WATElt SHAKES. 301 



and the pythons of India been called boas. The first 

 notions of an enormous reptile capable of seizing man, and 

 even the great quadrupeds, came to us from India and the 

 coast of Guinea. However indifferent names may be, we 

 can scarcely admit the idea, that the hemisphere in which 

 Virgil described the agonies of Laocoon. (a fable which the 

 Greeks of Asia borrowed from much more southern nations) 

 does not possess the boa-constrictor. I will not augment 

 the confusion of zoological nomenclature by proposing new 

 changes, and shall confine myself to observing that at least 

 the missionaries and the latinized Indians of the missions, 

 if not the planters of Guiana, clearly distinguish the traga- 

 venados (real boas, with simple anal plates) from the culebras 

 de agua, or water-snakes, like the camudu (pythons with 

 double anal scales). The traga-venados have no transverse 

 bunds on the back, but a chain of rhombic or hexagonal 

 spots. Some species prefer the driest places; others love 

 the water, as the pythons, or culebras de agua. 



Advancing towards the west, we find the hills or islets in 

 the deserted branch of the Orinoco crowned with the same 

 palm-trees that rise on the rocks of the cataracts. One of 

 these hills, called Keri, is celebrated in the country on 

 account of a white spot which shines from afar, and in 

 which the natives profess to see the image of the full moon. 

 I could not climb this steep rock, but I believe the white 

 spot to be a large nodule of quartz, formed by the union of 

 several of those veins so common in granites passing into 

 gneiss. Opposite Keri, or the Rock of the Moon, on the 

 twin mountain Ouivitari, which is an islet in the midst of 

 the cataracts, the Indians point out with mysterious awe a 

 similar white spot. It has the form of a disc; and they 

 say tin's is the image of the sun (Camosi). Perhaps the 

 geographical situation of these two objects has contributed 

 to their having received these names. Keri is on the side 

 of the setting, Camosi on that of the rising sun. Languages 

 being the most ancient historical monuments of nations, 

 some learned men have been singularly struck by the ana- 

 logy between the American word camosi and camosch, which 

 seems to have signified originally, the sun, in one of the 

 Semitic dialects. This analogy has given rise to hypotheses 



