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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(* At The Orinoco The Puignaves, Or Poignaves, Are
Distinguished From The Guipunaves (Uipunavi).
The latter, on account
of their language, are considered as belonging to the Maypure and
Cabre nations; yet water is called in Poignave, as well as in Maypure,
oueni.) These two words have a very peculiar character for words of
American origin.
As the names of the constellations may have been
transmitted to immense distances from one nation to another, these
Poignave words have fixed the attention of the learned, who have
imagined they recognize the Phoenician and Moabite tongues in the word
camosi of the Pareni. Fuebot and zenquerot seem to remind us of the
Phoenician words mot (clay), ardod (oak-tree), ephod, etc. But what
can we conclude from simple terminations which are most frequently
foreign to the roots? In Hebrew the feminine plurals terminate also in
oth. I noted entire phrases in Poignave; but the young man whom I
interrogated spoke so quick that I could not seize the division of the
words, and should have mixed them confusedly together had I attempted
to write them down.* (* For a curious example of this, see the speech
of Artabanes in Aristophanes (Acharn. act 1 scene 3) where a Greek has
attempted to give a Persian oration. See also Gibbon's Roman Empire
chapter 53 note 54, for a curious example of the way in which foreign
languages have been disfigured when it has been attempted to represent
them in a totally different tongue.)
The Mission near the raudal of Maypures was very considerable in the
time of the Jesuits, when it reckoned six hundred inhabitants, among
whom were several families of whites.
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