Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 361 of 635 - First - Home
In Fact,
Balboa Discovered This Black Tribe In The Isthmus Of Darien.
"That
conquistador," says Gomara, "entered the province of Quareca:
He found
no gold, but some blacks, who were slaves of the lord of the place. He
asked this lord whence he had received them; who replied, that men of
that colour lived near the place, with whom they were constantly at
war...These negroes," adds Gomara, "exactly resemble those of Guinea;
and no others have since been seen in America (en las Indios yo pienso
que no se han visto negros despues.") The passage is very remarkable.
Hypotheses were formed in the sixteenth century, as now; and Petrus
Martyr imagined that these men seen by Balboa (the Quarecas), were
Ethiopian blacks who, as pirates, infested the seas, and had been
shipwrecked on the coast of America. But the negroes of Soudan are not
pirates; and it is easier to conceive that Esquimaux, in their boats
of skins, may have gone to Europe, than the Africans to Darien. Those
learned speculators who believe in a mixture of the Polynesians with
the Americans rather consider the Quarecas as of the race of Papuans,
similar to the negritos of the Philippines. Tropical migrations from
west to east, from the most western part of Polynesia to the Isthmus
of Darien, present great difficulties, although the winds blow during
whole weeks from the west. Above all, it is essential to know whether
the Quarecas were really like the negroes of Soudan, as Gomara
asserts, or whether they were only a race of very dark Indians (with
smooth and glossy hair), who from time to time, before 1492, infested
the coasts of the island of Hayti which has become in our days the
domain of Ethiopians.) The first travellers were easily deceived by
the crowds which the appearance of European vessels brought together
on some points of the coast.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 361 of 635
Words from 98503 to 98817
of 174507