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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In Going Down The Guainia, Or Rio Negro, You Pass On The Right The
Cano Maliapo, And On The Left The Canos Dariba And Eny.
At five
leagues distance, nearly in 1 degree 38 minutes of north latitude, is
the island of San Josef.
A little below that island, in a spot where
there are a great number of orange-trees now growing wild, the
traveller is shown a small rock, two hundred feet high, with a cavern
called by the missionaries the Glorieta de Cocuy. This summer-house
(for such is the signification of the word glorieta in Spanish)
recalls remembrances that are not the most agreeable. It was here that
Cocuy, the chief of the Manitivitanos,* had his harem of women, and
where he devoured the finest and fattest. (* At San Carlos there is
still preserved an instrument of music, a kind of large drum,
ornamented with very rude Indian paintings, which relate to the
exploits of Cocuy.) The tradition of the harem and the orgies of Cocuy
is more current in the Lower Orinoco than on the banks of the Guainia.
At San Carlos the very idea that the chief of the Manitivitanos could
be guilty of cannibalism is indignantly rejected.
The Portuguese government has established many settlements even in
this remote part of Brazil. Below the Glorieta, in the Portuguese
territory, there are eleven villages in an extent of twenty-five
leagues. I know of nineteen more as far as the mouth of the Rio Negro,
beside the six towns of Thomare, Moreira (near the Rio Demenene, or
Uaraca, where dwelt anciently the Guiana Indians), Barcellos, San
Miguel del Rio Branco, near the river of the same name (so well known
in the fictions of El Dorado), Moura, and Villa de Rio Negro.
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