Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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These Last, Described By La Condamine, Stretch Their Ears
By Weights Of A Considerable Size.)
Plantain, Paruru (in Tamanac also, paruru).
Cassava, Elente (in Maco, cahig).
Maize, Niarne.
The sun, Jama (in Salive, mume-seke-cocco).
The moon, Jama (in Salive, vexio).
Water, Ahia (in Salive, cagua).
One, Nianti.
Two, Tajus.
Three, Percotahuja.
Four, Imontegroa.
The young man could not reckon as far as five, which certainly is no
proof that the word five does not exist in the Maco tongue. I know not
whether this tongue be a dialect of the Salive, as is pretty generally
asserted; for idioms derived from one another, sometimes furnish words
utterly different for the most common and most important things.* (*
The great family of the Esthonian (or Tschoudi) languages, and of the
Samoiede languages, affords numerous examples of these differences.)
But in discussions on mother-tongues and derivative languages, it is
not the sounds, the roots only, that are decisive; but rather the
interior structure and grammatical forms. In the American idioms,
which are notwithstanding rich, the moon is commonly enough called the
sun of night or even the sun of sleep; but the moon and sun very
rarely bear the same name, as among the Macos. I know only a few
examples in the most northerly part of America, among the Woccons, the
Ojibbeways, the Muskogulges, and the Mohawks.* (* Nipia-kisathwa in
the Shawanese (the idiom of Canada), from nippi, to sleep, and
kisathwa, the sun.) Our missionary asserted that jama, in Maco,
indicated at the same time the Supreme Being, and the great orbs of
night and day; while many other American tongues, for instance the
Tamanac, and the Caribbee, have distinct words to denote God, the
Moon, and the Sun. We shall soon see how anxious the missionaries of
the Orinoco are not to employ, in their translations of the prayers of
the church, the native words which denote the Divinity, the Creator
(Amanene), the Great Spirit who animates all nature. They choose
rather to Indianize the Spanish word Dios, converting it, according to
the differences of pronunciation, and the genius of the different
dialects, into Dioso, Tiosu, or Piosu.
When we again embarked on the Orinoco, we found the river free from
shoals. After a few hours we passed the Raudal of Garcita, the rapids
of which are easy of ascent, when the waters are high. To the eastward
is seen a small chain of mountains called the chain of Cumadaminari,
consisting of gneiss, and not of stratified granite. We were struck
with a succession of great holes at more than one hundred and eighty
feet above the present level of the Orinoco, yet which,
notwithstanding, appear to be the effects of the erosion of the
waters. We shall see hereafter, that this phenomenon occurs again
nearly at the same height, both in the rocks that border the cataracts
of Maypures, and fifty leagues to the east, near the mouth of the Rio
Jao. We slept in the open air, on the left bank of the river, below
the island of Tomo.
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