Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 693 of 777 - First - Home
(* The Chevalier Gieseke Has Recently Confirmed All That
Krantz Related Of The Colour Of The Skin Of The Esquimaux.
That race
(even in the latitude of seventy-five and seventy-six degrees, where
the climate is so rigorous) is not in general so diminutive as it was
long believed to be.
Ross' Voyage to the North.) In Guiana, the hordes
who live in the midst of the thickest forests are generally less tawny
than those who inhabit the shores of the Orinoco, and are employed in
fishing. But this slight difference, which is alike found in Europe
between the artisans of towns and the cultivators of the fields or the
fishermen on the coasts, in no way explains the problem of the Indios
blancos. They are surrounded by other Indians of the woods (Indios del
monte) who are of a reddish-brown, although now exposed to the same
physical influences. The causes of these phenomena are very ancient,
and we may repeat with Tacitus, "est durans originis vis."
The fair-complexioned tribes, which we had an opportunity of seeing at
the mission of Esmeralda, inhabit part of a mountainous country lying
between the sources of six tributaries of the Orinoco; that is to say,
between the Padamo, the Jao, the Ventuari, the Erevato, the Aruy, and
the Paraguay.* (* They are six tributary streams on the right bank of
the Orinoco; the first three run towards the south, or the Upper
Orinoco; the three others towards the north, or the Lower Orinoco.)
The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries are accustomed to designate
this country more particularly by the name of Parima.* (* The name
Parima, which signifies water, great water, is applied sometimes, and
more especially, to the land washed by the Rio Parima, or Rio Branco
(Rio de Aguas Blancas), a stream running into the Rio Negro; sometimes
to the mountains (Sierra Parima), which divide the Upper and Lower
Orinoco.) Here, as in several other countries of Spanish America, the
savages have reconquered what had been wrested from them by
civilization, or rather by its precursors, the missionaries.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 693 of 777
Words from 188395 to 188740
of 211397