Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 359 of 777 - First - Home
The More Southern Establishments, Those Of Atabapo,
Of Cassiquiare, And Of Rio Negro, Were Formed By The Fathers Of The
Observance Of St. Francis.
The Orinoco appears to have flowed
heretofore where the village of Atures now stands, and the flat
savannah that
Surrounds the village no doubt formed part of the river.
I saw to the east of the mission a succession of rocks, which seemed
to have been the ancient shore of the Orinoco. In the lapse of ages
the river has been impelled westward, in consequence of the
accumulations of earth, which occur more frequently on the side of the
eastern mountains, that are furrowed by torrents. The cataract bears
the name of Mapara,* as we have mentioned above (* I am ignorant of
the etymology of this word, which I believe means only a fall of
water. Gili translates into Maypure a small cascade (raudalito) by
uccamatisi mapara canacapatirri. Should we not spell this word
matpara? mat being a radical of the Maypure tongue, and meaning bad
(Hervas, Saggio N. 29). The radical par (para) is found among American
tribes more than five hundred leagues distant from each other, the
Caribs, Maypures, Brazilians, and Peruvians, in the words sea, rain,
water, lake. We must not confound mapara with mapaja; this last word
signifies, in Maypure and Tamanac, the papaw or melon-tree, no doubt
on account of the sweetness of its fruit, for mapa means in the
Maypure, as well as in the Peruvian and Omagua tongues, the honey of
bees.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 359 of 777
Words from 97105 to 97358
of 211397
