OOirUSIOF OF NAMES. 377 



Tlio Indians, I repeat, are excellent geographers; they 

 outflank the enemy, notwithstanding the limits traced upon 

 the maps, in spite of the forts and the estacamentos ; and 

 when the missionaries see them arrive from such distances, 

 and in different seasons, they begin to frame hypotheses of 

 supposed communications of rivers. Each party has an 

 interest in concealing what it knows with certainty; and 

 that love of the mysterious, so general among the ignorant, 

 contributes to perpetuate the doubt. It may also be 

 observed that the various Indian nations, who frequent 

 this labyrinth of rivers, give them names entirely different ; 

 and that these names are disguised and lengthened by 

 terminations that signify * water,' ' great water,' and ' cur- 

 rent.' How often have I been perplexed by the necessity 

 of settling the synonymes of rivers, when I have sent fop 

 the most intelligent natives, to interrogate them, through 

 an interpreter, respecting the number of tributary streams, 

 the sources of the rivers, and the portages. Three or four 

 languages being spoken in the same mission, it is difficult 

 to make the witnesses agree. Our maps are loaded with 

 names arbitrarily shortened or perverted. To examine how 

 far they may be accurate, we must be guided by the geo- 

 graphical situation of the confluent rivers, I might almost 

 say by a certain etymological tact. The Rio Uaupe, or 

 Uapcs of the Portuguese maps, is the Gruapue of the 

 Spanish maps, and the Ucayari ot the natives. The Anava 

 of the old geographers is the Anauahu of Arrowsmith, 

 and the Uauauhau or Guanauhu of the Indians. The 

 desire of leaving no void in the maps, in order to give 

 them an appearance of accuracy, has caused rivers to be 

 created, to which names have been applied that have not 

 been recognized as synonymous. It is only lately that 

 travellers in America, in Persia, and in the Indies, have 

 felt the importance of being correct in the denomination of 

 places. When we read the travels of Sir Walter Raleigh, 

 it is difficult indeed to recognise in the ' lake of Mrecabo ' 

 the laguna of Maracaybo, and in the 'Marquis Paraco' 

 the name of Pizarro, the destroyer of the empire of the 

 Incas. 



The great tributary streams of the Amazon are desig- 

 nated by the missionaries by different names in their uppei 



