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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These Various Changes, The Problem We Are Going To Solve Has Become
Much More Complicated Than Is Generally Supposed.
The number of
geographers who discuss the basis of a map, with regard to the three
points of measures, of the comparison of descriptive works, and of the
etymological study* of names, is extremely small.
(* I use this
expression, perhaps an improper one, to mark a species of philological
examination, to which the names of rivers, lakes, mountains, and
tribes, must be subjected, in order to discover their identity in a
great number of maps. The apparent diversity of names arises partly
from the difference of the dialects spoken by one and the same family
of people, partly from the imperfection of our European orthography,
and from the extreme negligence with which geographers copy one
another. We recognize with difficulty the Rio Uaupe in the Guaupe or
Guape; the Xie, in the Guaicia; the Raudal de Atures, in Athule; the
Caribbees, in the Calinas and Galibis; the Guaraunos or Uarau, in the
Oaraw-its; etc. It is, however, by similar mutations of letters, that
the Spaniards have made hijo of filius; hambre, of fames; and Felipo
de Urre, and even Utre, of the Conquistador Philip von Huten; that the
Tamanacs in America have substituted choraro for soldado; and the Jews
in China, Ialemeiohang for Jeremiah. Analogy and a certain
etymological tact must guide geographers in researches of this kind,
in which they would be exposed to serious errors, if they were not to
study at the same time the respective situations of the upper and
lower tributary streams of the same river. Our maps of America are
overloaded with names, for which rivers have been created. This desire
of compiling, of filling up vacancies, and of employing, without
investigation, heterogeneous materials, has given our maps of
countries the least visited an appearance of exactness, the falsity of
which is discovered when we arrive on the spot.) Almost all the maps
of South America which have appeared since the year 1775 are, in what
regards the interior of the country, comprised between the steppes of
Venezuela and the river of the Amazons, between the eastern back of
the Andes and the coast of Cayenne, a simple copy of the great Spanish
map of La Cruz Olmedilla. A line, indicating the extent of country
which Don Jose Solano boasted of having discovered and pacified by his
troops and emissaries, was taken for the road followed by that
officer, who never went beyond San Fernando de Atabapo, a village one
hundred and sixty leagues distant from the pretended lake Parima. The
study of the work of Father Caulin, who was the historiographer of the
expedition of Solano, and who states very clearly, from the testimony
of the Indians, how the name of the river Parima gave rise to the
fable of El Dorado, and of an inland sea, has been neglected. No use
either has been made of a map of the Orinoco, three years posterior to
that of La Cruz, and traced by Surville from the collection of true or
hypothetical materials preserved in the archives of the Despacho
universal de Indias.
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