8 TEEE-INHABITING INDIANS. 



the ywruma bread is made ; and far from being a palm-tree 

 of the shore, like the Chamserops humilis, the common 

 cocoa-tree, and the lodoicea of Commerson, is found as a 

 palm-tree of the marshes as far as the sources of the 

 Orinoco.* In the season of inundations these clumps of 

 mauritia, with their leaves in the form of a fan, have the 

 appearance of a forest rising from the bosom of the waters. 

 The navigator, in proceeding along the channels of the 

 delta of the Orinoco at night, sees with surprise the summit 

 of the palm-trees illumined by large fires. These are the 

 habitations of the Gruaraons (Tivitivas and Waraweties of 

 Raleigh f), which are suspended from the trunks of trees. 

 These tribes hang up mats in the air, which they fill with 

 earth, and kindle, on a layer of moist clay, the fire necessary 

 for their household wants. They have owed their liberty 

 and their political independence for ages to the quaking and 

 swampy soil, which they pass over in the time of drought, 

 and on which they alone know how to walk in security to 

 their solitude in the delta of the Orinoco ; to their abode 

 on the trees, where religious enthusiasm will probably never 

 lead any American stytites.$ I have already mentioned in 



Indian Archipelago, vol. i, p. 387 and 393.) This produce is triple that 

 of corn, and double that of potatoes in France. But the plantain pro- 

 duces, on the same surface of land, still more alimentary substance than 

 the sago-tree. 



* I dwell much on these divisions of the great and fine families of 

 palms according to the distribution of the species : 1st, in dry places, or 

 inland plains, Corypha tectorum ; 2nd, on the sea-coast, Chamserops 

 humilis, Cocos nucifera, Corypha maritima, Lodoicea seychellarum, 

 Labill. ; 3rd, in the fresh-water marshes, Sagus Rumphii, Mauritia 

 flexuosa ; and 4th, in the alpine regions, between seven and fifteen 

 hundred toises high, Ceroxylon andicola, Oreodoxa fdgida, Kunthia 

 montana. This last group of palmoe montance, which rises in the Andes 

 of Guanacas nearly to the limit of perpetual snow, was, I believe, 

 entirely unknown before our travels in America. (Nov. Gen. vol. i, 

 p. 317 ; Semanario de Santa Fe de Bogota, 1819, No. 21, p. 163.) 



f The Indian name of the tribe of Uaraus (Guaraunos of the 

 Spaniards) may be recognized in the Warawety (Ouarauety) of Raleigh, 

 one of the branches of the Tivitivas. See Discovery of Guiana, 1576, 

 p. 90, and the sketch of the habitations of the Guaraons, in Raleghi brevis 

 Descrip. Guiana, 1594, tab. 4. 



J This sect was founded by Simeon Sisanites, a native of Syria. He 

 passed thirty -seven years in mystic contemplation, on five pillars, the last 

 of which was thirty-six cubits high. The sancti columnares attempted 



