This Law Of Succession Which Is Founded On A System Of Mistrust, Denoting No Great Purity Of Manners, Prevails In

India; among the Ashantees (in Africa); and among several tribes of the savages of North America.* (* Among the Hurons (Wyandots)

And the Natchez the succession to the magistracy is continued by the women: it is not the son who succeeds, but the son of the sister, or of the nearest relation in the female line. This mode of succession is said to be the most certain because the supreme power remains attached to the blood of the last chief; it is a practice that insures legitimacy. Ancient traces of this strange mode of succession, so common in Africa and in the East Indies, exist in the dynasty of the kings of the West India Islands.) The young chiefs and other youths who are desirous of marrying, are subject to the most extraordinary fasts and penances, and are required to take medicines prepared by the marirris or piaches, called in the transalleghenian countries, war-physic. The Carribbee marirris are at once priests, jugglers and physicians; they transmit to their successors their doctrine, their artifices, and the remedies they employ. The latter are accompanied by imposition of hands, and certain gestures and mysterious practices, apparently connected with the most anciently known processes of animal magnetism. Though I had opportunities of seeing many persons who had closely observed the confederated Caribs, I could not learn whether the marirris belong to a particular caste. It is observed in North America that, among the Shawanese,* (* People that came from Florida, or from the south (shawaneu) to the north.) divided into several tribes, the priests, who preside at the sacrifices, must be (as among the Hebrews) of one particular tribe, that of the Mequachakes. Any facts that may hereafter be discovered in America respecting the remains of a sacerdotal caste appears to me calculated to excite great interest, on account of those priest-kings of Peru, who styled themselves the children of the Sun; and of those sun-kings among the Natchez, who recall to mind the Heliades of the first eastern colony of Rhodes.

On quitting the mission of Cari, we had some difficulties to settle with our Indian muleteers. They had discovered that we had brought skeletons with us from the cavern of Ataruipe; and they were fully persuaded that the beasts of burden which carried the bodies of their old relations would perish on the journey.* (* See volume 2.24.) Every precaution we had taken was useless; nothing escapes a Carib's penetration and keen sense of smell, and it required all the authority of the missionary to forward our passage. We had to cross the Rio Cari in a boat, and the Rio de agua clara, by fording, or, it may almost be said, by swimming. The quicksands of the bed of this river render the passage very difficult at the season when the waters are high. The strength of the current seems surprising in so flat a country; but the rivers of the plains are precipitated, to quote a correct observation of Pliny the younger,* "less by the declivity of their course than by their abundance, and as it were by their own weight." (* Epist. lib. 8 ep. 8. Clitumnus non loci devexitate, sed ipsa sui copia et quasi pondere impellitur.) We had two bad stations, one at Matagorda and the other at Los Riecetos, before we reached the little town of Pao. We beheld everywhere the same objects; small huts constructed of reeds, and roofed with leather; men on horseback armed with lances, guarding the herds; herds of cattle half wild, remarkable for their uniform colour, and disputing the pasturage with horses and mules. No sheep or goats are found on these immense plains. Sheep do not thrive well in equinoctial America, except on table-lands above a thousand toises high, where their fleece is long and sometimes very fine. In the burning climate of the plains, where the wolves give place to jaguars, these small ruminating animals, destitute of means of defence, and slow in their movements, cannot be preserved in any considerable numbers.

We arrived on the 15th of July at the Fundacion, or Villa, del Pao, founded in 1744, and situated very favourably for a commercial station between Nueva Barcelona and Angostura. Its real name is El Concepcion del Pao. Alcedo, La Cruz, Olmedilla, and many other geographers, have mistaken the situation of this small town of the Llanos of Barcelona, confounding it either with San Juan Bauptisto del Pao of the Llanos of Caracas, or with El Valle del Pao de Zarate. Though the weather was cloudy I succeeded in obtaining some heights of alpha Centauri, serving to determine the latitude of the place; which is 8 degrees 37 minutes 57 seconds. Some altitudes of the sun gave me 67 degrees 8 minutes 12 seconds for the longitude, supposing Angostura to be 66 degrees 15 minutes 21 seconds. The astronomical determinations of Calabozo and Concepcion del Pao are very important to the geography of this country, where, in the midst of savannahs, fixed points are altogether wanting. Some fruit-trees grow in the vicinity of Pao: they are rarely seen in the Llanos. We even found some cocoa-trees, which appeared very vigorous, notwithstanding the great distance of the sea. I was the more struck with this fact because doubts have recently been started respecting the veracity of travellers, who assert that they have seen the cocoa-tree, which is a palm of the shore, at Timbuctoo, in the centre of Africa. We several times saw cocoa-trees amid the cultivated spots on the banks of the Rio Magdalena, more than a hundred leagues from the coast.

Five days, which to us appeared very tedious, brought us from Villa del Pao to the port of Nueva Barcelona. As we advanced the sky became more serene, the soil more dusty, and the atmosphere more hot. The heat from which we suffered is not entirely owing to the temperature of the air, but is produced by the fine sand mingled with it; this sand strikes against the face of the traveller, as it does against the ball of the thermometer.

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