148 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



Guiana the Warraws or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u), inhabit 

 not only the marshy delta and river network of the Orinoco, and 

 particularly the banks of the Manamo Grande and the Cano Macareo, 

 but also extend, with little variation in their modes of life, along the 

 sea coast between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de 

 Navios of the Orinoco. (Compare my Relation historique, t. i. p. 

 492, t. ii. pp. 653 and 703, with Richard Schornburgk's "Reisen in 

 Britisch Guiana," th. i. 1847, s. 62, 120, 173, and 194.) According 

 to the testimony of the last-named excellent explorer and observer, 

 there are still 1700 "Warraws or Guaranis living in the district of 

 Cumaca, and along the banks of the Barima river, which empties 

 itself into the gulf of the Boca d Navios. The manners and cus- 

 toms of the tribes living in the delta of the Orinoco were already 

 known to the great historical writer Cardinal Bembo, the cotem- 

 porary of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He 

 says, "quibusdani in locis propter paludes incolse domus in arboribus 

 sedificant" (Historise Venetae, 1551, p. 88). It is more probable 

 that Bembo is alluding to the Guaranis at the mouth of the Orinoco, 

 than to the natives near the mouth of the Gulf of Maracaibo, where 

 Alonzo de Hojeda, in August, 1499, when lie was accompanied by 

 Yespucci and Juan de la Cosa, also found a population having their 

 residence "fondata sopra F acqua come Venezia" (Riccardi's Text in 

 my Examen Crit. t. iv. p. 496). In Vespucci's account of his voyage 

 (in which we find the first indication of the etymology of the term 

 Province of Venezuela;, Little Venice, for Province of Caraccas), he 

 only speaks of houses raised upon foundation pillars, not of habita- 

 tions in the trees. 



Sir Walter Raleigh offers a later evidence of high authority ; he 

 says expressly, in his description of Guiana, that, on his second 

 voyage in 1595, when in the mouth of the Orinoco, he saw the 

 "fires" of the Tivitives and the Oua-raa-etes (so he calls the Guara- 

 nis) "high up in the trees" (Raleigh, Discov. of Guiana, 1596, p. 

 90). The fire is represented in a drawing in the Latin edition: 

 " brevis et adiniranda descriptio regni Guianae" (Norib. 1599), tab. 

 4. Raleigh was also the first who brought to England the fruit of 

 the Mauritia-palm, which he very justlycompared, on account of its 

 scales, to a fir cone. The Padre Jose Gumilla, who twice visited 



