are sometimes found to be identical in languages, the

grammatical construction of which is entirely different; I may cite as

examples the Guarany and the Omagua,* languages of nations formerly

very powerful. (* Sun and Moon, in Guarany, Quarasi and Jasi; in

Omagua, Huarassi and Jase. I shall give, farther on, these same words

in the principal languages of the old and new worlds. See note below.)

It may be conceived that, with the worship of the stars and of the

powers of nature, words which have a relation to these objects might

pass from one idiom to another. I showed the constellation of the

Southern Cross to a Pareni Indian, who covered the lantern while I was

taking the circum-meridian heights of the stars; and he called it

Bahumehi, a name which the caribe fish, or serra salme, also bears in

Pareni. He was ignorant of the name of the belt of Orion; but a

Poignave Indian,* who knew the constellations better, assured me that

in his tongue the belt of Orion bore the name of Fuebot; he called the

moon Zenquerot. (* At the Orinoco the Puignaves, or Poignaves, are

distinguished from the Guipunaves (Uipunavi). The latter, on account

of their language, are considered as belonging to the Maypure and

Cabre nations; yet water is called in Poignave, as well as in Maypure,

oueni.) These two words have a very peculiar character for words of

American origin. As the names of the constellations may have been

transmitted to immense distances from one nation to another, these

Poignave words have fixed the attention of the learned, who have

imagined they recognize the Phoenician and Moabite tongues in the word

camosi of the Pareni. Fuebot and zenquerot seem to remind us of the

Phoenician words mot (clay), ardod (oak-tree), ephod, etc. But what

can we conclude from simple terminations which are most frequently

foreign to the roots? In Hebrew the feminine plurals terminate also in

oth. I noted entire phrases in Poignave; but the young man whom I

interrogated spoke so quick that I could not seize the division of the

words, and should have mixed them confusedly together had I attempted

to write them down.* (* For a curious example of this, see the speech

of Artabanes in Aristophanes (Acharn. act 1 scene 3) where a Greek has

attempted to give a Persian oration. See also Gibbon's Roman Empire

chapter 53 note 54, for a curious example of the way in which foreign

languages have been disfigured when it has been attempted to represent

them in a totally different tongue.)

The Mission near the raudal of Maypures was very considerable in the

time of the Jesuits, when it reckoned six hundred inhabitants, among

whom were several families of whites. Under the government of the

Fathers of the Observance the population was reduced to less than

sixty. It must be observed that in this part of South America

cultivation has been diminishing for half a century, while beyond the

forests, in the provinces near the sea, we find villages that contain

from two or three thousand Indians. The inhabitants of Maypures are a

mild, temperate people, and distinguished by great cleanliness. The

savages of the Orinoco for the most part have not that inordinate

fondness for strong liquors which prevails in North America. It is

true that the Ottomacs, the Jaruros, the Achaguas, and the Caribs, are

often intoxicated by the immoderate use of chiza and many other

fermented liquors, which they know how to prepare with cassava, maize,

and the saccharine fruit of the palm-tree; but travellers have as

usual generalized what belongs only to the manners of some tribes. We

were frequently unable to prevail upon the Guahibos, or the

Maco-Piroas, to taste brandy while they were labouring for us, and

seemed exhausted by fatigue. It will require a longer residence of

Europeans in these countries to spread there the vices that are

already common among the Indians on the coast. In the huts of the

natives of Maypures we found an appearance of order and neatness,

rarely met with in the houses of the missionaries.

These natives cultivate plantains and cassava, but no maize. Cassava,

made into thin cakes, is the bread of the country. Like the greater

part of the Indians of the Orinoco, the inhabitants of Maypures have

beverages which may be considered nourishing; one of these, much

celebrated in that country, is furnished by a palm-tree which grows

wild in the vicinity of the mission on the banks of the Auvana. This

tree is the seje: I estimated the number of flowers on one cluster at

forty-four thousand; and that of the fruit, of which the greater part

fall without ripening, at eight thousand. The fruit is a small fleshy

drupe. It is immersed for a few minutes in boiling water, to separate

the kernel from the parenchymatous part of the sarcocarp, which has a

sweet taste, and is pounded and bruised in a large vessel filled with

water. The infusion yields a yellowish liquor, which tastes like milk

of almonds. Sometimes papelon (unrefined sugar) is added. The

missionary told us that the natives become visibly fatter during the

two or three months in which they drink this seje, into which they dip

their cakes of cassava. The piaches, or Indian jugglers, go into the

forests, and sound the botuto (the sacred trumpet) under the seje

palm-trees, to force the tree, they say, to yield an ample produce the

following year. The people pay for this operation, as the Mongols, the

Arabs, and nations still nearer to us, pay the chamans, the marabouts,

and other classes of priests, to drive away the white ants and the

locusts by mystic words or prayers, or to procure a cessation of

continued rain, and invert the order of the seasons.

"I have a manufacture of pottery in my village," said Father Zea, when

accompanying us on a visit to an Indian family, who were occupied in

baking, by a fire of brushwood, in the open air, large earthen

vessels, two feet and a half high. This branch of manufacture is

peculiar to the various tribes of the great family of Maypures, and

they appear to have followed it from time immemorial. In every part of

the forests, far from any human habitation, on digging the earth,

fragments of pottery and delf are found. The taste for this kind of

manufacture seems to have been common heretofore to the natives of

both North and South America. To the north of Mexico, on the banks of

the Rio Gila, among the ruins of an Aztec city; in the United States,

near the tumuli of the Miamis; in Florida, and in every place where

any traces of ancient civilization are found, the soil covers

fragments of painted pottery; and the extreme resemblance of the

ornaments they display is striking. Savage nations, and those

civilized people* (* The Hindoos, the Tibetians, the Chinese, the

ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Peruvians; with whom the tendency

toward civilization in a body has prevented the free development of

the faculties of individuals.) who are condemned by their political

and religious institutions always to imitate themselves, strive, as if

by instinct, to perpetuate the same forms, to preserve a peculiar type

or style, and to follow the methods and processes which were employed

by their ancestors. In North America, fragments of delf ware have been

discovered in places where there exist lines of fortification, and the

walls of towns constructed by some unknown nation, now entirely

extinct. The paintings on these fragments have a great similitude to

those which are executed in our days on earthenware by the natives of

Louisiana and Florida. Thus too, the Indians of Maypures often painted

before our eyes the same ornaments as those we had observed in the

cavern of Ataruipe, on the vases containing human bones. They were

grecques, meanders, and figures of crocodiles, of monkeys, and of a

large quadruped which I could not recognize, though it had always the

same squat form. I might hazard the hypothesis that it belongs to

another country, and that the type had been brought thither in the

great migration of the American nations from the north-west to the

south and south-east; but I am rather inclined to believe that the

figure is intended to represent a tapir, and that the deformed image

of a native animal has become by degrees one of the types that has

been preserved.

The Maypures execute with the greatest skill grecques, or ornaments

formed by straight lines variously combined, similar to those that we

find on the vases of Magna Grecia, on the Mexican edifices at Mitla,

and in the works of so many nations who, without communication with

each other, find alike a sensible pleasure in the symmetric repetition

of the same forms. Arabesques, meanders, and grecques, please our

eyes, because the elements of which their series is composed, follow

in rhythmic order. The eye finds in this order, in the periodical

return of the same forms, what the ear distinguishes in the cadenced

succession of sounds and concords. Can we then admit a doubt that the

feeling of rhythm manifests itself in man at the first dawn of

civilization, and in the rudest essays of poetry and song?

Among the natives of Maypures, the making of pottery is an occupation

principally confined to the women. They purify the clay by repeated

washings, form it into cylinders, and mould the largest vases with

their hands. The American Indian is unacquainted with the potter's

wheel, which was familiar to the nations of the east in the remotest

antiquity. We may be surprised that the missionaries have not

introduced this simple and useful machine among the natives of the

Orinoco, yet we must recollect that three centuries have not sufficed

to make it known among the Indians of the peninsula of Araya, opposite

the port of Cumana. The colours used by the Maypures are the oxides of

iron and manganese, and particularly the yellow and red ochres that

are found in the hollows of sandstone. Sometimes the fecula of the

Bignonia chica is employed, after the pottery has been exposed to a

feeble fire. This painting is covered with a varnish of algarobo,

which is the transparent resin of the Hymenaea courbaril. The large

vessels in which the chiza is preserved are called ciamacu, the

smallest bear the name of mucra, from which word the Spaniards of the

coast have framed murcura. Not only the Maypures, but also the

Guaypunaves, the Caribs, the Ottomacs, and even the Guamos, are

distinguished at the Orinoco as makers of painted pottery, and this

manufacture extended formerly towards the banks of the Amazon.

Orellana was struck with the painted ornaments on the ware of the

Omaguas, who in his time were a populous commercial nation.

The following facts throw some light on the history of American

civilization. In the United States, west of the Allegheny mountains,

particularly between the Ohio and the great lakes of Canada, on

digging the earth, fragments of painted pottery, mingled with brass

tools, are constantly found. This mixture may well surprise us in a

country where, on the first arrival of Europeans, the natives were

ignorant of the use of metals. In the forests of South America, which

extend from the equator as far as the eighth degree of north latitude,

from the foot of the Andes to the Atlantic, this painted pottery is

discovered in the most desert places, but it is found accompanied by

hatchets of jade and other hard stones, skilfully perforated. No

metallic tools or ornaments have ever been discovered; though in the

mountains on the shore, and at the back of the Cordilleras, the art of

melting gold and copper, and of mixing the latter metal with tin to

make cutting instruments, was known. How can we account for these

contrasts between the temperate and the torrid zone? The Incas of Peru

had pushed their conquests and their religious wars as far as the

banks of the Napo and the Amazon, where their language extended over a

small space of land; but the civilization of the Peruvians, of the

inhabitants of Quito, and of the Muyscas of New Grenada, never appears

to have had any sensible influence on the moral state of the nations

of Guiana. It must be observed further, that in North America, between

the Ohio, Miami, and the Lakes, an unknown people, whom systematic

authors would make the descendants of the Toltecs and Aztecs,

constructed walls of earth and sometimes of stone without mortar,*

from ten to fifteen feet high, and seven or eight thousand feet long.

(* Of siliceous limestone, at Pique, on the Great Miami; of sandstone

at Creek Point, ten leagues from Chillakothe, where the wall is

fifteen hundred toises long.) These singular circumvallations

sometimes enclosed a hundred and fifty acres of ground. In the plains

of the Orinoco, as in those of Marietta, the Miami, and the Ohio, the

centre of an ancient civilization is found in the west on the back of

the mountains; but the Orinoco, and the countries lying between that

great river and the Amazon, appear never to have been inhabited by

nations whose constructions have resisted the ravages of time. Though

symbolical figures are found engraved on the hardest rocks, yet

further south than eight degrees of latitude, no tumulus, no

circumvallation, no dike of earth similar to those that exist farther

north in the plains of Varinas and Canagua, has been found. Such is

the contrast that may be observed between the eastern parts of North

and South America, those parts which extend from the table-land of

Cundinamarca* (* This is the ancient name of the empire of the Zaques,

founded by Bochica or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, in New

Grenada.) and the mountains of Cayenne towards the Atlantic, and those

which stretch from the Andes of New Spain towards the Alleghenies.

Nations advanced in civilization, of which we discover traces on the

banks of lake Teguyo and in the Casas grandes of the Rio Gila, might

have sent some tribes eastward into the open countries of the Missouri

and the Ohio, where the climate differs little from that of New

Mexico; but in South America, where the great flux of nations has

continued from north to south, those who had long enjoyed the mild

temperature of the back of the equinoctial Cordilleras no doubt

dreaded a descent into burning plains bristled with forests, and

inundated by the periodical swellings of rivers. It is easy to

conceive how much the force of vegetation, and the nature of the soil

and climate, within the torrid zone, embarrassed the natives in regard

to migration in numerous bodies, prevented settlements requiring an

extensive space, and perpetuated the misery and barbarism of solitary

hordes.

The feeble civilization introduced in our days by the Spanish monks

pursues a retrograde course. Father Gili relates that, at the time of

the expedition to the boundaries, agriculture began to make some

progress on the banks of the Orinoco; and that cattle, especially

goats, had multiplied considerably at Maypures. We found no goats,

either in the mission or in any other village of the Orinoco; they had

all been devoured by the tigers. The black and white breeds of pigs

only, the latter of which are called French pigs (puercos franceses),

because they are believed to have come from the Caribbee Islands, have

resisted the pursuit of wild beasts. We saw with much pleasure

guacamayas, or tame macaws, round the huts of the Indians, and flying

to the fields like our pigeons. This bird is the largest and most

majestic species of parrot with naked cheeks that we found in our

travels. It is called in Marativitan, cahuei. Including the tail, it

is two feet three inches long. We had observed it also on the banks of

the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Rio Negro. The flesh of the cahuei,

which is frequently eaten, is black and somewhat tough. These macaws,

whose plumage glows with vivid tints of purple, blue, and yellow, are

a great ornament to the Indian farm-yards; they do not yield in beauty

to the peacock, the golden pheasant, the pauxi, or the alector. The

practice of rearing parrots, birds of a family so different from the

gallinaceous tribes, was remarked by Columbus. When he discovered

America he saw macaws, or large parrots, which served as food to the

natives of the Caribbee Islands, instead of fowls.

A majestic tree, more than sixty feet high, which the planters call

fruta de burro, grows in the vicinity of the little village of

Maypures. It is a new species of the unona, and has the stateliness of

the Uvaria zeylanica of Aublet. Its branches are straight, and rise in

a pyramid, nearly like the poplar of the Mississippi, erroneously

called the Lombardy poplar. The tree is celebrated for its aromatic

fruit, the infusion of which is a powerful febrifuge. The poor

missionaries of the Orinoco, who are afflicted with tertian fevers

during a great part of the year, seldom travel without a little bag

filled with frutas de burro. I have already observed that between the

tropics, the use of aromatics, for instance very strong coffee, the

Croton cascarilla, or the pericarp of the Unona xylopioides, is

generally preferred to that of the astringent bark of cinchona, or of

Bonplandia trifolatia, which is the Angostura bark. The people of

America have the most inveterate prejudice against the employment of

different kinds of cinchona; and in the very countries where this

valuable remedy grows, they try (to use their own phrase) to cut off

the fever, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and hot lemonade prepared

with sugar and the small wild lime, the rind of which is equally oily

and aromatic.

The weather was unfavourable for astronomical observations. I

obtained, however, on the 20th of April, a good series of

corresponding altitudes of the sun, according to which the chronometer

gave 70 degrees 37 minutes 33 seconds for the longitude of the mission

of Maypures; the latitude was found, by a star observed towards the

north, to be 5 degrees 13 minutes 57 seconds; and by a star observed

towards the south, 5 degrees 13 minutes 7 seconds. The error of the

most recent maps is half a degree of longitude and half a degree of

latitude. It would be difficult to relate the trouble and torments

which these nocturnal observations cost us. Nowhere is a denser cloud

of mosquitos to be found. It formed, as it were, a particular stratum

some feet above the ground, and it thickened as we brought lights to

illumine our artificial horizon. The inhabitants of Maypures, for the

most part, quit the village to sleep in the islets amid the cataracts,

where the number of insects is less; others make a fire of brushwood

in their huts, and suspend their hammocks in the midst of the smoke.

We spent two days and a half in the little village of Maypures, on the

banks of the great Upper Cataract, and on the 21st April we embarked

in the canoe we had obtained from the missionary of Carichana. It was

much damaged by the shoals it had struck against, and the carelessness

of the Indians; but still greater dangers awaited it. It was to be

dragged over land, across an isthmus of thirty-six thousand feet; from

the Rio Tuamini to the Rio Negro, to go up by the Cassiquiare to the

Orinoco, and to repass the two raudales.

When the traveller has passed the Great Cataracts, he feels as if he

were in a new world, and had overstepped the barriers which nature

seems to have raised between the civilized countries of the coast and

the savage and unknown interior. Towards the east, in the bluish

distance, we saw for the last time the high chain of the Cunavami

mountains. Its long, horizontal ridge reminded us of the Mesa of the

Brigantine, near Cumana; but it terminates by a truncated summit. The

Peak of Calitamini (the name given to this summit) glows at sunset as

with a reddish fire. This appearance is every day the same. No one

ever approached this mountain, the height of which does not exceed six

hundred toises. I believe this splendour, commonly reddish but

sometimes silvery, to be a reflection produced by large plates of

talc, or by gneiss passing into mica-slate. The whole of this country

contains granitic rocks, on which here and there, in little plains, an

argillaceous grit-stone immediately reposes, containing fragments of

quartz and of brown iron-ore.

In going to the embarcadero, we caught on the trunk of a hevea* (* One

of those trees whose milk yields caoutchouc.) a new species of

tree-frog, remarkable for its beautiful colours; it had a yellow

belly, the back and head of a fine velvety purple, and a very narrow

stripe of white from the point of the nose to the hinder extremities.

This frog was two inches long, and allied to the Rana tinctoria, the

blood of which, it is asserted, introduced into the skin of a parrot,

in places where the feathers have been plucked out, occasions the

growth of frizzled feathers of a yellow or red colour. The Indians

showed us on the way, what is no doubt very curious in that country,

traces of cartwheels in the rock. They spoke, as of an unknown animal,

of those beasts with large horns, which, at the time of the expedition

to the boundaries, drew the boats through the valley of Keri, from the

Rio Toparo to the Rio Cameji, to avoid the cataracts, and save the

trouble of unloading the merchandize. I believe these poor inhabitants

of Maypures would now be as much astonished at the sight of an ox of

the Spanish breed, as the Romans were at the sight of the Lucanian

oxen, as they called the elephants of the army of Pyrrhus.

We embarked at Puerto de Arriba, and passed the Raudal de Cameji with

some difficulty. This passage is reputed to be dangerous when the

water is very high; but we found the surface of the river beyond the

raudal as smooth as glass. We passed the night in a rocky island

called Piedra Raton, which is three-quarters of a league long, and

displays that singular aspect of rising vegetation, those clusters of

shrubs, scattered over a bare and rocky soil, of which we have often

spoken.

On the 22nd of April we departed an hour and a half before sunrise.

The morning was humid but delicious; not a breath of wind was felt;

for south of Atures and Maypures a perpetual calm prevails. On the

banks of the Rio Negro and the Cassiquiare, at the foot of Cerro

Duida, and at the mission of Santa Barbara, we never heard that

rustling of the leaves which has such a peculiar charm in very hot

climates. The windings of rivers, the shelter of mountains, the

thickness of the forests, and the almost continual rains, at one or

two degrees of latitude north of the equator, contribute no doubt to

this phenomenon, which is peculiar to the missions of the Orinoco.

In that part of the valley of the Amazon which is south of the

equator, but at the same distance from it, as the places just

mentioned, a strong wind always rises two hours after mid-day. This

wind blows constantly against the stream, and is felt only in the bed

of the river. Below San Borja it is an easterly wind; at Tomependa I

found it between north and north-north-east; it is still the same

breeze, the wind of the rotation of the globe, but modified by slight

local circumstances. By favour of this general breeze you may go up

the Amazon under sail, from Grand Para as far as Tefe, a distance of

seven hundred and fifty leagues. In the province of Jaen de

Bracamoros, at the foot of the western declivity of the Cordilleras,

this Atlantic breeze rises sometimes to a tempest.

It is highly probable that the great salubrity of the Amazon is owing

to this constant breeze. In the stagnant air of the Upper Orinoco the

chemical affinities act more powerfully, and more deleterious miasmata

are formed. The insalubrity of the climate would be the same on the

woody banks of the Amazon, if that river, running like the Niger from

west to east, did not follow in its immense length the same direction,

which is that of the trade-winds. The valley of the Amazon is closed

only at its western extremity, where it approaches the Cordilleras of

the Andes. Towards the east, where the sea-breeze strikes the New

Continent, the shore is raised but a few feet above the level of the

Atlantic. The Upper Orinoco first runs from east to west, and then

from north to south. Where its course is nearly parallel to that of

the Amazon, a very hilly country (the group of the mountains of Parima

and of Dutch and French Guiana) separates it from the Atlantic, and

prevents the wind of rotation from reaching Esmeralda. This wind

begins to be powerfully felt only from the confluence of the Apure,

where the Lower Orinoco runs from west to east in a vast plain open

towards the Atlantic, and therefore the climate of this part of the

river is less noxious than that of the Upper Orinoco.

In order to add a third point of comparison, I may mention the valley

of the Rio Magdalena, which, like the Amazon, has one direction only,

but unfortunately, instead of being that of the breeze, it is from

south to north. Situated in the region of the trade-winds, the Rio

Magdalena has the stagnant air of the Upper Orinoco. From the canal of

Mahates as far as Honda, particularly south of the town of Mompox, we

never felt the wind blow but at the approach of the evening storms.

When, on the contrary, you proceed up the river beyond Honda, you find

the atmosphere often agitated. The strong winds that are ingulfed in

the valley of Neiva are noted for their excessive heat. We may be at

first surprised to perceive that the calm ceases as we approach the

lofty mountains in the upper course of the river, but this

astonishment ends when we recollect that the dry and burning winds of

the Llanos de Neiva are the effect of descending currents. The columns

of cold air rush from the top of the Nevados of Quindiu and of

Guanacas into the valley, driving before them the lower strata of the

atmosphere. Everywhere the unequal heating of the soil, and the

proximity of mountains covered with perpetual snow, cause partial

currents within the tropics, as well as in the temperate zone. The

violent winds of Neiva are not the effect of a repercussion of the

trade-winds; they rise where those winds cannot penetrate; and if the

mountains of the Upper Orinoco, the tops of which are generally

crowned with trees, were more elevated, they would produce the same

impetuous movements in the atmosphere as we observe in the Cordilleras

of Peru, of Abyssinia, and of Thibet. The intimate connection that

exists between the direction of rivers, the height and disposition of

the adjacent mountains, the movements of the atmosphere, and the

salubrity of the climate, are subjects well worthy of attention. The

study of the surface and the inequalities of the soil would indeed be

irksome and useless were it not connected with more general

considerations.

At the distance of six miles from the island of Piedra Raton we

passed, first, on the east, the mouth of the Rio Sipapo, called Tipapu

by the Indians; and then, on the west, the mouth of the Rio Vichada.

Near the latter are some rocks covered by the water, that form a small

cascade or raudalito. The Rio Sipapo, which Father Gili went up in

1757, and which he says is twice as broad as the Tiber, comes from a

considerable chain of mountains, which in its southern part bears the

name of the river, and joins the group of Calitamini and of Cunavami.

Next to the Peak of Duida, which rises above the mission of Esmeralda,

the Cerros of Sipapo appeared to me the most lofty of the whole

Cordillera of Parima. They form an immense wall of rocks, shooting up

abruptly from the plain, its craggy ridge of running from

south-south-east to north-north-west. I believe these crags, these

indentations, which equally occur in the sandstone of Montserrat in

Catalonia,* (* From them the name of Montserrat is derived, Monte

Serrato signifying a mountain ridged or jagged like a saw.) are owing

to blocks of granite heaped together. The Cerros de Sipapo wear a

different aspect every hour of the day. At sunrise the thick

vegetation with which these mountains are clothed is tinged with that

dark green inclining to brown, which is peculiar to a region where

trees with coriaceous leaves prevail. Broad and strong shadows are

projected on the neighbouring plain, and form a contrast with the

vivid light diffused over the ground, in the air, and on the surface

of the waters. But towards noon, when the sun reaches its zenith,

these strong shadows gradually disappear, and the whole group is

veiled by an aerial vapour of a much deeper azure than that of the

lower regions of the celestial vault. These vapours, circulating

around the rocky ridge, soften its outline, temper the effects of the

light, and give the landscape that aspect of calmness and repose which

in nature, as in the works of Claude Lorraine and Poussin, arises from

the harmony of forms and colours.

Cruzero, the powerful chief of the Guaypunaves, long resided behind

the mountains of Sipapo, after having quitted with his warlike horde

the plains between the Rio Inirida and the Chamochiquini. The Indians

told us that the forests which cover the Sipapo abound in the climbing

plant called vehuco de maimure. This species of liana is celebrated

among the Indians, and serves for making baskets and weaving mats. The

forests of Sipapo are altogether unknown, and there the missionaries

place the nation of the Rayas,* whose mouths are believed to be in

their navels.

(* Rays, on account of the pretended analogy with the fish of this

name, the mouth of which seems as if forced downwards below the body.

This singular legend has been spread far and wide over the earth.

Shakespeare has described Othello as recounting marvellous tales:

"of cannibals that do each other eat:

Of Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.")

An old Indian, whom we met at Carichana, and who boasted of having

often eaten human flesh, had seen these acephali "with his own eyes."

These absurd fables are spread as far as the Llanos, where you are not

always permitted to doubt the existence of the Raya Indians. In every

zone intolerance accompanies credulity; and it might be said that the

fictions of ancient geographers had passed from one hemisphere to the

other, did we not know that the most fantastic productions of the

imagination, like the works of nature, furnish everywhere a certain

analogy of aspect and of form.

We landed at the mouth of the Rio Vichada or Visata to examine the

plants of that part of the country. The scenery is very singular. The

forest is thin, and an innumerable quantity of small rocks rise from

the plain. These form massy prisms, ruined pillars, and solitary

towers fifteen or twenty feet high. Some are shaded by the trees of

the forest, others have their summits crowned with palms. These rocks

are of granite passing into gneiss. At the confluence of the Vichada

the rocks of granite, and what is still more remarkable, the soil

itself, are covered with moss and lichens. These latter resemble the

Cladonia pyxidata and the Lichen rangiferinus, so common in the north

of Europe. We could scarcely persuade ourselves that we were elevated

less than one hundred toises above the level of the sea, in the fifth

degree of latitude, in the centre of the torrid zone, which has so

long been thought to be destitute of cryptogamous plants. The mean

temperature of this shady and humid spot probably exceeds twenty-six

degrees of the centigrade thermometer. Reflecting on the small

quantity of rain which had hitherto fallen, we were surprised at the

beautiful verdure of the forests. This peculiarity characterises the

valley of the Upper Orinoco; on the coast of Caracas, and in the

Llanos, the trees in winter (in the season called summer in South

America, north of the equator) are stripped of their leaves, and the

ground is covered only with yellow and withered grass. Between the

solitary rocks just described arise some high plants of columnar

cactus (Cactus septemangularis), a very rare appearance south of the

cataracts of Atures and Maypures.

Amid this picturesque scene M. Bonpland was fortunate enough to find

several specimens of Laurus cinnamomoides, a very aromatic species of

cinnamon, known at the Orinoco by the names of varimacu and of

canelilla.* (* The diminutive of the Spanish word canela, which

signifies cinnamon.) This valuable production is found also in the

valley of the Rio Caura, as well as near Esmeralda, and eastward of

the Great Cataracts. The Jesuit Francisco de Olmo appears to have been

the first who discovered the canelilla, which he did in the country of

the Piaroas, near the sources of the Cataniapo. The missionary Gili,

who did not advance so far as the regions I am now describing, seems

to confound the varimacu, or guarimacu, with the myristica, or

nutmeg-tree of America. These barks and aromatic fruits, the cinnamon,

the nutmeg, the Myrtus pimenta, and the Laurus pucheri, would have

become important objects of trade, if Europe, at the period of the

discovery of the New World, had not already been accustomed to the

spices and aromatics of India. The cinnamon of the Orinoco, and that

of the Andaquies missions, are, however, less aromatic than the

cinnamon of Ceylon, and would still be so even if dried and prepared

by similar processes.

Every hemisphere produces plants of a different species; and it is not

by the diversity of climates that we can attempt to explain why

equinoctial Africa has no laurels, and the New World no heaths; why

calceolariae are found wild only in the southern hemisphere; why the

birds of the East Indies glow with colours less splendid than those of

the hot parts of America; finally, why the tiger is peculiar to Asia,

and the ornithorynchus to Australia. In the vegetable as well as in

the animal kingdom, the causes of the distribution of the species are

among the mysteries which natural philosophy cannot solve. The

attempts made to explain the distribution of various species on the

globe by the sole influence of climate, take their date from a period

when physical geography was still in its infancy; when, recurring

incessantly to pretended contrasts between the two worlds, it was

imagined that the whole of Africa and of America resembled the deserts

of Egypt and the marshes of Cayenne. At present, when men judge of the

state of things not from one type arbitrarily chosen, but from

positive knowledge, it is ascertained that the two continents, in

their immense extent, contain countries that are altogether analogous.

There are regions of America as barren and burning as the interior of

Africa. Those islands which produce the spices of India are scarcely

remarkable for their dryness; and it is not on account of the humidity

of the climate, as has been affirmed in recent works, that the New

Continent is deprived of those fine species of lauriniae and

myristicae, which are found united in one little corner of the earth

in the archipelago of India. For some years past cinnamon has been

cultivated with success in several parts of the New Continent; and a

zone that produces the coumarouna, the vanilla, the pucheri, the

pine-apple, the pimento, the balsam of tolu, the Myroxylon peruvianum,

the croton, the citroma, the pejoa, the incienso of the Silla of

Caracas, the quereme, the pancratium, and so many majestic liliaceous

plants, cannot be considered as destitute of aromatics. Besides, a dry

air favours the development of the aromatic or exciting properties,

only in certain species of plants. The most inveterate poisons are

produced in the most humid zone of America; and it is precisely under

the influence of the long rains of the tropics that the American

pimento (Capsicum baccatum), the fruit of which is often as caustic

and fiery as Indian pepper, vegetates best. From all these

considerations it follows, first, that the New Continent possesses

spices, aromatics, and very active vegetable poisons, peculiar to

itself, and differing specifically from those of the Old World;

secondly, that the primitive distribution of species in the torrid

zone cannot be explained by the influence of climate solely, or by the

distribution of temperature, which we observe in the present state of

our planet; but that this difference of climates leads us to perceive

why a given type of organization develops itself more vigorously in

such or such local circumstances. We can conceive that a small number

of the families of plants, for instance the musaceae and the palms,

cannot belong to very cold regions, on account of their internal

structure, and the importance of certain organs; but we cannot explain

why no one of the family of the Melastomaceae vegetates north of the

parallel of the thirtieth degree of latitude, or why no rose-tree

belongs to the southern hemisphere. Analogy of climates is often found

in the two continents, without identity of productions.

The Rio Vichada, which has a small raudal at its confluence with the

Orinoco, appeared to me, next to the Meta and the Guaviare, to be the

most considerable river coming from the west. During the last forty

years no European has navigated the Vichada. I could learn nothing of

its sources; they rise, I believe, with those of the Tomo, in the

plains that extend to the south of Casimena. Fugitive Indians of Santa

Rosalia de Cabapuna, a village situate on the banks of the Meta, have

arrived even recently, by the Rio Vichada, at the cataract of

Maypures; which sufficiently proves that the sources of this river are

not very distant from the Meta. Father Gumilla has preserved the names

of several German and Spanish Jesuits, who in 1734 fell victims to

their zeal for religion, by the hands of the Caribs on the now desert

banks of the Vichada.

Having passed the Cano Pirajavi on the east, and then a small river on

the west, which issues, as the Indians say, from a lake called Nao, we

rested for the night on the shore of the Orinoco, at the mouth of the

Zama, a very considerable river, but as little known as the Vichada.

Notwithstanding the black waters of the Zama, we suffered greatly from

insects. The night was beautiful, without a breath of wind in the

lower regions of the atmosphere, but towards two in the morning we saw

thick clouds crossing the zenith rapidly from east to west. When,

declining toward the horizon, they traversed the great nebulae of

Sagittarius and the Ship, they appeared of a dark blue. The light of

the nebulae is never more splendid than when they are in part covered

by sweeping clouds. We observe the same phenomenon in Europe in the

Milky Way, in the aurora borealis when it beams with a silvery light;

and at the rising and setting of the sun in that part of the sky that

is whitened* from causes which philosophers have not yet sufficiently

explained. (* The dawn: in French aube (alba, albente coelo.))

The vast tract of country lying between the Meta, the Vichada, and the

Guaviare, is altogether unknown a league from the banks; but it is

believed to be inhabited by wild Indians of the tribe of Chiricoas,

who fortunately build no boats. Formerly, when the Caribs, and their

enemies the Cabres, traversed these regions with their little fleets

of rafts and canoes, it would have been imprudent to have passed the

night near the mouth of a river running from the west. The little

settlements of the Europeans having now caused the independent Indians

to retire from the banks of the Upper Orinoco, the solitude of these

regions is such, that from Carichana to Javita, and from Esmeralda to

San Fernando de Atabapo, during a course of one hundred and eighty

leagues, we did not meet a single boat.

At the mouth of the Rio Zama we approach a class of rivers, that

merits great attention. The Zama, the Mataveni, the Atabapo, the

Tuamini, the Temi, and the Guainia, are aguas negras, that is, their

waters, seen in a large body, appear brown like coffee, or of a

greenish black. These waters, notwithstanding, are most beautiful,

clear, and agreeable to the taste. I have observed above, that the

crocodiles, and, if not the zancudos, at least the mosquitos,

generally shun the black waters. The people assert too, that these

waters do not colour the rocks; and that the white rivers have black

borders, while the black rivers have white. In fact, the shores of the

Guainia, known to Europeans by the name of the Rio Negro, frequently

exhibit masses of quartz issuing from granite, and of a dazzling

whiteness. The waters of the Mataveni, when examined in a glass, are

pretty white; those of the Atabapo retain a slight tinge of

yellowish-brown. When the least breath of wind agitates the surface of

these black rivers they appear of a fine grass-green, like the lakes

of Switzerland. In the shade, the Zama, the Atabapo, and the Guainia,

are as dark as coffee-grounds. These phenomena are so striking, that

the Indians everywhere distinguish the waters by the terms black and

white. The former have often served me for an artificial horizon; they

reflect the image of the stars with admirable clearness.

The colour of the waters of springs, rivers, and lakes, ranks among

those physical problems which it is difficult, if not impossible, to

solve by direct experiments. The tints of reflected light are

generally very different from the tints of transmitted light;

particularly when the transmission takes place through a great portion

of fluid. If there were no absorption of rays, the transmitted light

would be of a colour corresponding with that of the reflected light;

and in general we judge imperfectly of transmitted light, by filling

with water a shallow glass with a narrow aperture. In a river, the

colour of the reflected light comes to us always from the interior

strata of the fluid, and not from the upper stratum.

Some celebrated naturalists, who have examined the purest waters of

the glaciers, and those which flow from mountains covered with

perpetual snow, where the earth is destitute of the relics of

vegetation, have thought that the proper colour of water might be

blue, or green. Nothing, in fact, proves, that water is by nature

white; and we must always admit the presence of a colouring principle,

when water viewed by reflection is coloured. In the rivers that

contain a colouring principle, that principle is generally so little

in quantity, that it eludes all chemical research. The tints of the

ocean seem often to depend neither on the nature of the bottom, nor on

the reflection of the sky on the clouds. Sir Humphrey Davy was of

opinion that the tints of different seas may very likely be owing to

different proportions of iodine.

On consulting the geographers of antiquity, we find that the Greeks

had noticed the blue waters of Thermopylae, the red waters of Joppa,

and the black waters of the hot-baths of Astyra, opposite Lesbos. Some

rivers, the Rhone for instance, near Geneva, have a decidedly blue

colour. It is said, that the snow-waters of the Alps are sometimes of

a dark emerald green. Several lakes of Savoy and of Peru have a brown

colour approaching black. Most of these phenomena of coloration are

observed in waters that are believed to be the purest; and it is

rather from reasonings founded on analogy, than from any direct

analysis, that we may throw any light on so uncertain a matter. In the

vast system of rivers near the mouth of the Rio Zama, a fact which

appears to me remarkable is, that the black waters are principally

restricted to the equatorial regions. They begin about five degrees of

north latitude; and abound thence to beyond the equator as far as

about two degrees of south latitude. The mouth of the Rio Negro is

indeed in the latitude of 3 degrees 9 minutes; but in this interval

the black and white waters are so singularly mingled in the forests

and the savannahs, that we know not to what cause the coloration must

be attributed. The waters of the Cassiquiare, which fall into the Rio

Negro, are as white as those of the Orinoco, from which it issues. Of

two tributary streams of the Cassiquiare very near each other, the

Siapa and the Pacimony, one is white, the other black.

When the Indians are interrogated respecting the causes of these

strange colorations, they answer, as questions in natural philosophy

or physiology are sometimes answered in Europe, by repeating the fact

in other terms. If you address yourself to the missionaries, they

reply, as if they had the most convincing proofs of the fact, that the

waters are coloured by washing the roots of the sarsaparilla. The

Smilaceae no doubt abound on the banks of the Rio Negro, the Pacimony,

and the Cababury; their roots, macerated in the water, yield an

extractive matter, that is brown, bitter, and mucilaginous; but how

many tufts of smilax have we seen in places, where the waters were

entirely white. In the marshy forest which we traversed, to convey our

canoe from the Rio Tuamini to the Cano Pimichin and the Rio Negro,

why, in the same soil, did we ford alternately rivulets of black and

white water? Why did we find no river white near its springs, and

black in the lower part of its course? I know not whether the Rio

Negro preserves its yellowish brown colour as far as its mouth,

notwithstanding the great quantity of white water it receives from the

Cassiquiare and the Rio Blanco.

Although, on account of the abundance of rain, vegetation is more

vigorous close to the equator than eight or ten degrees north or

south, it cannot be affirmed, that the rivers with black waters rise

principally in the most shady and thickest forests. On the contrary, a

great number of the aguas negras come from the open savannahs that

extend from the Meta beyond the Guaviare towards the Caqueta. In a

journey which I made with Senor Montufar from the port of Guayaquil to

the Bodegas de Babaojo, at the period of the great inundations, I was

struck by the analogy of colour displayed by the vast savannahs of the

Invernadero del Garzal and of the Lagartero, as well as by the Rio

Negro and the Atabapo. These savannahs, partly inundated during three

months, are composed of paspalum, eriochloa, and several species of

cyperaceae. We sailed on waters that were from four to five feet deep;

their temperature was by day from 33 to 34 degrees of the centigrade

thermometer; they exhaled a strong smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, to

which no doubt some rotten plants of arum and heliconia, that swam on

the surface of the pools, contributed. The waters of the Lagartero

were of a golden yellow by transmitted, and coffee-brown by reflected

light. They are no doubt coloured by a carburet of hydrogen. An

analogous phenomenon is observed in the dunghill-waters prepared by

our gardeners, and in the waters that issue from bogs. May we not also

admit, that it is a mixture of carbon and hydrogen, an extractive

vegetable matter, that colours the black rivers, the Atabapo, the

Zama, the Mataveni, and the Guainia? The frequency of the equatorial

rains contributes no doubt to this coloration by filtration through a

thick mass of grasses. I suggest these ideas only in the form of a

doubt. The colouring principle seems to be in little abundance; for I

observed that the waters of the Guainia or Rio Negro, when subjected

to ebullition, do not become brown like other fluids charged with

carburets of hydrogen.

It is also very remarkable, that this phenomenon of black waters,

which might be supposed to belong only to the low regions of the

torrid zone, is found also, though rarely, on the table-lands of the

Andes. The town of Cuenca in the kingdom of Quito, is surrounded by

three small rivers, the Machangara, the Rio del Matadero, and the

Yanuncai; of which the two former are white, and the waters of the

last are black (aguas negras). These waters, like those of the

Atabapo, are of a coffee-colour by reflection, and pale yellow by

transmission. They are very clear, and the inhabitants of Cuenca, who

drink them in preference to any other, attribute their colour to the

sarsaparilla, which it is said grows abundantly on the banks of the

Rio Yanuncai.

We left the mouth of the Zama at five in the morning of the 23rd of

April. The river continued to be skirted on both sides by a thick

forest. The mountains on the east seemed gradually to retire farther

back. We passed first the mouth of the Rio Mataveni, and afterward an

islet of a very singular form; a square granitic rock that rises in

the middle of the water. It is called by the missionaries El

Castillito, or the Little Castle. Black bands seem to indicate, that

the highest swellings of the Orinoco do not rise at this place above

eight feet; and that the great swellings observed lower down are owing

to the tributary streams which flow into it north of the raudales of

Atures and Maypures. We passed the night on the right bank opposite

the mouth of the Rio Siucurivapu, near a rock called Aricagua. During

the night an innumerable quantity of bats issued from the clefts of

the rock, and hovered around our hammocks.

On the 24th a violent rain obliged us early to return to our boat. We

departed at two o'clock, after having lost some books, which we could

not find in the darkness of the night, on the rock of Aricagua. The

river runs straight from south to north; its banks are low, and shaded

on both sides by thick forests. We passed the mouths of the Ucata, the

Arapa, and the Caranaveni. About four in the afternoon we landed at

the Conucos de Siquita, the Indian plantations of the mission of San

Fernando. The good people wished to detain us among them, but we

continued to go up against the current, which ran at the rate of five

feet a second, according to a measurement I made by observing the time

that a floating body took to go down a given distance. We entered the

mouth of the Guaviare on a dark night, passed the point where the Rio

Atabapo joins the Guaviare, and arrived at the mission after midnight.

We were lodged as usual at the Convent, that is, in the house of the

missionary, who, though much surprised at our unexpected visit,

nevertheless received us with the kindest hospitality.

NOTE.

If, in the philosophical study of the structure of languages, the

analogy of a few roots acquires value only when they can be

geographically connected together, neither is the want of resemblance

in roots any very strong proof against the common origin of nations.

In the different dialects of the Totonac language (that of one of the

most ancient tribes of Mexico) the sun and the moon have names which

custom has rendered entirely different. This difference is found among

the Caribs between the language of men and women; a phenomenon that

probably arises from the circumstance that, among prisoners, men were

oftener put to death than women. Females introduced by degrees words

of a foreign language into the Caribbee; and, as the girls followed

the occupations of the women much more than the boys, a language was

formed peculiar to the women. I shall record in this note the names of

the sun and moon in a great number of American and Asiatic idioms,

again reminding the reader of the uncertainty of all judgments founded

merely on the comparison of solitary words.

TABLE OF NAMES OF THE SUN AND THE MOON.

COLUMN 1 : LANGUAGE.

COLUMN 2 : NAME OF THE SUN.

COLUMN 3 : NAME OF THE MOON.

IN THE NEW WORLD:

Eastern Esquimaux (Greenland) : Ajut, kaumat, sakanach : Anningat,

kaumei, tatcok.

Western Esquimaux (Kadjak) : Tschingugak, madschak : Igaluk, tangeik.

Ojibbeway : Kissis : Debicot.

Delaware : Natatane : Keyshocof.

Nootka : Opulszthl : Omulszthl.

Otomi : Hindi : Zana.

Aztec or Mexican : Tonatiuh : Meztli.

Cora : Taica : Maitsaca.

Huasteca : Aquicha : Aytz.

Muysca : Zuhe (sua) : Chia.

Yaruro : ditto : Goppe.

Caribbee and Tamanac : Veiou (hueiou) : Nouno (nonum).

Maypure : Kie : Kejapi.

Lule : Inni : Allit.

Vilela : Olo : Copi.

Moxo : Sachi : Cohe.

Chiquito : Suus : Copi.

Guarani : Quarasi : Jasi.

Tupi (Brasil) : Coaracy : Iacy.

Peruvian (Quichua) : Inti : Quilla.

Araucan (Chili) : Antu : Cuyen.

IN THE OLD WORLD:

Mongol : Nara (naran) : Sara (saran).

Mantchou : Choun : Bia.

Tschaghatai : Koun : Ay.

Ossete (of Caucasus) : Khourr : Mai.

Tibetan : Niyma : Rdjawa.

Chinese : Jy : Yue.

Japanese : Fi : Tsouki.

Sanscrit : Surya, aryama, mitra, aditya, arka, hamsa : Tschandra,

tschandrama, soma, masi.

Persian : Chor, chorschid, afitab : Mah.

Zend : Houere.

Pehlvi : Schemschia, zabzoba, kokma : Kokma.

Phoenician : Schemesih.

Hebrew : Schemesch : Yarea.

Aramean or Chaldean : Schimscha : Yarha.

Syrian : Schemscho : Yarho.

Arabic : Schams : Kamar.

Ethiopian : Tzabay : Warha.

The American words are written according to the Spanish orthography. I

would not change the orthography of the Nootka word onulszth, taken

from Cook's Voyages, to show how much Volney's idea of introducing an

uniform notation of sounds is worthy of attention, if not applied to

the languages of the East written without vowels. In onulszth there

are four signs for one single consonant. We have already seen that

American nations, speaking languages of a very different structure,

call the sun by the same name; that the moon is sometimes called

sleeping sun, sun of night, light of night; and that sometimes the two

orbs have the same denomination. These examples are taken from the

Guarany, the Omagua, Shawanese, Miami, Maco, and Ojibbeway idioms.

Thus in the Old World, the sun and moon are denoted in Arabic by

niryn, the luminaries; thus, in Persian, the most common words, afitab

and chorschid, are compounds. By the migration of tribes from Asia to

America, and from America to Asia, a certain number of roots have

passed from one language into others; and these roots have been

transported, like the fragments of a shipwreck, far from the coast,

into the islands. (Sun, in New England, kone; in Tschagatai, koun; in

Yakout, kouini. Star, in Huastec, ot; in Mongol, oddon; in Aztec,

citlal, citl; in Persian, sitareh. House, in Aztec, calli; in Wogoul,

kualla or kolla. Water, in Aztec, atel (itels, a river, in Vilela); in

Mongol, Tscheremiss, and Tschouvass, atl, atelch, etel, or idel.

Stone, in Caribbee, tebou; in the Lesgian of Caucasus, teb; in Aztec,

tepetl; in Turkish, tepe. Food, in Quichua, micunnan; in Malay,

macannon. Boat, in Haitian, canoa; in Ayno, cahani; in Greenlandish,

kayak; in Turkish, kayik; in Samoyiede, kayouk; in the Germanic

tongues, kahn.) But we must distinguish from these foreign elements

what belongs fundamentally to the American idioms themselves. Such is

the effect of time, and communication among nations, that the mixture

with an heterogenous language has not only an influence upon roots,

but most frequently ends by modifying and denaturalizing grammatical

forms. "When a language resists a regular analysis," observes William

von Humboldt, in his considerations on the Mexican, Cora, Totonac, and

Tarahumar tongues, "we may suspect some mixture, some foreign

influence; for the faculties of man, which are, as we may say,

reflected in the structure of languages, and in their grammatical

forms, act constantly in a regular and uniform manner."