180 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



only speaks of houses raised upon foundation pillars, not of 

 habitations in the trees. 



Sir Walter Ealeigh 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 Guaranis) " high up in the 

 trees" (Ealeigh, Discov. of Guiana, 1596, p. 90). The fire 

 is represented in a drawing in the Latin edition : " brevis et 

 admiranda descriptio regui Guianse," (Norib. 1599) tab. 4. 

 Ealeigh was also the first who brought to England the fruit 

 of the Mauritia-palm, which he very justly compared, on 

 account of its scales, to a fir cone. The Padre Jose 

 Gumilla, who twice visited the Guaranis as a missionary, 

 says, indeed, that this people had their habitation in the 

 palmares (palm groves) of the morasses; but he only 

 mentions dwellings raised upon high pillars, and not scaf- 

 foldings attached to trees still in a growing state ; (Gumilla, 

 Historia natural, civil, y geografica de las Naciones situadas 

 en las riveras del Eio Orinoco, nueva imp. 1791, p. 143, 

 145, and 163). Hillhouse and Sir Eobert Schomburgk, 

 (Journal of the Eoyal Geographical Society, vol. xii. 1842, 

 p. 175; and Description of the Murichi or Ita Palm, read 

 at the Meeting of the British Association held at Cambridge, 

 June 1845; printed in Simond's Colonial Magazine), are 

 of opinion that both Bembo and Ealeigh, (the former 

 speaking from the reports of others, the latter as an eye- 

 witness), were deceived by the high tops of the palm-trees 



