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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First, In Dry Places, Or Inland Plains, Corypha Tectorum;
Second, On The Sea-Coast, Chamaerops Humilis, Cocos Nucifera, Corypha
Maritima,
Lodoicea seychellarum, Labill.; third, in the fresh-water
marshes, Sagus Rumphii, Mauritia flexuosa; and 4th, in the alpine
regions, between
Seven and fifteen hundred toises high, Ceroxylon
andicola, Oreodoxa frigida, Kunthia montana. This last group of palmae
montanae, which rises in the Andes of Guanacas nearly to the limit of
perpetual snow, was, I believe, entirely unknown before our travels in
America. (Nov. Gen. volume 1 page 317; Semanario de Santa Fe de Bogota
1819 Number 21 page 163.) In the season of inundations these clumps of
mauritia, with their leaves in the form of a fan, have the appearance
of a forest rising from the bosom of the waters. The navigator, in
proceeding along the channels of the delta of the Orinoco at night,
sees with surprise the summit of the palm-trees illumined by large
fires. These are the habitations of the Guaraons (Tivitivas and
Waraweties of Raleigh* (* The Indian name of the tribe of Uaraus
(Guaraunos of the Spaniards) may be recognized in the Warawety
(Ouarauoty) of Raleigh, one of the branches of the Tivitivas. See
Discovery of Guiana, 1576 page 90 and the sketch of the habitations of
the Guaraons, in Raleghi brevis Descrip. Guianae, 1594 tab 4.)), which
are suspended from the trunks of trees. These tribes hang up mats in
the air, which they fill with earth, and kindle, on a layer of moist
clay, the fire necessary for their household wants. They have owed
their liberty and their political independence for ages to the quaking
and swampy soil, which they pass over in the time of drought, and on
which they alone know how to walk in security to their solitude in the
delta of the Orinoco; to their abode on the trees where religious
enthusiasm will probably never lead any American stylites.* (* This
sect was founded by Simeon Sisanites, a native of Syria. He passed
thirty-seven years in mystic contemplation, on five pillars, the last
of which was thirty-six cubits high. The sancti columnares attempted
to establish their aerial cloisters in the country of Treves, in
Germany; but the bishops opposed these extravagant and perilous
enterprises. Mosheim, Instit. Hist. Eccles page 192. See Humboldt's
Views of Nature (Bohn) pages 13 and 136.) I have already mentioned in
another place that the mauritia palm-tree, the tree of life of the
missionaries, not only affords the Guaraons a safe dwelling during the
risings of the Orinoco, but that its shelly fruit, its farinaceous
pith, its juice, abounding in saccharine matter, and the fibres of its
petioles, furnish them with food, wine,* and thread proper for making
cords and weaving hammocks. (* The use of this moriche wine however is
not very common. The Guaraons prefer in general a beverage of
fermented honey.) These customs of the Indians of the delta of the
Orinoco were found formerly in the Gulf of Darien (Uraba), and in the
greater part of the inundated lands between the Guarapiche and the
mouths of the Amazon.
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