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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"You Come," Said He, "To A Country
Where This Kind Of Merchandise Has No Sale; We Write Little Here; And
The dried leaves of maize, the platano (plantain-tree), and the vijaho
(heliconia), serve us, like paper in Europe, to
Wrap up needles,
fish-hooks, and other little articles of which we are careful." This
old officer united in his person the civil and ecclesiastical
authority. He taught the children, I will not say the Catechism, but
the Rosary; he rang the bells to amuse himself; and impelled by ardent
zeal for the service of the church, he sometimes used his chorister's
wand in a manner not very agreeable to the natives.
Notwithstanding the small extent of the mission, three Indian
languages are spoken at Esmeralda; the Idapimanare, the Catarapenno,
and the Maquiritan. The last of these prevails on the Upper Orinoco,
from the confluence of the Ventuari as far as that of the Padamo (*
The Arivirianos of the banks of the Ventuari speak a dialect of the
language of the Maquiritares. The latter live, jointly with a tribe of
the Macos, in the savannahs that are by the Padamo. They are so
numerous, that they have even given their name to this tributary
stream of the Orinoco.); the Caribbee prevails on the Lower Orinoco;
the Ottomac, near the confluence of the Apure, at the Great Cataracts;
and the Maravitan, on the banks of the Rio Negro. These are the five
or six languages most generally spoken. We were surprised to find at
Esmeralda many zambos, mulattos, and copper-coloured people, who
called themselves Spaniards (Espanoles) and who fancy they are white,
because they are not so red as the Indians. These people live in the
most absolute misery; they have for the most part been sent hither in
banishment (desterrados). Solano, in his haste to found colonies in
the interior of the country, in order to guard its entrance against
the Portuguese, assembled in the Llanos, and as far as the island of
Margareta, vagabonds and malefactors, whom justice had vainly pursued,
and made them go up the Orinoco to join the unhappy Indians who had
been carried off from the woods. A mineralogical error gave celebrity
to Esmeralda. The granites of Duida and Maraguaca contain in open
veins fine rock-crystals, some of them of great transparency, others
coloured by chlorite or blended with actonite; these were mistaken for
diamonds and emeralds.
So near the sources of the Orinoco we heard of nothing in these
mountains but the proximity of El Dorado, the lake Parima, and the
ruins of the great city of Manoa. A man, still known in the country
for his credulity and his love of exaggeration, Don Apollinario Diez
de la Fuente, assumed the pompous title of capitan poblador, and cabo
militar (military commander) of the fort of Cassiquiare. This fort
consisted of a few trunks of trees, joined together by planks; and to
complete the deception, a demand was made at Madrid for the privileges
of a villa for the mission of Esmeralda, which but a hamlet with
twelve or fifteen huts.
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