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 Air
Driven With Force Into The Bony Drum Produces That Mournful Sound
Which Characterises The Araguatoes.
I sketched on the spot these
organs, which are imperfectly known to anatomists, and published
the description of them on my return to Europe.
The araguato, which the Tamanac Indians call aravata,* (* In the
writings of the early Spanish missionaries, this monkey is
described by the names of aranata and araguato. In both names we
easily discover the same root. The v has been transformed into g
and n. The name of arabata, which Gumilla gives to the howling apes
of the Lower Orinoco, and which Geoffroy thinks belongs to the S.
straminea of Great Paria, is the same Tamanac word aravata. This
identity of names need not surprise us. The language of the Chayma
Indians of Cumana is one of the numerous branches of the Tamanac
language, and the latter is connected with the Caribbee language of
the Lower Orinoco.) and the Maypures marave, resembles a young
bear.* (* Alouate ourse (Simia ursina).) It is three feet long,
reckoning from the top of the head (which is small and very
pyramidal) to the beginning of the prehensile tail. Its fur is
bushy, and of a reddish brown; the breast and belly are covered
with fine hair, and not bare as in the mono colorado, or alouate
roux of Buffon, which we carefully examined in going from
Carthagena to Santa Fe de Bogota. The face of the araguato is of a
blackish blue, and is covered with a fine and wrinkled skin: its
beard is pretty long; and, notwithstanding the direction of the
facial line, the angle of which is only thirty degrees, the
araguato has, in the expression of the countenance, as much
resemblance to man as the marimonde (S. belzebuth, Bresson) and the
capuchin of the Orinoco (S. chiropotes). Among thousands of
araguatoes which we observed in the provinces of Cumana, Caracas,
and Guiana, we never saw any change in the reddish brown fur of the
back and shoulders, whether we examined individuals or whole
troops. It appeared to me in general, that variety of colour is
less frequent among monkeys than naturalists suppose.
The araguato of Caripe is a new species of the genus Stentor, which
I have above described. It differs equally from the ouarine (S.
guariba) and the alouate roux (S. seniculus, old man of the woods).
Its eye, voice, and gait, denote melancholy. I have seen young
araguatoes brought up in Indian huts. They never play like the
little sagoins, and their gravity was described with much
simplicity by Lopez de Gomara, in the beginning of the sixteenth
century. "The Aranata de los Cumaneses," says this author, "has the
face of a man, the beard of a goat, and a grave demeanour (honrado
gesto.)" Monkeys are more melancholy in proportion as they have
more resemblance to man. Their sprightliness diminishes, as their
intellectual faculties appear to increase.
We stopped to observe some howling monkeys, which, to the number of
thirty or forty, crossed the road, passing in a file from one tree
to another over the horizontal and intersecting branches.
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