Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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That Fine Race Of People, The Caribs, Now Occupy Only A Small Part Of
The Country Which They Inhabited At The Time Of The Discovery Of
America.
The cruelties exercised by Europeans have entirely
exterminated them from the West Indian Islands and the coasts of
Darien; while under the government of the missions they have formed
populous villages in the provinces of New Barcelona and Spanish
Guiana.
The Caribs who inhabit the Llanos of Piritu and the banks of
the Carony and the Cuyuni may be estimated at more than thirty-five
thousand. If we add to this number the independent Caribs who live
westward of the mountains of Cayenne and Pacaraymo, between the
sources of the Essequibo and the Rio Branco, we shall no doubt obtain
a total of forty thousand individuals of pure race, unmixed with any
other tribes of natives. Prior to my travels, the Caribs were
mentioned in many geographical works as an extinct race. Writers
unacquainted with the interior of the Spanish colonies of the
continent supposed that the small islands of Dominica, Guadaloupe, and
St. Vincent had been the principal abodes of that nation of which the
only vestiges now remaining throughout the whole of the eastern West
India Islands are skeletons petrified, or rather enveloped in a
limestone containing madrepores.* (* These skeletons were discovered
in 1805 by M. Cortez. They are encased in a formation of madrepore
breccia, which the negroes call God's masonry, and which, like the
travertin of Italy, envelops fragments of vases and other objects
created by human skill.
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