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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It Is Difficult To Fix Them
To The Soil; And The Three Most Modern Missions In Which They Have
Been Collected, Those Of Cura, Curucuy, And Arechica, Are Already
Destroyed.
The Guayanos, who early in the sixteenth century gave their
name to the whole of that vast province, are less intelligent but
milder; and more easy, if not to civilize, at least to subjugate, than
the Caribs.
Their language appears to belong to the great branch of
the Caribbee and Tamanac tongues. It displays the same analogies of
roots and grammatical forms, which are observed between the Sanscrit,
the Persian, the Greek, and the German. It is not easy to fix the
forms of what is indefinite by its nature; and to agree on the
differences which should be admitted between dialects, derivative
languages and mother-tongues. The Jesuits of Paraguay have made known
to us another tribe of Guayanos* in the southern hemisphere, living in
the thick forests of Parana. (* They are also called Guananas, or
Gualachas.) Though it cannot be denied in general that in consequence
of distant migrations,* (* Like the celebrated migrations of the
Omaguas, or Omeguas.) the nations that are settled north and south of
the Amazon have had communications with each other, I will not decide
whether the Guayanos of Parana and of Uruguay exhibit any other
relation to those of Carony, than that of an homonomy, which is
perhaps only accidental.
The most considerable Christian settlements are now concentrated
between the mountains of Santa Maria, the mission of San Miguel and
the eastern bank of the Carony, from San Buenaventura as far as Guri
and the embarcadero of San Joaquin; a space of ground which has not
more than four hundred and sixty square leagues of surface.
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