THE EARTH AND ITS INHABITANTS, 



AxMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE GUIANAS. 

 General Survey. 



UmNG the last three centuries the term Guiana, as a geographical 

 expression, has been diversely modiHed. When the first Spanish, 

 English, and Dutch navigators visittd the banks of the Orinoco 

 they found them occupied by the Guayano, Guayana, or Guaya- 

 naze Indians, whose name came to be applied in a vague way to 

 the whole region roamed by them south of the great river. This extension of its 

 meaning was all the more natural that the word was already current in various 

 forms, not only as a tribal designation, but also as the name of several rivers in 

 different parts of the Continent. 



Thus the Guaraunos (Warauns) of the Orinoco delta would appear to be simply 

 Guayanos; the Rucuyennes farther east also called themselves Wayana, and gave 

 the same name to a great tree, mythical protector of the tribe. Lastly the Upper 

 Rio Negro, in its higher reaches below the Andean foothills, I ears the name of 

 Guainia, a native term identical with Guiana, as is also Waini or Guainia, the 

 name of one of the coast streams between the Essequibo and the Orinoco delta. 



But the name Guiana, as first employed by Europeans, did not include the 

 Atlantic coastlands, which are at present more particularly designated by that name. 

 It was, in fact, restricted to the region now known as Venezuelan Guiana, and was 

 thus limited by the vast semi-circular bend of the Upper Orinoco. But in 

 geographical terminology it gradually acquired a wider application, being at first 

 extended to the Brazilian lands bounded southwards by the Rio Negro and the 



