America -- Early accounts to 1600; El Dorado; Guiana -- Discovery and exploration
There is also another goodly river beyond Caroli which is called Arui,
which also runneth through the lake Cassipa, and falleth into Orenoque
farther west, making all that land between Caroli and Arui an island;
which is likewise a most beautiful country. Next unto Arui there are two
rivers Atoica and Caura, and on that branch which is called Caura are
a nation of people whose heads appear not above their shoulders; which
though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine own part I am
resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Aromaia and
Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they are reported
to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle
of their breasts, and that a long train of hair groweth backward between
their shoulders. The son of Topiawari, which I brought with me into
England, told me that they were the most mighty men of all the land, and
use bows, arrows, and clubs thrice as big as any of Guiana, or of the
Orenoqueponi; and that one of the Iwarawaqueri took a prisoner of them
the year before our arrival there, and brought him into the borders of
Aromaia, his father's country. And farther, when I seemed to doubt of
it, he told me that it was no wonder among them; but that they were as
great a nation and as common as any other in all the provinces, and had
of late years slain many hundreds of his father's people, and of other
nations their neighbours. But it was not my chance to hear of them till
I was come away; and if I had but spoken one word of it while I was
there I might have brought one of them with me to put the matter out of
doubt. Such a nation was written of by Mandeville, whose reports
were holden for fables many years; and yet since the East Indies were
discovered, we find his relations true of such things as heretofore were
held incredible (Mandeville, or the author who assumed this name, placed
his headless men in the East Indian Archipelago, the fable is borrowed
from older writers, Herodotus &c). Whether it be true or no, the matter
is not great, neither can there be any profit in the imagination; for
mine own part I saw them not, but I am resolved that so many people did
not all combine or forethink to make the report.
When I came to Cumana in the West Indies afterwards by chance I spake
with a Spaniard dwelling not far from thence, a man of great travel.
And after he knew that I had been in Guiana, and so far directly west
as Caroli, the first question he asked me was, whether I had seen any of
the Ewaipanoma, which are those without heads. Who being esteemed a most
honest man of his word, and in all things else, told me that he had
seen many of them; I may not name him, because it may be for his
disadvantage, but he is well known to Monsieur Moucheron's son of
London, and to Peter Moucheron, merchant, of the Flemish ship that was
there in trade; who also heard, what he avowed to be true, of those
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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