284 



professor at Seville, and then missionary in the 

 province of New Barcelona, published, in 1 683, 

 a grammar of the Cumanagoto, and some theo- 

 logical works in the same language. I have 

 not been able to learn, whether the Piritoos, 

 Cocheymas, Chacopatas, Tomuzas, and Topo- 

 cuares, now confounded in the same villages 

 with the Cumanagotoes, and speaking their 

 language, were originally tribes of the same 

 nation. The Piritoos, as we have elsewhere 

 observed, have taken their name from the ra- 

 vine Pirichucuar, where the small thorny palm- 

 tree*, called piritoo, grows in abundance ; the 

 wood of which, excessively hard, and therefore 

 little conbustible, serves to make pipes. On 

 this spot the village of the Conception of Piri- 

 too was founded in 1556, the chief place of the 

 Cumanagoto Missions, known by the name of 

 the Missiones de Piritu. 



6. The Caribbees (Carives). This is the name 

 which was given them by the first navigators, 

 and which is retained throughout all Spanish 

 America. The French and the Germans have 

 transformed it, I know not why, into Caraibes. 

 They call themselves Carina, Calina, and Cal- 

 linago. I traversed some Caribbean Missions 



* Caudice gracili aculeato, foliis pinnatis. Perhaps of 

 the genus aiphanes of Willdenouw. (See my Proleg. de 

 Distrib. geogr. Plant., 1817, p. 228.) 



