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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When The
Spaniards, After The Year 1498, Began To Visit The Mainland, They
Already Had Words* To Designate The Vegetable Productions Most
Useful To Man, And Common Both To The Islands And To The Coasts Of
Cumana And Paria.
(* The following are Haitian words, in their real
form, which have passed into the Castilian language since the end
of the 15th century.
Many of them are not uninteresting to
descriptive botany. Ahi (Capsicum baccatum), batata (Convolvus
batatas), bihao (Heliconia bihai), caimito (Chrysophyllum caimito),
cahoba (Swietenia mahagoni), jucca and casabi (Jatropba manihot);
the word casabi or cassava is employed only for the bread made with
the roots of the Jatropha (the name of the plant jucca was also
heard by Americo Vespucci on the coast of Paria); age or ajes
(Dioscorea alata), copei (Clusia alba), guayacan (Guaiacum
officinale), guajaba (Psidium pyriferum), guanavano (Anona
muricata), mani (Arachis hypogaea), guama (Inga), henequen (was
supposed from the erroneous accounts of the first travellers to be
an herb with which the Haitians used to cut metals; it means now
every kind of strong thread), hicaco (Chrysobalanus icaco), maghei
(Agave Americana), mahiz or maiz (Zea, maize), mamei (Mammea
Americana), mangle (Rhizophora), pitahaja (Cactus pitahaja), ceiba
(Bombax), tuna (Cactus tuna), hicotea (a tortoise), iguana (Lacerta
iguana), manatee (Trichecus manati), nigua (Pulex penetrans),
hamaca (a hammock), balsa (a raft; however balsa is an old
Castilian word signifying a pool of water), barbacoa (a small bed
of light wood, or reeds), canei or buhio (a hut), canoa (a canoe),
cocujo (Elater noctilucus, the fire-fly), chicha (fermented
liquor), macana (a large stick or club, made with the petioles of a
palm-tree), tabaco (not the herb, but the pipe through which it is
smoked), cacique (a chief). Other American words, now as much in
use among the Creoles, as the Arabic words naturalized in the
Spanish, do not belong to the Haitian tongue; for example, caiman,
piragua, papaja (Carica), aguacate (Persea), tarabita, paramo. Abbe
Gili thinks with some probability, that they are derived from the
tongue of some people who inhabited the temperate climate between
Coro, the mountains of Merida, and the tableland of Bogota. (Saggio
volume 3 page 228.) How many Celtic and German words would not
Julius Caesar and Tacitus have handed down to us, had the
productions of the northern countries visited by the Romans
differed as much from the Italian and Roman, as those of
equinoctial America!) Not satisfied with retaining these words
borrowed from the Haitians, they helped also to spread them all
over America (at a period when the language of Haiti was already a
dead language), and to diffuse them among nations who were ignorant
even of the existence of the West India Islands. Some words, which
are in daily use in the Spanish colonies, are attributed
erroneously to the Haitians. Banana is from the Chaconese, the
Mbaja language; arepa (bread of manioc, or of the Jatropha manihot)
and guayuco (an apron, perizoma) are Caribbee: curiara (a very long
boat) is Tamanac:
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