8T7PERIOB ACTIVITY OF OTHERS. 417 



employed. " Wlien I seeing Padre, Padre to me saying ;"* 

 instead of, " when I saw the missionary, he said to me." 

 1 have mentioned in another place, how wise it appeared 

 to me in the Jesuits to generalize one of the languages of 

 civilized America, for instance that of the Peruvians,f and 

 instruct the Indians in an idiom which is foreign to them 

 in its roots, but not in its structure and grammatical forms. 

 This was following the system which the Incas, or king- 

 priests of Peru had employed for ages, in order to humanize 

 the barbarous nations of the Upper Maranon, and maintain 

 them under their domination; a system somewhat more 

 reasonable than that of making the natives of America 

 speak Latin, as was gravely proposed in a provincial concilia 

 at Mexico. 



We were told that the Indians of the Cassiquiare and 

 the Rio Negro are preferred on the Lower Orinoco, and 

 especially at Angostura, to the inhabitants of the other 

 missions, on account of their intelligence and activity. 

 Those of Mandavaca are celebrated among the tribes of 

 their own race for the preparation of the cware poison, 

 which does not yield in strength to the cwrare of Esmeralda. 

 Unhappily the natives devote themselves to this employ- 

 ment more than to agriculture. Yet the soil on the banks 

 of the Cassiquiare is excellent. We find there a granitic 

 sand, of a blackish-brown colour, which is covered in the 

 forests with thick layers of rich earth, and on the banks of 

 the river with clay almost impermeable to water. The soil 

 of the Cassiquiare appears more fertile than that of the 

 valley of the Rio Negro, where maize does not prosper. 

 Bice, beans, cotton, sugar, and indigo yield rich harvests, 

 wherever their cultivation has been tried.J We saw wild 

 indigo around the missions of San Miguel de Davipe, San 

 Carlos, and Mandavaca. No doubt can exist that several 

 nations of America, particularly the Mexicans, long before 

 the conquest, employed real indigo in their hieroglyphic 



* " Qua ml o io mirando Padre, Padre me diciendo." 

 t The Quichua or Inca language (Lengua del Inga). 

 % M. Bonpland found at Mandavaca, in the huts of the natives, a plant 

 with tuberous roots, exactly like cassava (yucca). It is called cwnapana, 

 and is cooked by being baked on the ashes. It grows spontaneously on 

 he banks of the Cassiquiare. 



VOL. II. 2 E 



