11 



para *, as we have mentioned above ; while the 

 name of the village is derived from that of 

 the nation of Atures, which is now believed to 

 be extinct. I find on the maps of the seven- 

 teenth century Island and Cataract of Athule ; 

 which is the word Atures written according to 

 the pronunciation of the Tamanacks, who con- 

 found, like so many other people, the consonants 

 I and r. This mountainous region was so little 

 known in Europe even in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, that d'Anville, in the first 

 edition of his South America, makes a branch 

 issue from the Oroonoko, near Salto de los Atu- 

 res, and fall into the Amazon, to which branch 

 he gives the name of Rio Negro. 



Ancient maps, as well as Father Gumilla's 



* I am ignorant of the etymology of this word, which I 

 believe means only a fall of water, Gili translates into May- 

 pure a small cascade (raudalito) by uccamatisi mapara canaca- 

 patirri (vol. 1, p. xxxix). Should we not spell this word 

 matpara ? mat being a radical of the Maypure tongue, and 

 meaning bad (Hervas, Saggio, n. 29). The radical par 

 (para) is found among American tribes more than five hun- 

 dred leagues distant from each other, the Caribs, Maypures, 

 Brazilians, and Peruvians, in the words sea } rain, water s lake m 

 We must not confound mapara with mapaja ; this last word 

 signifies, in Maypure and Tamanack, the papaw or melon - 

 tree, no doubt on account of the sweetness of it's fruit, for 

 mapa means in the Maypure, as well as in the Peruvian and 

 Omagua tongues, the honey of bees. The Tamanacks call a 

 cascade, or raudal, in general uatapurutpe ; the Maypures, 

 uca. 



