The small coast tribe or nation of the Guaranis, (called in British Guiana the Warraws or Guaranos, and by the Caribs U-ara-u), inhabit not only the marshy Delta and river network of the Orinoco, and particularly the banks of the Manamo Grande and the Caño Macareo, but also extend, with little variation in their modes of life, along the sea coast between the mouths of the Essequibo and the Boca de Navios of the Orinoco. (Compare my Relation historique, T. i. p. 492, T. ii. p. 653 and 703, with Richard Schomburgk’s “Reisen in Britisch Guiana,” Th. i. 1847, S. 62, 120, 173, and 194). According to the testimony of the last-named excellent explorer and observer, there are still 1700 Warraus or Guaranis living in the district of Cumaca, and along the banks of the Barima river, which empties itself into the gulf of the Boca de Navios. The manners and customs of the tribes living in the Delta of the Orinoco were already known to the great historical writer Cardinal Bembo, the contemporary of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Alonzo de Hojeda. He says, “quibusdam in locis propter paludes incolæ domus in arboribus ædificant” (Historiæ Venetæ, 1551, p. 88). It is more probable that Bembo is alluding to the Guaranis at the mouth of the Orinoco, than to the natives near the mouth of the Gulph of Macaraibo, where Alonzo de Hojeda, in August 1499, when he was accompanied by Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa, also found a population having their residence “fondata sopra l’ acqua come Venezia” (Riccardi’s Text in my Examen crit. t. iv. p. 496). In Vespucci’s account of his voyage (in which we find the first indication of the etymology of the term Province of Venezuela, Little Venice, for Province of Caraccas), he only speaks of houses raised upon foundation pillars, not of habitations in the trees.