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 Men, Young And Old,
Form A Circle, Holding Each Others' Hands; And Turn Sometimes To The
Right, Sometimes To The Left, For Whole Hours, With Silent Gravity.
Most Frequently The Dancers Themselves Are The Musicians.
Feeble
sounds, drawn from a series of reeds of different lengths, form a slow
and plaintive accompaniment.
The first dancer, to mark the time, bends
both knees in a kind of cadence. Sometimes they all make a pause in
their places, and execute little oscillatory movements, bending the
body from one side to the other. The reeds ranged in a line, and
fastened together, resemble the Pan's pipes, as we find them
represented in the bacchanalian processions on Grecian vases. To unite
reeds of different lengths, and make them sound in succession by
passing them before the lips, is a simple idea, and has naturally
presented itself to every nation. We were surprised to see with what
promptitude the young Indians constructed and tuned these pipes, when
they found reeds on the bank of the river. Uncivilized men, in every
zone, make great use of these gramina with high stalks. The Greeks,
with truth, said that reeds had contributed to subjugate nations by
furnishing arrows, to soften men's manners by the charm of music, and
to unfold their understanding by affording the first instruments for
tracing letters. These different uses of reeds mark in some sort three
different periods in the life of nations. We must admit that the
tribes of the Orinoco are in the first stage of dawning civilization.
The reed serves them only as an instrument of war and of hunting; and
the Pan's pipes, of which we have spoken, have not yet, on those
distant shores, yielded sounds capable of awakening mild and humane
feelings.
We found in the hut allotted for the festival, several vegetable
productions which the Indians had brought from the mountains of
Guanaya, and which engaged our attention. I shall only here mention
the fruit of the juvia, reeds of a prodigious length, and shirts made
of the bark of marima. The almendron, or juvia, one of the most
majestic trees of the forests of the New World, was almost unknown
before our visit to the Rio Negro. It begins to be found after a
journey of four days east of Esmeralda, between the Padamo and Ocamo,
at the foot of the Cerro Mapaya, on the right bank of the Orinoco. It
is still more abundant on the left bank, at the Cerro Guanaja, between
the Rio Amaguaca and the Gehette. The inhabitants of Esmeralda assured
us, that in advancing above the Gehette and the Chiguire, the juvia
and cacao-trees become so common that the wild Indians (the Guaicas
and Guaharibos) do not disturb the Indians of the missions when
gathering in their harvests. They do not envy them the productions
with which nature has enriched their own soil. Scarcely any attempt
has been made to propagate the almendrones in the settlements of the
Upper Orinoco.
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