<;o; FUSION OF NAMES. 
377 
The Indians, I repeat, are excellent geographers; they 
outflank the enemy, notwithstanding the limits traced upon 
the maps, in spite of the foi-ts and the estacamsntos ; and 
when the missionaries see them arrive from such distances, 
and in diflerent seasons, they begin to frame hypotheses of 
supposed communications of rivers. Each party has an 
interest in concealing what it knows with certainty; and 
that love of the mysterious, so general among the ignorant, 
contributes to perpetuate the doubt. It may also be 
observed that the various Indian nations, who frequent 
this labyrinth of rivers, give them names entirely different ; 
and that these names are disguised and lengthened by 
terminations that signify ‘ water,’ ‘ great -water,’ and ‘ cur- 
rent.’ How often have I been perplexed by the necessity 
of settling the synonymes of rivers, when I have sent for 
the most intelligent natives, to interrogate them, through 
an interpreter, respecting the number of tributary streams, 
the sources of the rivers, and the portages. Three or four 
languages being spoken in the same mission, it is difficult 
to make the witnesses agree. Our maps are loaded with 
names arbitrarily shortened or perverted. To examine how 
far they may be accurate, we must be guided by the geo- 
graphical situation of the confluent rivers, I plight almost 
say by a certain etymological tact. The .Rio TJaupe, or 
Rapes of the Portuguese maps, is the Guapue ot the 
Spanish maps, and the Ueayari ot the natives. The Anava 
of the old geographers is the Anauahu of Arrowsmith, 
and the Uanauhau or G-uanauhu of the Indians. The 
desire of leaving no void in the maps, in order to give 
them an appearance of accuracy, has caused rivers to be 
created, to which names have been applied that have not 
been recognized as synonymous. It is only lately that 
travellers in America, in Persia, and in the Indies, have 
felt the importance of being correct in the denomination of 
places. When we read the travels of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
it is difficult indeed to recognise in the 1 lake of Mrecabo ’ 
tlie laguna of Maracaybo, aud in the ‘ Marquis Paraeo 
the name of Pizarro, the destroyer of the empire of the 
Incas. 
The great tributary streams of the Amazon are desig- 
nated bv the missionaries by different names in their upper 
