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The Indians made incisions with their large knives in the trunks of the trees, and fixed our attention on those beautiful red and gold-coloured woods, which will one day be sought for by our turners and cabinet-makers. Father Caulin Descrip. The Indians recognize the species by the smell, and more particularly by chewing the woody fibres.
What is that other cinnamon tree which the Indians call tuorco, common in the mountains of Tocayo, and at the sources of the Rio Uchere, the bark of which is mixed with chocolate? Father Caulin gives the name of curucay to the Copaifera officinalis, which yields the Balsam of Capivi. Hist. They were described to us as small wells or funnels, hollowed out by nature in a marshy soil.
Thus the Rio Turiva, near the Encaramada, has five names in the different parts of its course. Gili volume 1 pages 22 and 364. Caulin page 75. In most of the names of the rivers of America we recognize the root water. Thus yacu in the Peruvian, and veni in the Maypure tongues, signify water and river.
I shall continue, with Father Caulin and the Spanish geographers, to call the river Esmeralda the Orinoco, or Upper Orinoco; but I must observe that if the Orinoco, from San Fernando de Atabapo as far as the delta which it forms opposite the island of Trinidad, were regarded as the continuance of the Rio Guaviare, and if that part of the Upper Orinoco between the Esmeralda and the mission of San Fernando were considered a tributary stream, the Orinoco would preserve, from the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos and the eastern declivity of the Andes to its mouth, a more uniform and natural direction, that from south-west to north-east.
I had an opportunity of seeing some of these Indians at Esmeralda, and can affirm that the short stature of the Guaicas, and the fair complexion of the Guaharibos, whom Father Caulin calls Guaribos blancos, have been alike exaggerated. The Indians of the lowest stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares and the Poignaves.
This would prove that these nations learned to know the precious metals among the foreign products which came to them from the Cordilleras,* or from the plains at the eastern back of the Andes. This circumstance has had the greatest influence on the state of geography in those countries. Fray Pedro Simon pages 597 and 608. Harris Coll. volume 2 page 212. Laet page 652. Caulin page 175.
None of the missionaries who have described the Orinoco before me, neither Father Gumilla, Gili, nor Caulin, had passed the Raudal of Maypures.
The tidings of this extraordinary passage spread with such rapidity that La Condamine was able to announce it* at a public sitting of the Academy, seven months after the return of Father Roman to Pararuma. Voyage a l'Amazone page 120. Mem. de l'Acad. 1745 page 450. Caulin page 79.
The study of the work of Father Caulin, who was the historiographer of the expedition of Solano, and who states very clearly, from the testimony of the Indians, how the name of the river Parima gave rise to the fable of El Dorado, and of an inland sea, has been neglected.
Some good observations of Fomalhaut and of Deneb have given 10 degrees 10 minutes 14 seconds as the latitude of Caripe; which proves that the position indicated in the maps of Caulin is 18 minutes wrong, and in that of Arrowsmith 14 minutes.
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