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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How Often
Have I Been Perplexed By The Necessity Of Settling The Synonyms Of
Rivers, When I Have Sent For The Most Intelligent Natives, To
Interrogate Them, Through An Interpreter, Respecting The Number Of
Tributary Streams, The Sources Of The Rivers, And The Portages.
Three
or four languages being spoken in the same mission, it is difficult to
make the witnesses agree.
Our maps are loaded with names arbitrarily
shortened or perverted. To examine how far they may be accurate, we
must be guided by the geographical situation of the confluent rivers,
I might almost say by a certain etymological tact. The Rio Uaupe, or
Uapes of the Portuguese maps, is the Guapue of the Spanish maps, and
the Ucayari of the natives. The Anava of the old geographers is the
Anauahu of Arrowsmith, and the Uanauhau or Guanauhu of the Indians.
The desire of leaving no void in the maps, in order to give them an
appearance of accuracy, has caused rivers to be created, to which
names have been applied that have not been recognized as synonymous.
It is only lately that travellers in America, in Persia, and in the
Indies, have felt the importance of being correct in the denomination
of places. When we read the travels of Sir Walter Raleigh, it is
difficult indeed to recognise in the lake of Mrecabo, the laguna of
Maracaybo, and in the Marquis Paraco the name of Pizarro, the
destroyer of the empire of the Incas.
The great tributary streams of the Amazon are designated by the
missionaries by different names in their upper and lower course. The
Iza is called, higher up, Putumayo, the Jupura towards its source
bears the name of Caqueta. The researches made in the missions of the
Andaquies on the real origin of the Rio Negro have been the more
fruitless because the Indian name of the river was unknown. I heard it
called Guainia at Javita, Maroa, and San Carlos. Southey, in his
history of Brazil, says expressly that the Rio Negro, in the lower
part of its course, is called Guiani, or Curana, by the natives; in
the upper part, Ueneya. It is the word Gueneya, instead of Guainia;
for the Indians of those countries say indifferently Guaranacua or
Ouaranacua, Guarapo or Uarapo.
The sources of the Rio Negro have long been an object of contention
among geographers. The interest we feel in this question is not merely
that which attaches to the origin of all great rivers, but is
connected with a crowd of other questions, that comprehend the
supposed bifurcations of the Caqueta, the communications between the
Rio Negro and the Orinoco, and the local fable of El Dorado, formerly
called Enim, or the empire of the Grand Paytiti. When we study with
care the ancient maps of these countries, and the history of their
geographical errors, we see how by degrees the fable of El Dorado has
been transported towards the west with the sources of the Orinoco. It
was at first fixed on the eastern declivity of the Andes, to the
south-west of the Rio Negro.
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