Note 31 — ON STEPPES AND DESERTS.

p. 12—“The Guaranes and the fan-palm Mauritia.”

The small coast tribe of the Guaranes (called in British Guiana, the Warraws, or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u) inhabit not only the swampy delta and the river net-work of the Orinoco (more particularly the banks of the Manamo grande and the Caño Macareo), but also extend, with very slight differences in their mode of living, along the sea-shore, between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de Navios of the Orinoco.^[GN] According to the testimony of Schomburgk, the admirable observer referred to in the note, there are still about 1700 Warraus or Guaranos living in the vicinity of Cumaca, and along the banks of the Barime river, which empties itself into the gulf of the Boca de Navios. The social habits of the tribes settled in the delta of the Orinoco were known to the great historian Cardinal Bembo, the cotemporary of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He says^[GO] quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolæ domus in arboribus œdificant. It is hardly probable that instead of the Guaranos at the mouth of the Orinoco, Bembo should here allude to the natives of the country near the mouth of the gulf of Maracaibo, where Alonzo de Hojeda, in August, 1499, (when accompanied by Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa) found a population having their dwellings fondata sopra l’acqua come Venezia (“built like Venice on the water”).^[GP] Vespucci, in the account of his 135travels, in which we meet with the first traces of the etymology of the name of the province of Venezuela (Little Venice) as used for the province of Caracas, speaks only of houses built on a foundation of piles, and makes no mention of habitations in trees.

Sir Walter Raleigh bears a subsequent and incontrovertible evidence to the same fact, for 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 fire of the Tivitites and Qua-rawetes” (so he calls the Guaranes), “high up in the trees.”^[GQ] There is a drawing of the fire in the Latin edition of this work,^[GR] and Raleigh was the first who brought to England the fruit of the Mauritia palm, which he very justly compared, on account of its scales, to fir-cones. Father José Gumilla, who twice visited the Guaranes as a missionary, says, indeed, that this tribe have their dwelling in the Palmares (palm groves) of the morasses; but while he speaks more definitely of pendent habitations supported by high pillars, makes no mention of platforms attached to still growing trees.^[GS] Hillhouse and Sir Robert Schomburgk^[GT] are of opinion that Bembo, through the relations of others, and Raleigh, by his own observation, were deceived into this belief in consequence of the high tops of the palm trees being lighted up in such a manner by the fires below them, that those sailing by thought the habitations of the Guaranes were attached to the trees themselves. “We do not deny,” says Schomburgk, “that in order to escape the attacks of the mosquitos, the Indian sometimes suspends his hammock from the tops of trees, but on such occasions no fires are made under the hammock.”^[GU]

According to Martius, the beautiful Palm, Moriche, Mauritia 136flexuosa, Quieteva, or Ita Palm,^[GV] belongs, together with Calamus, to the family of the Lepidocaryæ or Corypheæ. Linnæus has described it very imperfectly, as he erroneously considered it to be devoid of leaves. The trunk is 26 feet high, but it probably does not attain this height in less than 120 or even 150 years. The Mauritia extends high up the declivity of the Duida, north of the Esmeralda mission, where I found it in great beauty. It forms, in moist places, fine groups of a fresh and shining verdure, reminding us of that of our alders. The trees preserve the moisture of the ground by their shade, and hence the Indians believe that the Mauritia draws water around its roots by some mysterious attraction. In conformity with an analogous theory they advise, that serpents should not be killed, because the destruction of these animals is followed by the drying up of the lagoons. Thus do the rude children of nature confound cause and effect! Gumilla calls the Mauritia flexuosa of the Guaranes the tree of life (“arbol de la vida”). It is found on the mountains of Ronaima, east of the sources of the Orinoco, as high as 4263 feet. On the unfrequented banks of the Rio Atabapo, in the interior of Guiana, we discovered a new species of Mauritia having a prickly stem; our Mauritia aculeata.^[GW]