8 
TEEE-INHABITING rNDIAKS. 
the ywuma bread is made ; and far from being a palm-tree 
of the shore, like the Chamaerops humilis, the common 
cocoa-tree, and the lodoicea of Commerson, is found as a 
palm-tree of the marshes as far as the sources of the 
Orinoco.* In the season of inundations these clumps of 
mauritia, with their leaves in the form of a fan, have the 
appearance of a forest rising from the bosom of the waters. 
The navigator, in proceeding along the ehannels of the 
delta of the Orinoco at night, sees with surprise the summit 
of the palm-trees illumined by large fires. These are the 
habitations of the Guaraons (Tivitivas and Waraweties of 
Ealeighf), which are suspended from the trunks of trees. 
These tribes hang up mats in the air, which they fill with 
earth, ^d kindle, on a layer of moist clay, the fire necessary 
for their household wants. They have ow'ed their liberty 
and their politicd independence for ages to the quaking and 
swampy soil, which they pass over in the time of drought, 
and on which they alone know how to walk in security to 
their solitude in the delta of the Orinoco ; to their abode 
on the trees, where religious enthusiasm will probably never 
lead any American stylites.% I have already mentioned in 
Indian Archipelago, vol. i, p. 387 and 393.) This produce is triple that 
of corn, and double that of potatoes in France. But the plantain pro- 
duces, on the same surface of land, still more alimentary substance than 
the sago-tree. 
* I dwell much on these divisions of the great and fine families of 
palms according to the distribution of the species : 1st, in dry places, or 
inland plains, Corypha tectorumj 2nd, on tho sea-coast, Cliarnterops 
humilis. Cocos nucifera, Corypha maritima, Lodoicea seychellarum, 
LahilL ; 3rd, in the fresh-water marshes, Sagus Rumphii, Mauritia 
flexuosa ; and 4th, in the alpine regions, between seven and fifteen 
hundred toises high, Ceroxylon andicola, Oreodoxa frigida, Kunthia 
montana. This last group of palma montana, which rises in the Andes 
of Guanacas nearly to the limit of perpetual snow, was, I believe, 
entirely unknown before our travels in America. {Nov. Gen. vol. i, 
p. 317 ; Semanario <ie Santa de Bogota, 1819, No. 21, p. 103.) 
t The Indian name of the tribe of Uaraus {Gnaraunos of the 
Spaniards) may be recognized in the Warawety {Ouaraneiy) of Raleigh, 
one of the branches of the Tivitivas. See Discovery of Guiana, 1576, 
p. 90, and the sketch of the habitations of the Guaraons, in Kaleghi brevis 
Descrip. Guiana. 1594, tab. 4. 
t This sect was founded by Simeon Sisanites, a native of Syria. He 
passed thirty -seven years in mystic contemplation, on five pillars, the last 
of which was thiftr-six cubits high- The sancti cotumnares attempted 
