While, however, the general accuracy of Père Labat’s statements were thus put beyond further doubt, it was discovered, by a comparative study of the languages of the Caribs and those of the tribes which they had subjugated, that it was not strictly true to assert that the language of the women was entirely different from that of the men—totalement different de celui des hommes—as the good Dominican had affirmed. They were entirely different in the words of daily use and of most frequent occurrence, but the difference extended in reality only to the minor part of the vocabulary actually employed. But the difference was quite sufficient to justify the interest it had so long excited among men of science, and to stimulate the researches which have only in recent years been crowned with success.[12]
The night before arriving at Ciudad Bolivar, while dreamily reclining in a steamer chair, I was awakened from my musings by a vivacious senorita, of pronounced Castilian type, rushing up to her father, near by, and exclaiming in an excited manner, “Mira, padre, mira, la Cruz del Sur!” Look, father, look—the Southern Cross! And sure enough, there, in the constellation Centauri, was the “Croce Maravigliosa,”—the marvelous cross—of the early navigators, the “Crucero” of incomparable beauty and brightness, the celestial clock of the early missionaries in the tropical lands of the New World. The cloud-veiled skies of the preceding nights had prevented us from getting a view of these “luci sante”—holy lights—but now we were privileged to behold them in all their heavenly splendor. At once we recalled that well-known passage of Dante, which the lovers of the great Florentine have applied to this constellation:—
“To the right hand I turned, and fixed my mind,
On the other pole attentive, where I saw
Four stars ne’er seen before save by the ken
Of our first parents. Heaven of their rays
Seemed joyous. O, thou northern site! bereft
Indeed, and widened, since of these deprived!”[13]
We never suspected it at the time, but as subsequent events proved, the señorita’s Cruz del Sur was to be our timepiece for many subsequent months. During long wanderings over mountain and plain and in many changing climes, it was the Southern Cross that served as our guide, and marked the hours of night, in lieu of Polaris and Ursa Major, which had disappeared below the horizon.
Toward noon, the second day after leaving the Port-of-Spain, we got our first view of Ciudad Bolivar, founded in 1764 by Joaquin Moreno de Mendoza, and since that time the capital of Guiana, now the great State of Bolivar. Situated upon an eminence, on the right bank of the river, it presents a very imposing appearance and seems much larger than it is in reality. The white stone walls of the houses, and the brownish-red tiles of the roofs, together with the delicate green crowns of lofty palms that dot every part of the city, enhance in a marked degree the beauty of the picture as seen under the brilliant light of the noonday sun. The cathedral, and the government buildings around the plaza in the higher part of the town, loom up with splendid effect. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more beautiful picture of a city, when seen at a distance, than is that of Ciudad Bolivar.