The calm of the atmosphere, and the tumultuous movement of the waters, produce a contrast peculiar to this zone. Here no breath of wind ever agitates the foliage, no cloud veils the splendour of the azure vault of heaven; a great mass of light is diffused in the air, on the earth strewn with plants with glossy leaves, and on the bed of the river, which extends as far as the eye can reach. This appearance surprises the traveller born in the north of Europe. The idea of wild scenery, of a torrent rushing from rock to rock, is linked in his imagination with that of a climate where the noise of the tempest is mingled with the sound of the cataract; and where, in a gloomy and misty day, sweeping clouds seem to descend into the valley, and to rest upon the tops of the pines. The landscape of the tropics in the low regions of the continents has a peculiar physiognomy, something of greatness and repose, which it preserves even where one of the elements is struggling with invincible obstacles. Near the equator, hurricanes and tempests belong to islands only, to deserts destitute of plants, and to those spots where parts of the atmosphere repose upon surfaces from which the radiation of heat is very unequal.
The mountain of Manimi forms the eastern limit of a plain which furnishes for the history of vegetation, that is, for its progressive development in bare and desert places, the same phenomena which we have described above in speaking of the raudal of Atures. During the rainy season, the waters heap vegetable earth upon the granitic rock, the bare shelves of which extend horizontally. These islands of mould, decorated with beautiful and odoriferous plants, resemble the blocks of granite covered with flowers, which the inhabitants of the Alps call gardens or courtils, and which pierce the glaciers of Switzerland.
In a place where we had bathed the day before, at the foot of the rock of Manimi, the Indians killed a serpent seven feet and a half long. The Macos called it a camudu. Its back displayed, upon a yellow ground, transverse bands, partly black, and partly inclining to a brown green: under the belly the bands were blue, and united in rhombic spots. This animal, which is not venomous, is said by the natives to attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at first, that the camudu was a boa; but I saw with surprise, that the scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It was therefore a viper (coluber); perhaps a python of the New Continent: I say perhaps, for great naturalists appear to admit that all the pythons belong to the Old, and all the boas to the New World. As the boa of Pliny was a serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have been well if the boas of America had been named pythons, and the pythons of India been called boas. The first notions of an enormous reptile capable of seizing man, and even the great quadrupeds, came to us from India and the coast of Guinea. However indifferent names may be, we can scarcely admit the idea, that the hemisphere in which Virgil described the agonies of Laocoon (a fable which the Greeks of Asia borrowed from much more southern nations) does not possess the boa-constrictor. I will not augment the confusion of zoological nomenclature by proposing new changes, and shall confine myself to observing that at least the missionaries and the latinized Indians of the missions, if not the planters of Guiana, clearly distinguish the traga-venados (real boas, with simple anal plates) from the culebras de agua, or water-snakes, like the camudu (pythons with double anal scales). The traga-venados have no transverse bands on the back, but a chain of rhombic or hexagonal spots. Some species prefer the driest places; others love the water, as the pythons, or culebras de agua.
Advancing towards the west, we find the hills or islets in the deserted branch of the Orinoco crowned with the same palm-trees that rise on the rocks of the cataracts. One of these hills, called Keri, is celebrated in the country on account of a white spot which shines from afar, and in which the natives profess to see the image of the full moon. I could not climb this steep rock, but I believe the white spot to be a large nodule of quartz, formed by the union of several of those veins so common in granites passing into gneiss. Opposite Keri, or the Rock of the Moon, on the twin mountain Ouivitari, which is an islet in the midst of the cataracts, the Indians point out with mysterious awe a similar white spot. It has the form of a disc; and they say this is the image of the sun (Camosi). Perhaps the geographical situation of these two objects has contributed to their having received these names. Keri is on the side of the setting, Camosi on that of the rising sun. Languages being the most ancient historical monuments of nations, some learned men have been singularly struck by the analogy between the American word camosi and camosch, which seems to have signified originally, the sun, in one of the Semitic dialects. This analogy has given rise to hypotheses which appear to me at least very problematical. The god of the Moabites, Chemosh, or Camosch, who has so wearied the patience of the learned; Apollo Chomens, cited by Strabo and by Ammianus Marcellinus; Belphegor; Amun or Hamon; and Adonis: all, without doubt, represent the sun in the winter solstice; but what can we conclude from a solitary and fortuitous resemblance of sounds in languages that have nothing besides in common?
The Maypure tongue is still spoken at Atures, although the mission is inhabited only by Guahibos and Macos. At Maypures the Guareken and Pareni tongues only are now spoken. From the Rio Anaveni, which falls into the Orinoco north of Atures, as far as beyond Jao, and to the mouth of the Guaviare (between the fourth and sixth degrees of latitude), we everywhere find rivers, the termination of which, veni,* (* Anaveni, Mataveni, Maraveni, etc.) recalls to mind the extent to which the Maypure tongue heretofore prevailed. Veni, or weni, signifies water, or a river. The words camosi and keri, which we have just cited, are of the idiom of the Pareni Indians,* (* Or Parenas, who must not be confounded either with the Paravenes of the Rio Caura (Caulin page 69), or with the Parecas, whose language belongs to the great family of the Tamanac tongues. A young Indian of Maypures, who called himself a Paragini, answered my questions almost in the same words that M. Bonpland heard from a Pareni. I have indicated the differences in the table, see below.) who, I think I have heard from the natives, lived originally on the banks of the Mataveni.* (* South of the Rio Zama. We slept in the open air near the mouth of the Mataveni on the 28th day of May, in our return from the Rio Negro.) The Abbe Gili considers the Pareni as a simple dialect of the Maypure. This question cannot be solved by a comparison of the roots merely. Being totally ignorant of the grammatical structure of the Pareni, I can raise but feeble doubts against the opinion of the Italian missionary. The Pareni is perhaps a mixture of two tongues that belong to different families; like the Maquiritari, which is composed of the Maypure and the Caribbee; or, to cite an example better known, the modern Persian, which is allied at the same time to the Sanscrit and to the Semitic tongues. The following are Pareni words, which I carefully compared with Maypure words.*
TABLE OF PARENI AND MAYPURE WORDS COMPARED.
COLUMN 1 : WORD.
COLUMN 2 : PARENI WORD.
COLUMN 3 : MAYPURE WORD. (* The words of the Maypure language have been taken from the works of Gili and Hervas. I collected the words placed between parentheses from a young Maco Indian, who understood the Maypure language.)
The sun : Camosi : Kie (Kiepurig).
The moon : Keri : Kejapi (Cagijapi).
A star : Ouipo : Urrupu.
The devil : Amethami : Vasuri.
Water : Oneui (ut) : Oueni.
Fire : Casi : Catti.
Lightning : Eno : Eno-ima.* (* I am ignorant of what ima signifies in
this compound word. Eno means in Maypure the sky and thunder. Ina
signifies mother.)
The head : Ossipo : Nuchibucu.* (* The syllables no and nu, joined to
the words that designate parts of the body, might have been
suppressed; they answer to the possessive pronoun my.)
The hair : Nomao.
The eyes : Nopurizi : Nupuriki.
The nose : Nosivi : Nukirri.
The mouth : Nonoma : Nunumacu.
The teeth : Nasi : Nati.
The tongue : Notate : Nuare.
The ear : Notasine : Nuakini.
The cheek : Nocaco.
The neck : Nono : Noinu.
The arm : Nocano : Nuana.
The hand : Nucavi : Nucapi.
The breast : Notoroni.
The back : Notoli.
The thigh : Nocazo.
The nipples : Nocini.
The foot : Nocizi : Nukii.
The toes : Nociziriani.
The calf of the leg : Nocavua.
A crocodile : Cazuiti : Amana.
A fish : Cimasi : Timaki.
Maize : Cana : Jomuki.
Plantain : Paratana (Teot)* : Arata.
(* We may be surprised to find the word teot denote the eminently
nutritive substance that supplies the place of corn (the gift of a
beneficent divinity), and on which the subsistence of man within the
tropics depends. I may here mention, that the word Teo, or Teot, which
in Aztec signifies God (Teotl, properly Teo, for tl is only a
termination), is found in the language of the Betoi of the Rio Meta.
The name of the moon, in this language so remarkable for the
complication of its grammatical structure, is Teo-ro. The name of the
sun is Teo-umasoi. The particle ro designates a woman, umasoi a man.
Among the Betoi, the Maypures, and so many other nations of both
continents, the moon is believed to be the wife of the sun. But what
is this root Teo? It appears to me very doubtful, that Teo-ro should
signify God-woman, for Memelu is the name of the All-powerful Being in
the Betoi langnage.)
Cacao : Cacavua* (* Has this word been introduced from a communication
with Europeans? It is almost identical with the Mexican (Aztec) word
cacava.).
Tobacco : Jema : Jema.
Pimento : (Pumake).
Mimosa inga : (Caraba).
Cecropia peltata : (Jocovi).
Agaric : (Cajuli).
Agaric : Puziana (Pagiana) : Papeta (Popetas).
Agaric : Sinapa (Achinafe) : Avanume (Avanome).
Agaric : Meteuba (Meuteufafa) : Apekiva (Pejiiveji).
Agaric : Puriana vacavi : (Jaliva).
Agaric : Puriana vacavi uschanite.
Agaric : Puriassima vacavi : (Javiji).