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 Showed Us, That
In The Space Of Thirty-Two Months Only One Marriage Had Been Entered
In The Registers Of The Parish Church.
Two others had been contracted
by uncatechised natives, and celebrated before the Indian Gobernador.
At the first foundation of the Mission, the Atures, Maypures,
Meyepures, Abanis, and Quirupas, had been assembled together.
Instead
of these tribes we found only Guahibos, and a few families of the
nation of Macos. The Atures have almost entirely disappeared; they are
no longer known, except by the tombs in the cavern of Ataruipe, which
recall to mind the sepulchres of the Guanches at Teneriffe. We learned
on the spot, that the Atures, as well as the Quaquas, and the Macos or
Piaroas, belong to the great stock of the Salive nations; while the
Maypures, the Abanis, the Parenis, and the Guaypunaves, are of the
same race as the Cabres or Caveres, celebrated for their long wars
with the Caribs. In this labyrinth of petty nations, divided from one
another as the nations of Latium, Asia Minor, and Sogdiana, formerly
were, we can trace no general relations but by following the analogy
of tongues. These are the only monuments that have reached us from the
early ages of the world; the only monuments, which, not being fixed to
the soil, are at once moveable and lasting, and have as it were
traversed time and space. They owe their duration, and the extent they
occupy, much less to conquering and polished nations, than to those
wandering and half-savage tribes, who, fleeing before a powerful
enemy, carried along with them in their extreme wretchedness only
their wives, their children, and the languages of their fathers.
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