Note 158 — Chapter VIII

King Blanco, pp. 63-64. The lack of significant early authorities for the mythologies of the region of Guiana and the Orinoco (Gumilla is as important as any) is compensated by the careful work of later observers of the native tribes, especially of Guiana. Among these, Humboldt, Sir Richard and Robert H. Schomburgk, and Brett, in the early and middle years of the nineteenth century, and im Thurn, at a later period, hold first place, while the contributions of van Coll, in Anthropos ii, iii (1907, 1908), are no less noteworthy. Latest of all is Walter Roth's "Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians," in 30 ARBE (1915), which, as a careful study of the myth-literature of a South American group, stands in a class by itself; it is furnished with a careful bibliography. The reader will understand that the intimate relation between the Antillean and Continental Carib (and, to a less extent, Arawakan) ideas brings the subject-matter of this chapter into direct connexion with that of Chapter I; while it should also be obvious that the Orinoco region is only separated from the Amazonian for convenience, and that Chapter X is virtually but a further study of the same level and type of thought. The bibliographies of Chh. I, VI, and X are supplementary, for this same region, to that given for Chapter VIII.