Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Companions Of Christopher
Columbus, Coasting Along The Island Of Margareta, The Northern
Coast Of Which Is Still Inhabited By
The noblest portion of the
Guayqueria nation,* (* The Guayquerias of La Banda del Norte
consider themselves as the most noble
Race, because they think they
are less mixed with the Chayma Indian, and other copper-coloured
races. They are distinguished from the Guayquerias of the continent
by their manner of pronouncing the Spanish language, which they
speak almost without separating their teeth. They show with pride
to Europeans the Punta de la Galera, or Galley's Point, (so called
on account of the vessel of Columbus having anchored there), and
the port of Manzanillo, where they first swore to the whites in
1498, that friendship which they have never betrayed, and which has
obtained for them, in court phraseology, the title of fieles,
loyal. - See above.) encountered a few natives who were harpooning
fish by throwing a pole tied to a cord, and terminating in an
extremely sharp point. They asked them in the Haiti language their
name; and the Indians, thinking that the question of the strangers
related to their harpoons, which were formed of the hard and heavy
wood of the Macana palm, answered guaike, guaike, which signifies
pointed pole. A striking difference at present exists between the
Guayquerias, a civilized tribe of skilled fishermen, and those
savage Guaraounos of the Orinoco, who suspend their habitations on
the trunks of the Moriche palm. The population of Cumana has been
singularly exaggerated, but according to the most authentic
registers it does not exceed 16,000 souls.
Probably the Indian suburb will by degrees extend as far as the
Embarcadero; the plain, which is not yet covered with houses or
huts, being more than 340 toises in length. The heat is somewhat
less oppressive on the side near the seashore, than in the old
town, where the reverberation of the calcareous soil, and the
proximity of the mountain of San Antonio, raise the temperature to
an excessive degree. In the suburb of the Guayquerias, the sea
breezes have free access; the soil is clayey, and, for that reason,
it is thought to be less exposed to violent shocks of earthquake,
than the houses at the foot of the rocks and hills on the right
bank of the Manzanares.
The shore near the mouth of the small river Santa Catalina is
bordered with mangrove trees,* but these mangroves are not
sufficiently spread to diminish the salubrity of the air of Cumana.
(* Rhizophora mangle. M. Bonpland found on the Plaga Chica the
Allionia incarnata, in the same place where the unfortunate
Loefling had discovered this new genus of Nyctagineae.) The soil of
the plain is in part destitute of vegetation, in part covered with
tufts of Sesuvium portulacastrum, Gomphrena flava, G. myrtifolia,
Talinum cuspidatum, T. cumanense, and Portulaca lanuginosa. Among
these herbaceous plants we find at intervals the Avicennia
tomentosa, the Scoparia dulcis, a frutescent mimosa with very
irritable leaves,* and particularly cassias, the number of which is
so great in South America, that we collected, in our travels, more
than thirty new species.
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