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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(Churchill volume 2.) Was this kind of head-dress
taken for a turban?
(Garcia, Origen de los Ind., page 303). I am
surprised that people of these regions should have worn a
head-dress; but, what is more curious still, Pinzon, in a voyage
which he made alone to the coast of Paria, the particulars of which
have been transmitted to us by Peter Martyr of Anghiera, professes
to have seen natives who were clothed: "Incolas omnes genu tenus
mares, foeminas surarum tenus, gossampinis vestibus amictos
simplicibus repererunt; sed viros more Turcorum insuto minutim
gossypio ad belli usum duplicibus." (The natives were clothed in
thin cotton garments; the men's reaching to the knee, and the
women's to the calf of the leg. Their war-dress was thicker, and
closely stitched with cotton after the Turkish manner.) - Pet.
Martyr, dec. 2 lib. 7. Who were these people described as being
comparatively civilized, and clothed with tunics (like those who
lived an the summit of the Andes), and seen on a coast, where
before and since the time of Pinzon, only naked men have ever been
seen?) Gomara and Anghiera wrote from such oral information as they
had been able to collect.
These marvels disappear, if we examine the recital which Ferdinand
Columbus drew up from his father's papers. There we find simply,
that "the admiral was surprised to see the inhabitants of Paria,
and those of the island of Trinidad, better made, more civilized
(de buena conversacion), and whiter than the natives whom he had
previously seen."* (* Churchill's Collection volume 2, Herrera
pages 80, 83, 84. Munoz, Hist. del Nuevo Mundo volume 1, "El color
era baxo como es regular en los Indios, pero mas clara que en las
islas reconocidas." (Their colour was dark, as is usual among the
Indians; but lighter than that of the people of the islands
previously known.) The missionaries are accustomed to call those
Indians who are less black, less tawny, WHITISH, and even ALMOST
WHITE. - Gumilla, Hist. de l'Orenoque volume 1 chapter 5 paragraph
2. Such incorrect expressions may mislead those who are not
accustomed to the exaggerations in which travellers often indulge.)
This certainly did not mean that the Pariagotos are white. The
lighter colour of the skin of the natives and the great coolness of
the mornings on the coast of Paria, seemed to confirm the fantastic
hypothesis which that great man had framed, respecting the
irregularity of the curvature of the earth, and the height of the
plains in this region, which he regarded as the effect of an
extraordinary swelling of the globe in the direction of the
parallels of latitude. Amerigo Vespucci (in his pretended FIRST
voyage, apparently written from the narratives of other navigators)
compares the natives to the Tartar nations,* (* Vultu non multum
speciosi sunt, quoniam latas facies Tartariis adsimilatas habent.
(Their countenances are not handsome, their cheek-bones being broad
like those of the Tartars.) - Americi Vesputii Navigatio Prima, in
Gryn's Orbis Novus 1555.) not in regard to their colour, but on
account of the breadth of their faces, and the general expression
of their physiognomy.
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