Note J — Sacred Philosophy.

“In the season of inundations, these clumps of the 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 channel of the delta of the Oronooco at night, sees with surprize the summits of the palm-trees illuminated by large fires. These are the habitations of the Guaraons (see Sir W. Raleigh’s Brevis Descript. Guianæ, 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 Oronooco, to their abodes on the trees, where religious enthusiasm will probably never lead any American Stylites (see Mosheim’s Church History). This tree, the tree of life of the missionaries, not only affords the Guaraons a safe dwelling during the risings of the Oronooco, but its shelly fruit, its farinaceous pith, its juice, abounding in saccharine matter, and the fibres of its leaves, furnish them with food, wine, and thread proper for making cords and weaving hammocks. It is curious to observe in the lowest degree of human civilization, the existence of a whole tribe depending on one single species of palm-tree, similar to those insects which feed on one and the same flower, or on one and the same part of a plant.”—Humboldt, Person. Narrative, vol. v. p. 728.