The Sea, Or Great Water, Is In The Caribbean, Maypure, And Brazilian Languages, Parana:

In the Tamanac, parava.

In Upper Guiana also the Orinoco is called Parava. In the Peruvian, or Quichua, I find rain, para; to rain, parani. Besides, there is a lake in Peru that has been very anciently called Paria. (Garcia, Origen de los Indios, page 292.) I have entered into these minute details concerning the word Paria, because it has recently been supposed that some connection might be traced between this word and the country of the Hindoo caste called the Parias.) This we will not positively affirm; for the Caribbees themselves give the name of Caribana to a country which they occupied, and which extended from the Rio Sinu to the gulf of Darien. This is a striking example of identity of name between an American nation and the territory it possessed. We may conceive, that in a state of society, where residence is not long fixed, such instances must be very rare.

2. The Guaraons or Gu-ara-una, almost all free and independent, are dispersed in the Delta of the Orinoco, with the variously ramified channels of which they alone are well acquainted. The Caribbees call the Guaraons U-ara-u. They owe their independence to the nature of their country; for the missionaries, in spite of their zeal, have not been tempted to follow them to the tree-tops. The Guaraons, in order to raise their abodes above the surface of the waters at the period of the great inundations, support them on the hewn trunks of the mangrove-tree and of the Mauritia palm-tree.* (* Their manners have been the same from time immemorial. Cardinal Bembo described them at the beginning of the 16th century, "quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolae domus in arboribus aedificant." (Hist. Venet. 1551.) Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1595, speaks of the Guaraons under the names of Araottes, Trivitivas, and Warawites. These were perhaps the names of some tribes, into which the great Guaraonese nation was divided. (Barrere Essai sur l'Hist. Naturelle de la France Equinoctiale.)) They make bread of the medullary flour of this palm-tree, which is the sago of America. The flour bears the name of yuruma: I have eaten it at the town of St. Thomas, in Guiana, and it was very agreeable to the taste, resembling rather the cassava-bread than the sago of India.* (* M. Kunth has combined together three genera of the palms, Calamus, Sigus, and Mauritia, in a new section, the Calameae.) The Indians assured me that the trunks of the Mauritia, the tree of life so much vaunted by father Gumilla, do not yield meal in any abundance, unless the palm-tree is cut down just before the flowers appear. Thus too the maguey,* (* Agave Americana, the aloe of our gardens.) cultivated in New Spain, furnishes a saccharine liquor, the wine (pulque) of the Mexicans, only at the period when the plant shoots forth its long stem. By interrupting the blossoming, nature is obliged to carry elsewhere the saccharine or amylaceous matter, which would accumulate in the flowers of the maguey and in the fruit of the Mauritia.

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