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 Mountain Is The
Ararat Of The Aramean Or Semitic Nations, And The Tlaloc Or Colhuacan
Of The Mexicans.
Amalivaca, sailing in his bark, engraved the figures
of the moon and the sun on the Painted Rock (Tepumereme) of
Encaramada.
Some blocks of granite piled upon one another, and forming
a kind of cavern, are still called the house or dwelling of the great
forefather of the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near
this cavern, in the plains of Maita, which they say was an instrument
of music, the drum of Amalivaca. We must here observe, that this
heroic personage had a brother, Vochi, who helped him to give the
surface of the earth its present form. The Tamanacs relate that the
two brothers, in their system of perfectibility, sought, at first, to
arrange the Orinoco in such a manner, that the current of the water
could always be followed either going down or going up the river. They
hoped by this means to spare men trouble in navigating rivers; but,
however great the power of these regenerators of the world, they could
never contrive to give a double slope to the Orinoco, and were
compelled to relinquish this singular plan. Amalivaca had daughters,
who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition states,
doubtless with a figurative meaning, that he broke their legs, to
render them sedentary, and force them to people the land of the
Tamanacs. After having regulated everything in America, on that side
of the great water, Amalivaca again embarked, and returned to the
other shore, to the same place from whence he came.
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