80 EXTENT OF THE CAEIB TRIBE. 



inhabitants of the Caribbee Islands ; others have traced in it 

 some resemblance to the ancient idiom of Cuba, or to those 

 of the Arowaks, and the Apalachites in Florida: but these 

 hypotheses are all founded on a very imperiect knowledge of 

 the idioms which it has been attempted to compare one with 

 another. 



The Spanish writers of the sixteenth century inform ua 

 that the Carib nations then extended over eighteen or nine- 

 teen degrees ol latitude, from the Virgin Islands east of 

 Porto Rico, to the mouths of the Amazon. Another pro- 

 longation toward the west, along the coast-chain of Santa 

 Marta and Venezuela, appears less certain. Gromara, how- 

 ever, and the most ancient historians, give the name of 

 Caribana, not, as it has since been applied, to the country 

 between the sources oi the Orinoco and the mountains of 

 French Guiana,* but to the marshy plains between the 

 mouths oi the Bio Atrato and the Bio Sinu. I have visited 

 those coasts in going from the Havannah to Porto Bello ; 

 and I there learned, that the cape which bounds the gulf of 

 Darien or Uraba on the east, still bears the name of Punta 

 Caribana. An opinion heretofore prevailed pretty generally, 

 that the Caribs of the West India Islands derived their 

 origin, and even their name, from these warlike people of 

 Darien. "From the eastern shore springs Cape Uraba, 

 which the natives call Caribana, whence the Caribs of the 

 island are said to have received their present name."f Thus 

 Anghiera expresses himself in his " Oceanica." He 

 had been told by a nephew of Amerigo Vespucci, that 

 thence, as far as the snowy mountains of St. Marta, all the 

 natives were "egenere Caribium, vel Canibalium." I do 

 not deny that Caribs may have had a settlement near the 

 gulf of Darien, and that they may have been driven thither 



* This name is found in the map of Hondius, of 1599, which accom- 

 panies the Latin edition of the narrative of Raleigh's voyage. In the 

 Dutch edition (Nieuwe Caerte van het goudrycke landt Guiana), the 

 Llanos of Caracas, between the mountains of Merida and the Rio Pao, 

 bear the name of Caribana. We may remark here, what we observe so 

 often in the history of geography, that the same denomination has spread 

 by degrees from west to east. 



f* " Inde Vrabam ab oriental! prehendit ora, quam appellant indigenes 

 Caribana, unde Curibes insulares originem habere nomenque retiner* 

 dicuntur." 



