Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 3 | Page 5

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 of the bocas chicas, requires various precautions, according as the waters are high or low. The regularity of these periodical risings of the Orinoco has been long an object of admiration to travellers, as the overflowings of the Nile furnished the philosophers of antiquity with a problem difficult to solve. The Orinoco and the Nile, contrary to the direction of the Ganges, the Indus, the Rio de la Plata, and the Euphrates, flow alike from the south toward the north; but the sources of the