Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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They Have Owed
Their Liberty And Their Political Independence For Ages To The Quaking
And Swampy Soil, Which They Pass
Over in the time of drought, and on
which they alone know how to walk in security to their solitude
In the
delta of the Orinoco; to their abode on the trees where religious
enthusiasm will probably never lead any American stylites.* (* This
sect was founded by Simeon Sisanites, a native of Syria. He passed
thirty-seven years in mystic contemplation, on five pillars, the last
of which was thirty-six cubits high. The sancti columnares attempted
to establish their aerial cloisters in the country of Treves, in
Germany; but the bishops opposed these extravagant and perilous
enterprises. Mosheim, Instit. Hist. Eccles page 192. See Humboldt's
Views of Nature (Bohn) pages 13 and 136.) I have already mentioned in
another place that the mauritia palm-tree, the tree of life of the
missionaries, not only affords the Guaraons a safe dwelling during the
risings of the Orinoco, but that its shelly fruit, its farinaceous
pith, its juice, abounding in saccharine matter, and the fibres of its
petioles, furnish them with food, wine,* and thread proper for making
cords and weaving hammocks. (* The use of this moriche wine however is
not very common. The Guaraons prefer in general a beverage of
fermented honey.) These customs of the Indians of the delta of the
Orinoco were found formerly in the Gulf of Darien (Uraba), and in the
greater part of the inundated lands between the Guarapiche and the
mouths of the Amazon.
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