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We must not confound mapara with mapaja; this last word signifies, in Maypure and Tamanac, the papaw or melon-tree, no doubt on account of the sweetness of its fruit, for mapa means in the Maypure, as well as in the Peruvian and Omagua tongues, the honey of bees.
The expedition of Piedro de Ursua and Lope de Aguirre in search of El Dorado and Omagua; "History of the Conquest of Mexico," by Don Antonio de Solis; Piedrolieta's "General History of the Conquest of the New Kingdom of Grenada," and others; and before we parted I had resolved that, so soon as the war was over, I would make a voyage to the land of the setting sun, and see for myself the wonders of which I had heard.
It seems surprising that a vegetable production so universally spread should have different names among neighbouring people. The following are the synonyms in thirteen languages. North America. Aztec or Mexican; yetl: Algonkin; sema: Huron; oyngoua. South America. Peruvian or Quichua; sayri: Chiquito; pais. Omagua; petema. Tamanac; cavas. Maypure; jema.
In Terra Firma and on the Orinoco, the Caribbean and the Tamanac alone would now be spoken; and in the south and south-west, the Quichua, the Guarano, the Omagua, and the Araucan.
It is remarkable, however, that the names of the sun and moon are sometimes found to be identical in languages, the grammatical construction of which is entirely different; I may cite as examples the Guarany and the Omagua,* languages of nations formerly very powerful. I shall give, farther on, these same words in the principal languages of the old and new worlds.
We have already seen that American nations, speaking languages of a very different structure, call the sun by the same name; that the moon is sometimes called sleeping sun, sun of night, light of night; and that sometimes the two orbs have the same denomination. These examples are taken from the Guarany, the Omagua, Shawanese, Miami, Maco, and Ojibbeway idioms.
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