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Show 1!8 STEPPES AND DESERTS. Guiana tho Warraws or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u,) inhabit not only the marshy delta and river network of the Orinoco, and particularly the banks of the Manama Grande and the Cafio Macareo, but also extend with little variation in their modes of life, along the sea coast between the mouths of the Essequibo, and the Boca de Navios of the Orinoco. (Compare my Relation historique, t. i. p. 492, t. ii. pp. 653 and 703, with Richard Schomburgk's 11 Reisen in Britisch Guiana,'' th. i. 184 7, ss. 62, 120, 173, and 194.) According to the testimony of the last-named excellent explorer and observer, there are still 1700 Warraws or Guaranis living in the district of Cumaca, and along the banks of the Barima river, which empties itself into the gulf of the Boca de Navios. The manners and customs of the tribes living in the delta of the Orinoco were already known to the great historical writer Cardinal Bembo, the cotemporary of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He says, 11 quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolre domus in arboribus red'ificant" (Historire Venetre, 1551, p. 88). It is more probable that Bembo is alluding to the Guaranis at the mouth of the Orinoco, than to the natives near the mouth of the Gulf of Maracaibo, where Alonzo de Hojeda, in August, 1499, when he was accompanied by Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa, also found a population having their residence 11 fondata sopra I' acqua come Venezia" (Riccardi's Text in my Examen Crit. t. iv. p. 496). In Vespucci's account of his voyage (in which we find the first indication of the etymology of the term Province of Venezuela, Little Venice, for Province of Caraccas), he only speaks of houses raised upon foundation pillars, not of habitations in the trees. Sir Walter Raleigh offers a later evidence of high authority j he says expressly, in his description of Guiana, that, on his second voyage in 1595, when in the mouth of the Orinoco, he saw the "fi?·e.s'' of the Tivitives and the Oua-raa-etes (so he calls the Guaranis) "high up in the trees" (Raleigh, Discov. of Guiana, 1596, p. 90). The fire is represented in a drawing in the Latin edition : "brevis et admirandadescriptio regni Guianre" (Norib. 1599), tab. 4. Raleigh was also the fit·st who brought to England the fruit of the Mauritia-palrn, which he very justly compared, on account of its scales, to a fir cone. The Padre Jos6 Gumilla, who twice visited |
