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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"It Is Their Festival Also," Said The
Indians Who Had Returned From The Harvest; And On Hearing Their
Complaints Of The Animals, One May Perceive That They Think Themselves
Alone The Lawful Masters Of The Forest.
One of the four canoes, which had taken the Indians to the gathering
of the Juvias, was filled in great part with that species of reeds
(carices) of which the blow-tubes are made.
These reeds were from
fifteen to seventeen feet long, yet no trace of a knot for the
insertion of leaves and branches was perceived. They were quite
straight, smooth externally, and perfectly cylindrical. These carices
come from the foot of the mountains of Yumariquin and Guanaja. They
are much sought after, even beyond the Orinoco, by the name of reeds
of Esmeralda. A hunter preserves the same blow-tube during his whole
life, and boasts of its lightness and precision, as we boast of the
same qualities in our fire-arms. What is the monocotyledonous plant*
that furnishes these admirable reeds? (* The smooth surface of these
tubes sufficiently proves that they are not furnished by a plant of
the family of umbelliferae.) Did we see in fact the internodes (parts
between the knots) of a gramen of the tribe of nastoides? or may this
carex be perhaps a cyperaceous plant* destitute of knots? (* The
caricillo del manati, which grows abundantly on the banks of the
Orinoco, attains from eight to ten feet in height.) I cannot solve
this question, or determine to what genus another plant belongs, which
furnishes the shirts of marima.
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