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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If They Do Not Make Known
The Internal Structure, And General Arrangement Of The Edifice,
They May Point Out Some Important Parts.
The three languages now most used in the provinces of Cumana and
Barcelona, are the Chayma, the Cumanagota, and the Caribbee.
They
have always been regarded in these countries as different idioms,
and a dictionary of each has been written for the use of the
Missions, by Fathers Tauste, Ruiz-blanco, and Breton. The
Vocabulario y Arte de la Lengua de los Indios Chaymas has become
extremely scarce. The few American grammars, printed for the most
part in the seventeenth century, passed into the Missions, and have
been lost in the forests. The dampness of the air and the voracity
of insects* render the preservation of books almost impossible in
those regions (* The termites, so well known in Spanish America
under the name of comegen, or 'devourer,' is one of these
destructive insects.): they are destroyed in a short space of time,
notwithstanding every precaution that may be employed. I had much
difficulty to collect in the Missions, and in the convents, those
grammars of American languages, which, on my return to Europe, I
placed in the hands of Severin Vater, professor and librarian at
the university of Konigsberg. They furnished him with useful
materials for his great work on the idioms of the New World. I
omitted, at the time, to transcribe from my journal, and
communicate to that learned gentleman, what I had collected in the
Chayma tongue.
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