86 



constellation of four, as the first has six stars that arc 

 very apparent, and the last four. The Milky Way 

 is called Rupuepeu, the fabulous road, from a storj-^ 

 which, like other nations, they relate of it, and which 

 is considered as fabulous by the astronomers of tht 

 country. 



They are well acquainted with the planets, which 

 they call Gaii, a word derived from the verb gaun, to 

 wash, from whence it may be inferred, that they 

 have respecting these bodies, the same opinion as the 

 Romans, that at their setting they submerge them- 

 selves in the sea. Nor are tlitre wanting Fontinelles 

 among them, who believe that many of those globes 

 arc so many other earths, inhabited in the same man- 

 ner as ours ; for this reason they call the sky 

 Guenu-mapu, the country of heaven ; and the moon 

 Cuyen-mapu^ the country of tlie moon. They agree 

 likewise with the Aristotelians, in maintaining that 

 the comets, called by them Cheruvoe, proceed from 

 terrestrial exhalations, inflamed in the upper regions 

 of the air ; but they are not considered as the pre- 

 cursors of evil and disaster, as they have been es- 

 teemed by almost ail the nations of the earth. An 

 eclipse of the sun is called by them Layantu^ and 

 that of the moon Layciijen^ that is, the death of the 

 sun or of the moon. But these expressions are 

 merely metaphorical, as are the correspondent ones 

 in Latin, of defectus so/is, ant lunœ. I know not 

 their opinions of the cause of these phenomena ; 

 but I have been informed that they evince no 

 greater alarm upon these occasions than at the most 

 common operations of nature. Their language con- 



