82 



ourang outang*, the gibbon, the jocko or chim- 

 panzee, and the pongo, pursued us during five 

 years from the northern to the southern hemis- 

 phere ; and we were every where blamed, in the 

 most cultivated class of society, for being the only 

 persons to doubt the existence of the great an- 

 thropomorphous monkey of America. We shall 

 first observe, that there are certain regions, 

 where this belief is particularly prevalent among 

 the people ; such are the banks of the Upper 

 Oroonoko-f-, the valley of Upar near the lake of 

 Maracaybo, the mountains of Santa Martha and 

 of Merida, the provinces of Quixos, and the 

 banks of the Amazon near Tomependa. In all 

 these places, so distant one from the other, it is 

 repeated, that the salvaje is easily recognized by 

 the traces of it's feet, the toes of which are 



* Simia satyrus. We must not believe, notwithstanding 

 the assertions of almost all zoological w riters, that the word 

 orang outang is applied exclusively in the Malay language to 

 the simia satyrus of Borneo. This expression, on the con- 

 trary, means any very large monkey, that resembles man in 

 figure. (Marsden, Hist, of Sumatra, 3d edit., p. 117). Mo- 

 dern zoologists have arbitrarily appropriated provincial 

 names to certain species ; and by continuing to prefer these 

 names, strangely disfigured in their orthography, to the latin 

 systematic names, the confusion of the nomenclature has 

 been increased. 



+ Near the Rio Paruasi (see vol. iv, p. 540) a moun- 

 tain bears the name of Achi-tipuiri, which means in Ta- 

 manack mountain of the man of the woods. 



