THE OUABAONS. 
331 
which it was inhabited ? This we will not positively affirm ; 
for the Caribbees themselves give the name of Oaribana 
to a country which they occupied, and which extended from 
the Eio Sinu to the gulf oi Darien. This is a striking 
example of identity of name between an American nation 
and the territory it possessed. We may conceive, that in a 
state of society, where residence is not long fixed, such 
instances must be very rare. 
II. The Guaraons or Gu-ara-una , almost all free and in- 
dependent, are dispersed in the Delta of the Orinoco, with 
the variously ramified channels of which they alone arc well 
acquainted. The Caribbees call tlio Guaraons TJ-ara-u. 
They owe their independence to the nature of their coun- 
try; for the missionaries, in spite of their zeal, have not 
been tempted to follow them to the tree-tops. The Gua- 
raons, in order to raise their abodes above the surface of 
the waters at the period of the great inundations, support 
them on the hewn trunks of the mangrove-tree and of the 
Mauri tin. palm-tree.* They make bread of the medullary 
flour of this palm-tree, which is the sago of America. 
The flour hears the name of yurima : I have eaten it at 
the town of St. Thomas, in Guiana, and it was very 
agreeable to the taste, resembling rather the cassava-bread 
great river, of a shore, and of a rainy country, I think I recognise the 
radical par, signifying water, not only in the languages of these countries, 
hut also in those of nations very distant from one another on the eastern 
and western coasts of America. The sea, or great water, is in *he Carib- 
bean, May pure, and Brazilian languages, parana: in the Tamanac, 
paruva. In Upper Guiana also the Orinoco is called Parara. In the 
Peruvian, or Quichua, [ find ' rain, 1 para ; ‘ to rain,’ parani. Besides, 
tliere is a lake in Peru that has been very anciently called Park. (Garcia, 
Origen de los Indios, p. 292.) I hove entered into these minute details 
concerning the word Paria, because it, has recently been supposed that 
some connection might be traced between this word and the country o( 
the Hindoo caste called the Farias. 
* Their manners have been tire same from time immemorial. Car- 
dinal Bembo described them at the beginning of the 16th century, 
‘ quibnsdam in locis propter paludes incolte dornus in arboribus redid - 
cant.” (Hist. Venet., 1551.) Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1595, speaks of 
the Guaraons under the names of Araottes , Trivitivas , and Warawites. 
These were perhaps the names of some tribes, into which the great 
Guaraonese nation was divided. (Barrere, Essai sur l’Hist. Naturelle 
do la France Equinoctiale.) 
