DISSEMINATION OF IDEAS. 235 



part of whom are cannibals. It is not yet two hundred 

 years since civilization and the light of a more humane 

 religion have pursued their way along the banks of these 

 ancient canals traced by the hand of nature ; long, however, 

 before the introduction of agriculture, before communica- 

 tions for the purposes of barter were established among 

 these scattered and often hostile tribes, the knowledge of 

 extraordinary phenomena, of falls of water, of volcanic fires, 

 and of snows resisting all the ardent heat of summer, was 

 propagated by a thousand fortuitous circumstances. Three 

 hundred leagues from the coast, in the centre of South 

 America, among nations whose excursions do not extend to 

 three days' journey, we find an idea of the ocean, and words 

 that denote a mass of salt water extending as far as the eye 

 can discern. Various events, which repeatedly occur in 

 savage life, contribute to enlarge these conceptions. In 

 consequence of the petty wars between neighbouring tribes, 

 a prisoner is brought into a strange country, and treated as 

 a poito or mero, that is to say, as a slave. After being often 

 sold, he is dragged to new wars, escapes, and returns home ; 

 he relates what he has seen, and what he has heard from 

 those whose tongue he has been compelled to learn. As on 

 discovering a coast, we hear of great inland animals, so, on 

 entering the valley of a vast river, we are surprised to find 

 that savages, who are strangers to navigation, have acquired 

 a knowledge of distant things. In the infant state of 

 society, the exchange of ideas precedes, to a certain point, 

 the exchange of productions. 



The two great cataracts of the Orinoco, the celebrity of 

 which is so far-spread and so ancient, are formed by the 

 passage of the river across the mountains of Parima. They 

 are called by the natives Mapara and Quittuna; but the 

 missionaries have substituted for these names those of 

 Atures and Maypures, after the names of the tribes which 

 were first assembled together in the nearest villages. On 

 the coast of Caracas, the two Great Cataracts are denoted 

 by the simple appellation of the two Raudales, or rapids ; 

 a denomination which implies that the other falls of water, 

 even the rapids of Camiseta and of Carichana, are not con- 

 sidered as worthy of attention when compared with the 

 cataracts of Atures and Maypures. 



