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 Same Author,
Notwithstanding His Credulity, Acknowledges That He Never Knew An
Indian Who Asserted Positively That He Had Seen The Salvaje With His
Own Eyes.
This wild legend, which the missionaries, the European
planters, and the negroes of Africa, have no doubt embellished with
Many features taken from the description of the manners of the
orang-otang,* the gibbon, the jocko or chimpanzee, and the pongo,
followed us, during five years, from the northern to the southern
hemisphere. (* Simia satyrus. We must not believe, notwithstanding the
assertions of almost all zoological writers, that the word orang-otang
is applied exclusively in the Malay language to the Simia satyrus of
Borneo. This expression, on the contrary, means any very large monkey,
that resembles man in figure. Marsden's History of Sumatra 3rd edition
page 117. Modern zoologists have arbitrarily appropriated provincial
names to certain species; and by continuing to prefer these names,
strangely disfigured in their orthography, to the Latin systematic
names, the confusion of the nomenclature has been increased.) We were
everywhere blamed, in the most cultivated class of society, for being
the only persons to doubt the existence of the great anthropomorphous
monkey of America. There are certain regions where this belief is
particularly prevalent among the people; such are the banks of the
Upper Orinoco, the valley of Upar near the lake of Maracaybo, the
mountains of Santa Martha and of Merida, the provinces of Quixos, and
the banks of the Amazon near Tomependa. In all these places, so
distant one from the other, it is asserted that the salvaje is easily
recognized by the traces of its feet, the toes of which are turned
backward.
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