Note 31 — STEPPES AND DESERTS.

p. 16.—“The Guaranis, and the fan-palm, Mauritia.”

The small coast tribe or nation of the Guaranis, (called in British Guiana the 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 Manamo Grande and the Caño 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. p. 653 and 703, with Richard Schomburgk’s “Reisen in Britisch Guiana,” Th. i. 1847, S. 62, 120, 173, and 194). According to the testimony of the last-named excellent explorer and observer, there are still 1700 Warraus 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 contemporary of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He says, “quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolæ domus in arboribus ædificant” (Historiæ Venetæ, 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 Gulph of Macaraibo, 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 “fondata sopra l’ 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; 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 “fires” 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 admiranda descriptio regni Guianæ,” (Norib. 1599) tab. 4. Raleigh was also the first who brought to England the fruit of the Mauritia-palm, which he very justly compared, on account of its scales, to a fir cone. The Padre José Gumilla, who twice visited the Guaranis as a missionary, says, indeed, that this people had their habitation in the palmares (palm groves) of the morasses; but he only mentions dwellings raised upon high pillars, and not scaffoldings attached to trees still in a growing state; (Gumilla, Historia natural, civil, y geografica de las Naciones situadas en las riveras del Rio Orinoco, nueva imp. 1791, p. 143, 145, and 163). Hillhouse and Sir Robert Schomburgk, (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii. 1842, p. 175; and Description of the Murichi or Ita Palm, read at the Meeting of the British Association held at Cambridge, June 1845; printed in Simond’s Colonial Magazine), are of opinion that both Bembo and Raleigh, (the former speaking from the reports of others, the latter as an eye-witness), were deceived by the high tops of the palm-trees being lit up at night by the flames of fires beneath, so that those who sailed by thought the habitations themselves were attached to the trees. “We do not deny that in order to escape the attacks of the musquitos, the Indian sometimes suspends his hammock from the tops of trees; on such occasions, however, no fires are made under the hammock.” (Compare also Sir Robert Schomburgk’s New Edition of Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, 1848, p. 50.)

According to Martius, the fine Palm Moriche, Mauritia flexuosa, Quiteve, or Ita palm, (Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana, 1847, p. 34 and 44), belongs, as well as Calamus, to the group of Lepidocaryeæ or Coryphineæ. Linnæus has described it very imperfectly, as he erroneously considers it to be leafless. The trunk grows as high as 26 feet, but it probably requires from 120 to 150 years to reach this height. The Mauritia extends high up on the declivity of the Duida, north of the Esmeralda mission, where I have found it in great beauty. It forms in moist places fine groups of a fresh shining verdure, which reminds us of that of our Alder groves. The trees preserve the moisture of the ground by their shade, and hence the Indians say that the Mauritia draws the water round its roots by a mysterious attraction. By a somewhat similar theory they advise that serpents should not be killed; because the destruction of the serpents and the drying up of the pools or lagunas accompany each other: thus the untutored child of nature confounds cause and effect. Gumilla terms the Mauritia flexuosa of the Guaranis the tree of life, arbol de la vida. It grows in the mountains of Ronaima, east of the sources of the Orinoco, as high as 4000 (4263 Eng.) feet. On the unvisited banks of the Rio Atabapo, in the interior of Guiana, we discovered a new species of Mauritia with prickly stems, our Mauritia aculeata; (Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth, Nova Genera et Species Plantarum, t. i. p. 310).