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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Neither The Analogy Nor The Diversity Of Language
Suffice To Solve The Great Problem Of The Filiation Of Nations;
They Merely Serve To Point Out Probabilities.
The Caribbees,
properly speaking, those who inhabit the Missions of the Cari, in
the llanos of Cumana, the banks
Of the Caura, and the plains to the
north-east of the sources of the Orinoco, are distinguished by
their almost gigantic size from all the other nations I have seen
in the new continent. Must it on this account be admitted, that the
Caribbees are an entirely distinct race? and that the Guaraons and
the Tamanacs, whose languages have an affinity with the Caribbee,
have no bond of relationship with them? I think not. Among the
nations of the same family, one branch may acquire an extraordinary
development of organization. The mountaineers of the Tyrol and
Salzburgh are taller than the other Germanic races; the Samoiedes
of the Altai are not so little and squat as those of the sea-coast.
In like manner it would be difficult to deny that the Galibis are
really Caribbees; and yet, notwithstanding the identity of
languages, how striking is the difference in their stature and
physical constitution!
Before Cortez entered the capital of Montezuma in 1521, the
attention of Europe was fixed on the regions we have just
traversed. In depicting the manners of the inhabitants of Paria and
Cumana, it was thought that the manners of all the inhabitants of
the new continent were described. This remark cannot escape those
who read the historians of the Conquest, especially the letters of
Peter Martyr of Anghiera, written at the court of Ferdinand the
Catholic.
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