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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Arabesques, Meanders, And Grecques, Please Our
Eyes, Because The Elements Of Which Their Series Is Composed, Follow
In Rhythmic Order.
The eye finds in this order, in the periodical
return of the same forms, what the ear distinguishes in the cadenced
succession of sounds and concords.
Can we then admit a doubt that the
feeling of rhythm manifests itself in man at the first dawn of
civilization, and in the rudest essays of poetry and song?
Among the natives of Maypures, the making of pottery is an occupation
principally confined to the women. They purify the clay by repeated
washings, form it into cylinders, and mould the largest vases with
their hands. The American Indian is unacquainted with the potter's
wheel, which was familiar to the nations of the east in the remotest
antiquity. We may be surprised that the missionaries have not
introduced this simple and useful machine among the natives of the
Orinoco, yet we must recollect that three centuries have not sufficed
to make it known among the Indians of the peninsula of Araya, opposite
the port of Cumana. The colours used by the Maypures are the oxides of
iron and manganese, and particularly the yellow and red ochres that
are found in the hollows of sandstone. Sometimes the fecula of the
Bignonia chica is employed, after the pottery has been exposed to a
feeble fire. This painting is covered with a varnish of algarobo,
which is the transparent resin of the Hymenaea courbaril. The large
vessels in which the chiza is preserved are called ciamacu, the
smallest bear the name of mucra, from which word the Spaniards of the
coast have framed murcura.
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