Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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As On Discovering A
Coast, We Hear Of Great Inland Animals, So, On Entering The Valley Of
A Vast River, We Are Surprised To Find That Savages, Who Are Strangers
To Navigation, Have Acquired A Knowledge Of Distant Things.
In the
infant state of society, the exchange of ideas precedes, to a certain
point, the exchange of productions.
The two great cataracts of the Orinoco, the celebrity of which is so
far-spread and so ancient, are formed by the passage of the river
across the mountains of Parima. They are called by the natives Mapara
and Quittuna; but the missionaries have substituted for these names
those of Atures and Maypures, after the names of the tribes which were
first assembled together in the nearest villages. On the coast of
Caracas, the two Great Cataracts are denoted by the simple appellation
of the two Raudales, or rapids; a denomination which implies that the
other falls of water, even the rapids of Camiseta and of Carichana,
are not considered as worthy of attention when compared with the
cataracts of Atures and Maypures.
These last, situated between five and six degrees of north latitude,
and a hundred leagues west of the Cordilleras of New Grenada, in the
meridian of Porto Cabello, are only twelve leagues distant from each
other. It is surprising that their existence was not known to
D'Anville, who, in his fine map of South America, marks the
inconsiderable cascades of Marimara and San Borja, by the names of the
rapids of Carichana and Tabaje.
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