Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 3 | Page 5

Materia
Medica of Hindostan, Madras 1813.)) The quantity of nutritious matter
which the real sago-tree of Asia affords (Sagus Rumphii, or
Metroxylon sagu, Roxb.) exceeds that which is furnished by any other
plant useful to man. One trunk of a tree in its fifteenth year sometimes
yields six hundred pounds weight of sago, or meal (for the word sago
signifies meal in the dialect of Amboyna). Mr. Crawfurd, who resided a
long time in the Indian Archipelago, calculates that an English acre
could contain four hundred and thirty-five sago-trees, which would
yield one hundred and twenty thousand five hundred pounds
avoirdupois of fecula, or more than eight thousand pounds yearly.
History of the Indian Archipelago volume 1 pages 387 and 393. This
produce is triple that of corn, and double that of potatoes in France. But
the plantain produces, on the same surface of land, still more
alimentary substance than the sago-tree.); it yields the flour of which
the yuruma bread is made; and far from being a palm-tree of the shore,
like the Chamaerops humilis, the common cocoa-tree, and the lodoicea
of Commerson, is found as a palm-tree of the marshes as far as the
sources of the Orinoco.* (* I dwell much on these divisions of the great
and fine families of palms according to the distribution of the species:
first, in dry places, or inland plains, Corypha tectorum; second, on the
sea-coast, Chamaerops humilis, Cocos nucifera, Corypha maritima,
Lodoicea seychellarum, Labill.; third, in the fresh-water marshes,
Sagus Rumphii, Mauritia flexuosa; and 4th, in the alpine regions,

between seven and fifteen hundred toises high, Ceroxylon andicola,
Oreodoxa frigida, Kunthia montana. This last group of palmae
montanae, which rises in the Andes of Guanacas nearly to the limit of
perpetual snow, was, I believe, entirely unknown before our travels in
America. (Nov. Gen. volume 1 page 317; Semanario de Santa Fe de
Bogota 1819 Number 21 page 163.) In the season of inundations these
clumps of mauritia, with their leaves in the form of a fan, have the
appearance of a forest rising from the bosom of the waters. The
navigator, in proceeding along the channels of the delta of the Orinoco
at night, sees with surprise the summit of the palm-trees illumined by
large fires. These are the habitations of the Guaraons (Tivitivas and
Waraweties of Raleigh* (* The Indian name of the tribe of Uaraus
(Guaraunos of the Spaniards) may be recognized in the Warawety
(Ouarauoty) of Raleigh, one of the branches of the Tivitivas. See
Discovery of Guiana, 1576 page 90 and the sketch of the habitations of
the Guaraons, in Raleghi brevis Descrip. Guianae, 1594 tab 4.)), which
are suspended from the trunks of trees. These tribes hang up mats in the
air, which they fill with earth, and kindle, on a layer of moist clay, the
fire necessary for their household wants. They have owed their liberty
and their political independence for ages to the quaking and swampy
soil, which they pass over in the time of drought, and on which they
alone know how to walk in security to their solitude in the delta of the
Orinoco; to their abode on the trees where religious enthusiasm will
probably never lead any American stylites.* (* This sect was founded
by Simeon Sisanites, a native of Syria. He passed thirty-seven years in
mystic contemplation, on five pillars, the last of which was thirty-six
cubits high. The sancti columnares attempted to establish their aerial
cloisters in the country of Treves, in Germany; but the bishops opposed
these extravagant and perilous enterprises. Mosheim, Instit. Hist.
Eccles page 192. See Humboldt's Views of Nature (Bohn) pages 13 and
136.) I have already mentioned in another place that the mauritia
palm-tree, the tree of life of the missionaries, not only affords the
Guaraons a safe dwelling during the risings of the Orinoco, but that its
shelly fruit, its farinaceous pith, its juice, abounding in saccharine
matter, and the fibres of its petioles, furnish them with food, wine,* and
thread proper for making cords and weaving hammocks. (* The use of
this moriche wine however is not very common. The Guaraons prefer

in general a beverage of fermented honey.) These customs of the
Indians of the delta of the Orinoco were found formerly in the Gulf of
Darien (Uraba), and in the greater part of the inundated lands between
the Guarapiche and the mouths of the Amazon. It is curious to observe
in the lowest degree of human civilization the existence of a whole
tribe depending on one single species of palm-tree, similar to those
insects which feed on one and the same flower, or on one and the same
part of a plant.
The navigation of the river, whether vessels arrive by the Boca de
Navios, or risk entering the labyrinth