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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This Rivalry Has Contributed To The Imperfection Of
The Geographical Knowledge Hitherto Obtained Respecting The Tributary
Rivers Of The Amazon.
When the communications of the natives are
impeded, and one nation is established near the mouth, and another in
the upper part of the same river, it is difficult for persons who
attempt to construct maps to acquire precise information.
The
periodical inundations, and still more the portages, by which boats
are passed from one stream to another, the sources of which are in the
same neighbourhood, have led to erroneous ideas of the bifurcations
and branchings of rivers. The Indians of the Portuguese missions, for
instance, enter (as I was informed upon the spot) the Spanish Rio
Negro on one side by the Rio Guainia and the Rio Tomo; and the Upper
Orinoco on the other, by the portages between the Cababuri, the
Pacimoni, the Idapa, and the Macava, to gather the aromatic seeds of
the puchero laurel beyond the Esmeralda. The Indians, I repeat, are
excellent geographers; they outflank the enemy, notwithstanding the
limits traced upon the maps, in spite of the forts and the
estacamentos; and when the missionaries see them arrive from such
distances, and in different seasons, they begin to frame hypotheses of
supposed communications of rivers. Each party has an interest in
concealing what it knows with certainty; and that love of the
mysterious, so general among the ignorant, contributes to perpetuate
the doubt. It may also be observed that the various Indian nations,
who frequent this labyrinth of rivers, give them names entirely
different; and that these names are disguised and lengthened by
terminations that signify water, great water, and current.
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