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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The Roots Of Another Family Of Monocotyledons
(Of Some Cyperaceae) Possess Also Diaphoretic And Resolvent
Properties.
The Carex arenaria, the C. hirta, etc.
Furnish the German
sarsaparilla of druggists. According to Clusius, Europe received the
first sarsaparilla from Yucatan, and the island of Puna, opposite
Guayaquil.) In reading the works of Clusius, it can scarcely be
conceived why our writers on the Materia Medica persist in considering
a plant of the United States as the most ancient type of the officinal
species of the genus smilax.
We found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio Negro some of
those green stones, known by the name of Amazon stones, because the
natives pretend, according to an ancient tradition, that they come
from the country of the women without husbands (Cougnantainsecouima),
or women living alone (Aikeambenano*). (* This word is of the Tamanac
language; these women are the sole Donne of the Italian missionaries.)
We were told at San Carlos, and in the neighbouring villages, that the
sources of the Orinoco, which we found east of the Esmeralda, and in
the missions of the Carony and at Angostura, that the sources of the
Rio Branco are the native spots of the green stones. These statements
confirm the report of an old soldier of the garrison of Cayenne
(mentioned by La Condamine), who affirmed that those mineral
substances were obtained from the country of women, west of the rapids
of the Oyapoc. The Indians who inhabit the fort of Topayos on the
Amazon five degrees east of the mouth of the Rio Negro, possessed
formerly a great number of these stones. Had they received them from
the north, that is, from the country pointed out by the Indians of the
Rio Negro, which extends from the mountains of Cayenne towards the
sources of the Essequibo, the Carony, the Orinoco, the Parime, and the
Rio Trombetas? or did they come from the south by the Rio Topayos,
which descends from the vast table-land of the Campos Parecis?
Superstition attaches great importance to these mineral substances:
they are worn suspended from the neck as amulets, because, according
to popular belief, they preserve the wearer from nervous complaints,
fevers, and the stings of venomous serpents. They have consequently
been for ages an article of trade among the natives, both north and
south of the Orinoco. The Caribs, who may be considered as the
Bucharians of the New World, made them known along the coasts of
Guiana; and the same stones, like money in circulation, passed
successively from nation to nation in opposite directions: their
quantity is perhaps not augmented, and the spot which produces them is
probably unknown rather than concealed. In the midst of enlightened
Europe, on occasion of a warm contest respecting native bark, a few
years ago, the green stones of the Orinoco were gravely proposed as a
powerful febrifuge. After this appeal to the credulity of Europeans,
we cannot be surprised to learn that the Spanish planters share the
predilection of the Indians for these amulets, and that they are sold
at a very considerable price.
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