143 



places ; others love the water, as the pythons, or 

 culebras de agua. 



Advancing toward the west, we find the 

 paps, or islets, in the deserted branch of the 

 Oroonoko, crowned with the same palm-trees, 

 that rise on the rocks of the cataracts. One of 

 these paps, called Keri, is celebrated in the 

 country on account of a white spot, that shines 

 from afar, in which the natives profess to see the 

 image of the full Moon. I could not climb this 

 steep rock, but I believe the white spot to be a 

 large nodule of quartz, formed by the union of 

 several of those veins, which are so common in 

 granites passing into gneiss. Opposite Keri, or 

 the rock of the Moon, on the twin mountain 

 Ouivitari, which is an islet in the midst of the 

 cataracts, the Indians point out with mysterious 

 fondness a similar white spot. It has the form 

 of a disk ; and they say, this is the image of the 

 Sun, camosi. Perhaps the geographical situa- 

 tion of these two objects has contributed to their 

 having received these names. Keri is on the 

 side of the setting, camosi on that of the rising 

 Sun. Languages being the most ancient histo- 

 rical monuments of nations, some distinguished 

 learned men have been singularly struck by the 

 analogy the American word camosi bears to ca- 

 mosch, which seems to have signified originally 

 the Sun, in one of the Semitic dialects. This 

 analogy has given rise to hypotheses, which 



