Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Travellers Cannot Be
Enough On Their Guard Against This Officious Assent, When They Seek
To Confirm Their Own Opinions By The Testimony Of The Natives.
To
put an Indian alcalde to the proof, I asked him one day, whether he
did not think the little river of Caripe, which issues from the
cavern of the Guacharo, returned into it on the opposite side by
some unknown entrance, after having ascended the slope of the
mountain.
The Indian seemed gravely to reflect on the subject, and
then answered, by way of supporting my hypothesis: "How else, if it
were not so, would there always be water in the bed of the river at
the mouth of the cavern?"
The Chaymas are very dull in comprehending anything relating to
numerical facts. I never knew one of these people who might not
have been made to say that he was either eighteen or sixty years of
age. Mr. Marsden observed the same peculiarity in the Malays of
Sumatra, though they have been civilized more than five centuries.
The Chayma language contains words which express pretty large
numbers, yet few Indians know how to apply them; and having felt,
from their intercourse with the missionaries, the necessity of so
doing, the more intelligent among them count in Spanish, but
apparently with great effort of mind, as far as thirty, or perhaps
fifty. The same persons, however, cannot count in the Chayma
language beyond five or six. It is natural that they should employ
in preference the words of a language in which they have been
taught the series of units and tens.
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