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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Among The Avanos And Maypures, Brothers Have
Often But One Wife.
When an Indian, who lives in polygamy, becomes a
christian, he is compelled by the missionaries, to choose among his
wives her whom he prefers, and to reject the others.
At the moment of
separation the new convert sometimes discovers the most valuable
qualities in the wives he is obliged to abandon. One understands
gardening perfectly; another knows how to prepare chiza, an
intoxicating beverage extracted from the root of cassava; all appear
to him alike clever and useful. Sometimes the desire of preserving his
wives overcomes in the Indian his inclination to christianity; but
most frequently, in his perplexity, the husband prefers submitting to
the choice of the missionary, as to a blind fatality.
The Indians, who from May to August take journeys to the east of
Esmeralda, to gather the vegetable productions of the mountains of
Yumariquin, gave us precise notions of the course of the Orinoco to
the east of the mission. This part of my itinerary may differ entirely
from the maps that preceded it. I shall begin the description of this
country with the granitic group of Duida, at the foot of which we
sojourned. This group is bounded on the west by the Rio Tamatama, and
on the east by the Rio Guapo. Between these two tributary streams of
the Orinoco, amid the morichales, or clumps of mauritia palm-trees,
which surround Esmeralda, the Rio Sodomoni flows, celebrated for the
excellence of the pine-apples that grow upon its banks.
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