Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.21, Part 2
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.
