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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He Varies His Signs, Pronounces His Words
Slowly, And Repeats Them Without Being Desired.
The consequence
conferred upon him, in suffering yourself to be instructed by him,
flatters his self-love.
This facility in making himself comprehended
is particularly remarkable in the independent Indian. It cannot be
doubted that direct intercourse with the natives is more instructive
and more certain than the communication by interpreters, provided the
questions be simplified, and repeated to several individuals under
different forms. The variety of idioms spoken on the banks of the
Meta, the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is so
prodigious, that a traveller, however great may be his talent for
languages, can never hope to learn enough to make himself understood
along the navigable rivers, from Angostura to the small fort of San
Carlos del Rio Negro. In Peru and Quito it is sufficient to know the
Quichua, or the Inca language; in Chile, the Araucan; and in Paraguay,
the Guarany; in order to be understood by most of the population. But
it is different in the Missions of Spanish Guiana, where nations of
various races are mingled in the village. It is not even sufficient to
have learned the Caribee or Carina, the Guamo, the Guahive, the
Jaruro, the Ottomac, the Maypure, the Salive, the Marivitan, the
Maquiritare, and the Guaica, ten dialects, of which there exist only
imperfect grammars, and which have less affinity with each other than
the Greek, German, and Persian languages.
The environs of the Mission of Carichana appeared to us to be
delightful.
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