Chapter 2: 18 (2)

We passed the night as usual, in the open air, though in a plantation, the proprietor of which employed himself in hunting tigers. He wore scarcely any clothing, and was of a dark brown complexion like a Zambo. This did not prevent his classing himself amongst the Whites. He called his wife and his daughter, who were as naked as himself, Dona Isabella and Dona Manuela. Without having ever quitted the banks of the Apure, he took a lively interest in the news of Madrid--enquiring eagerly respecting those never-ending wars, and everything down yonder (todas las cosas de alla). He knew, he said, that the king was soon to come and visit the grandees of the country of Caracas, but he added with some pleasantry, as the people of the court can eat only wheaten bread, they will never pass beyond the town of Victoria, and we shall not see them here. I had brought with me a chiguire, which I had intended to have roasted; but our host assured us, that such Indian game was not food fit for nos otros caballeros blancos, (white gentlemen like ourselves and him). Accordingly he offered us some venison, which he had killed the day before with an arrow, for he had neither powder nor fire-arms.

We supposed that a small wood of plantain-trees concealed from us the hut of the farm; but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, lightnings flashed over the horizon, thunder rolled, and we were wet to the skin. During this storm a whimsical incident served to amuse us for a moment. Dona Isabella's cat had perched upon the tamarind-tree, at the foot of which we lay. It fell into the hammock of one of our companions, who, being hurt by the claws of the cat, and suddenly aroused from a profound sleep, imagined he was attacked by some wild beast of the forest. We ran to him on hearing his cries, and had some trouble to convince him of his error. While it rained in torrents on our hammocks and on our instruments which we had brought ashore, Don Ignacio congratulated us on our good fortune in not sleeping on the strand, but finding ourselves in his domain, among whites and persons of respectability (entre gente blanca y de trato). Wet as we were, we could not easily persuade ourselves of the advantages of our situation, and we listened with some impatience to the long narrative our host gave us of his pretended expedition to the Rio Meta, of the valour he had displayed in a sanguinary combat with the Guahibo Indians, and "the services that he had rendered to God and his king, in carrying away Indian children (los Indiecitos) from their parents, to distribute them in the Missions." We were struck with the singularity of finding in that vast solitude a man believing himself to be of European race and knowing no other shelter than the shade of a tree, and yet having all the vain pretensions, hereditary prejudices, and errors of long-standing civilization!

On the 1st of April, at sunrise, we quitted Senor Don Ignacio and Senora Dona Isabella his wife. The weather was cooler, for the thermometer (which generally kept up in the daytime to 30 or 35 degrees) had sunk to 24 degrees. The temperature of the river was little changed: it continued constantly at 26 or 27 degrees. The current carried with it an enormous number of trunks of trees. It might be imagined that on ground entirely smooth, and where the eye cannot distinguish the least hill, the river would have formed by the force of its current a channel in a straight line; but a glance at the map, which I traced by the compass, will prove the contrary. The two banks, worn by the waters, do not furnish an equal resistance; and almost imperceptible inequalities of the level suffice to produce great sinuosities. Yet below the Joval, where the bed of the river enlarges a little, it forms a channel that appears perfectly straight, and is shaded on each side by very tall trees. This part of the river is called Cano Rico. I found it to be one hundred and thirty-six toises broad. We passed a low island, inhabited by thousands of flamingos, rose-coloured spoonbills, herons, and moorhens, which displayed plumage of the most various colours. These birds were so close together that they seemed to be unable to stir. The island they frequent is called Isla de Aves, or Bird Island. Lower down we passed the point where the Rio Arichuna, an arm of the Apure, branches off to the Cabulare, carrying away a considerable body of its waters. We stopped, on the right bank, at a little Indian mission, inhabited by the tribe of the Guamos, called the village of Santa Barbara de Arichuna.

The Guamos* are a race of Indians very difficult to fix on a settled spot. (* Father Gili observes that their Indian name is Uamu and Pau, and that they originally dwelt on the Upper Apure.) They have great similarity of manners with the Achaguas, the Guajibos,* (* Their Indian name is Guahiva.) and the Ottomacs, partaking their disregard of cleanliness, their spirit of vengeance, and their taste for wandering; but their language differs essentially. The greater part of these four tribes live by fishing and hunting, in plains often inundated, situated between the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare. The nature of these regions seems to invite the natives to a wandering life. On entering the mountains of the Cataracts of the Orinoco, we shall soon find, among the Piraoas, the Macos, and the Maquiritaras, milder manners, a love of agriculture, and great cleanliness in the interior of their huts. On mountain ridges, in the midst of impenetrable forests, man is compelled to fix himself; and cultivate a small spot of land. This cultivation requires little care; while, in a country where there are no other roads than rivers, the life of the hunter is laborious and difficult. The Guamos of the mission of Santa Barbara could not furnish us with the provision we wanted. They cultivate only a little cassava. They appeared hospitable; and when we entered their huts, they offered us dried fish, and water cooled in porous vessels.

Beyond the Vuelta del Cochino Roto, in a spot where the river has scooped itself a new bed, we passed the night on a bare and very extensive strand. The forest being impenetrable, we had the greatest difficulty to find dry wood to light fires, near which the Indians believe themselves in safety from the nocturnal attacks of the tiger. Our own experience seems to bear testimony in favour of this opinion; but Azara asserts that, in his time, a tiger in Paraguay carried off a man who was seated near a fire lighted in the savannah.

The night was calm and serene, and there was a beautiful moonlight. The crocodiles, stretched along the shore, placed themselves in such a manner as to be able to see the fire. We thought we observed that its blaze attracted them, as it attracts fishes, crayfish, and other inhabitants of the water. The Indians showed us the tracks of three tigers in the sand, two of which were very young. A female had no doubt conducted her little ones to drink at the river. Finding no tree on the strand, we stuck our oars in the ground, and to these we fastened our hammocks. Everything passed tranquilly till eleven at night; and then a noise so terrific arose in the neighbouring forest, that it was almost impossible to close our eyes. Amid the cries of so many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated such only as were at intervals heard separately. These were the little soft cries of the sapajous, the moans of the alouate apes, the howlings of the jaguar and couguar, the peccary, and the sloth, and the cries of the curassao, the parraka, and other gallinaceous birds. When the jaguars approached the skirt of the forest, our dog, which till then had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for shelter beneath our hammocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of the tiger came from the tops of the trees; and then it was followed by the sharp and long whistling of the monkeys, which appeared to flee from the danger that threatened them. We heard the same noises repeated, during the course of whole months, whenever the forest approached the bed of the river. The security evinced by the Indians inspires confidence in the minds of travellers, who readily persuade themselves that the tigers are afraid of fire, and that they do not attack a man lying in his hammock. These attacks are in fact extremely rare; and, during a long abode in South America, I remember only one example, of a llanero, who was found mutilated in his hammock opposite the island of Achaguas.

When the natives are interrogated on the causes of the tremendous noise made by the beasts of the forest at certain hours of the night, the answer is, "They are keeping the feast of the full moon."

I believe this agitation is most frequently the effect of some conflict that has arisen in the depths of the forest. The jaguars, for instance, pursue the peccaries and the tapirs, which, having no defence but in their numbers, flee in close troops, and break down the bushes they find in their way. Terrified at this struggle, the timid and mistrustful monkeys answer, from the tops of the trees, the cries of the large animals. They awaken the birds that live in society, and by degrees the whole assembly is in commotion. It is not always in a fine moonlight, but more particularly at the time of a storm and violent showers, that this tumult takes place among the wild beasts. "May Heaven grant them a quiet night and repose, and us also!" said the monk who accompanied us to the Rio Negro, when, sinking with fatigue, he assisted in arranging our accommodations for the night. It was indeed strange, to find no silence in the solitude of woods. In the inns of Spain we dread the sound of guitars from the next apartment; on the Orinoco, where the traveller's resting-place is the open beach, or beneath the shelter of a solitary tree, his slumbers are disturbed by a serenade from the forest.

We set sail before sunrise, on the 2nd of April. The morning was beautiful and cool, according to the feelings of those who are accustomed to the heat of these climates. The thermometer rose only to 28 degrees in the air, but the dry and white sand of the beach, notwithstanding its radiation towards a cloudless sky, retained a temperature of 36 degrees. The porpoises (toninas) ploughed the river in long files. The shore was covered with fishing-birds. Some of these perched on the floating wood as it passed down the river, and surprised the fish that preferred the middle of the stream. Our canoe was aground several times during the morning. These shocks are sufficiently violent to split a light bark. We struck on the points of several large trees, which remain for years in an oblique position, sunk in the mud. These trees descend from Sarare, at the period of great inundations, and they so fill the bed of the river, that canoes in going up find it difficult sometimes to make their way over the shoals, or wherever there are eddies. We reached a spot near the island of Carizales, where we saw trunks of the locust-tree, of an enormous size, above the surface of the water. They were covered with a species of plotus, nearly resembling the anhinga, or white bellied darter. These birds perch in files, like pheasants and parrakas, and they remain for hours entirely motionless, with their beaks raised toward the sky.

Below the island of Carizales we observed a diminution of the waters of the river, at which we were the more surprised, as, after the bifurcation at la Boca de Arichuna, there is no branch, no natural drain, which takes away water from the Apure. The loss is solely the effect of evaporation, and of filtration on a sandy and wet shore. Some idea of the magnitude of these effects may be formed, from the fact that we found the heat of the dry sands, at different hours of the day, from 36 to 52 degrees, and that of sands covered with three or four inches of water 32 degrees. The beds of rivers are heated as far as the depth to which the solar rays can penetrate without undergoing too great an extinction in their passage through the superincumbent strata of water. Besides, filtration extends in a lateral direction far beyond the bed of the river. The shore, which appears dry to us, imbibes water as far up as to the level of the surface of the river. We saw water gush out at the distance of fifty toises from the shore, every time that the Indians struck their oars into the ground. Now these sands, wet below, but dry above, and exposed to the solar rays, act like sponges, and lose the infiltrated water every instant by evaporation. The vapour that is emitted, traverses the upper stratum of sand strongly heated, and becomes sensible to the eye when the air cools towards evening. As the beach dries, it draws from the river new portions of water; and it may be easily conceived that this continual alternation of vaporization and lateral absorption must cause an immense loss, difficult to submit to exact calculation. The increase of these losses would be in proportion to the length of the course of the rivers, if from their source to their mouth they were equally surrounded by a flat shore; but these shores being formed by deposits from the water, and the water having less velocity in proportion as it is more remote from its source, throwing down more sediment in the lower than in the upper part of its course, many rivers in hot climates undergo a diminution in the quantity of their water, as they approach their outlets. Mr. Barrow observed these curious effects of sands in the southern part of Africa, on the banks of the Orange River. They have also become the subject of a very important discussion, in the various hypotheses that have been formed respecting the course of the Niger.* (* Geographers supposed, for a long period, that the Niger was entirely absorbed by the sands, and evaporated by the heat of the tropical sun, as no embouchure could be found on the western coast of Africa to meet the requirements of so enormous a river. It was discovered, however, by the Landers, in 1830, that it does really flow into the Atlantic; yet the cause mentioned above is so powerful, that of all the numerous branches into which it separates at its mouth, only one (the Nun River) is navigable even for light ships, and for half the year even those are unable to enter.)

Near the Vuelta de Basilio, where we landed to collect plants, we saw on the top of a tree two beautiful little monkeys, black as jet, of the size of the sai, with prehensile tails. Their physiognomy and their movements sufficiently showed that they were neither the quato (Simia beelzebub) nor the chamek, nor any of the Ateles. Our Indians themselves had never seen any that resembled them. Monkeys, especially those living in troops, make long emigrations at certain periods, and consequently it happens that at the beginning of the rainy seasons the natives discover round their huts different kinds which they have not before observed. On this same bank our guides showed us a nest of young iguanas only four inches long. It was difficult to distinguish them from common lizards. There was no distinguishing mark yet formed but the dewlap below the throat. The dorsal spines, the large erect scales, all those appendages that render the iguana so remarkable when it attains its full growth, were scarcely traceable.

The flesh of this animal of the saurian family appeared to us to have an agreeable taste in every country where the climate is very dry; we even found it so at periods when we were not in want of other food. It is extremely white, and next to the flesh of the armadillo, one of the best kinds of food to be found in the huts of the natives.

It rained toward evening, and before the rain fell, swallows, exactly resembling our own, skimmed over the surface of the water. We saw also a flock of paroquets pursued by little goshawks without crests. The piercing cries of these paroquets contrasted singularly with the whistling of the birds of prey. We passed the night in the open air, upon the beach, near the island of Carizales. There were several Indian huts in the neighbourhood, surrounded with plantations. Our pilot assured us beforehand that we should not hear the cries of the jaguar, which, when not extremely pressed by hunger, withdraws from places where he does not reign unmolested. "Men put him out of humour" (los hombres lo enfadan), say the people in the Missions. A pleasant and simple expression, that marks a well-observed fact.

Since our departure from San Fernando we had not met a single boat on this fine river. Everything denoted the most profound solitude. On the morning of the 3rd of April our Indians caught with a hook the fish known in the country by the name of caribe,* (* Caribe in the Spanish language signifies cannibal.) or caribito, because no other fish has such a thirst for blood. It attacks bathers and swimmers, from whom it often bites away considerable pieces of flesh. The Indians dread extremely these caribes; and several of them showed us the scars of deep wounds in the calf of the leg and in the thigh, made by these little animals. They swim at the bottom of rivers; but if a few drops of blood be shed on the water, they rise by thousands to the surface, so that if a person be only slightly bitten, it is difficult for him to get out of the water without receiving a severer wound. When we reflect on the numbers of these fish, the largest and most voracious of which are only four or five inches long, on the triangular form of their sharp and cutting teeth, and on the amplitude of their retractile mouths, we need not be surprised at the fear which the caribe excites in the inhabitants of the banks of the Apure and the Orinoco. In places where the river was very limpid, where not a fish appeared, we threw into the water little morsels of raw flesh, and in a few minutes a perfect cloud of caribes had come to dispute their prey. The belly of this fish has a cutting edge, indented like a saw, a characteristic which may be also traced in the serra-salmes, the myletes, and the pristigastres. The presence of a second adipous dorsal fin, and the form of the teeth, covered by lips distant from each other, and largest in the lower jaw, place the caribe among the serra-salmes. Its mouth is much wider than that of the myletes of Cuvier. Its body, toward the back, is ash-coloured with a tint of green, but the belly, the gill-covers, and the pectoral, anal, and ventral fins, are of a fine orange hue. Three species are known in the Orinoco, and are distinguished by their size. The intermediate appears to be identical with the medium species of the piraya, or piranha, of Marcgrav.* (* Salmo rhombeus, Linn.) The caribito has a very agreeable flavour. As no one dares to bathe where it is found, it may be considered as one of the greatest scourges of those climates, in which the sting of the mosquitos and the general irritation of the skin render the use of baths so necessary.

We stopped at noon in a desert spot called Algodonal. I left my companions while they drew the boat ashore and were occupied in preparing our dinner. I went along the beach to get a near view of a group of crocodiles sleeping in the sun, and lying in such a manner as to have their tails, which were furnished with broad plates, resting on one another. Some little herons,* white as snow, walked along their backs, and even upon their heads, as if passing over trunks of trees. (* Garzon chico. It is believed, in Upper Egypt, that herons have an affection for crocodiles, because they take advantage in fishing of the terror that monstrous animal causes among the fishes, which he drives from the bottom to the surface of the water; but on the banks of the Nile, the heron keeps prudently at some distance from the crocodile.) The crocodiles were of a greenish grey, half covered with dried mud; from their colour and immobility they might have been taken for statues of bronze. This excursion had nearly proved fatal to me. I had kept my eyes constantly turned towards the river; but, whilst picking up some spangles of mica agglomerated together in the sand, I discovered the recent footsteps of a tiger, easily distinguishable from their form and size. The animal had gone towards the forest, and turning my eyes on that side, I found myself within eighty paces of a jaguar that was lying under the thick foliage of a ceiba. No tiger had ever appeared to me so large.

There are accidents in life against which we may seek in vain to fortify our reason. I was extremely alarmed, yet sufficiently master of myself and of my motions to enable me to follow the advice which the Indians had so often given us as to how we ought to act in such cases. I continued to walk on without running, avoided moving my arms, and I thought I observed that the jaguar's attention was fixed on a herd of capybaras which was crossing the river. I then began to return, making a large circuit toward the edge of the water. As the distance increased, I thought I might accelerate my pace. How often was I tempted to look back in order to assure myself that I was not pursued! Happily I yielded very tardily to this desire. The jaguar had remained motionless. These enormous cats with spotted robes are so well fed in countries abounding in capybaras, pecaries, and deer, that they rarely attack men. I arrived at the boat out of breath, and related my adventure to the Indians. They appeared very little interested by my story; yet, after having loaded our guns, they accompanied us to the ceiba beneath which the jaguar had lain. He was there no longer, and it would have been imprudent to have pursued him into the forest, where we must have dispersed, or advanced in single file, amidst the intertwining lianas.

In the evening we passed the mouth of the Cano del Manati, thus named on account of the immense quantity of manatees caught there every year. This herbivorous animal of the cetaceous family, is called by the Indians apcia and avia,* and it attains here generally ten or twelve feet in length. (* The first of these words belongs to the Tamanac language, and the second to the Ottomac. Father Gili proves, in opposition to Oviedo, that manati (fish with hands) is not Spanish, but belongs to the languages of Hayti (St. Domingo) and the Maypures. I believe also that, according to the genius of the Spanish tongue, the animal would have been called manudo or manon, but not manati.) It usually weighs from five hundred to eight hundred pounds, but it is asserted that one has been taken of eight thousand pounds weight. The manatee abounds in the Orinoco below the cataracts, in the Rio Meta, and in the Apure, between the two islands of Carizales and Conserva. We found no vestiges of nails on the external surface or the edges of the fins, which are quite smooth; but little rudiments of nails appear at the third phalanx, when the skin of the fins is taken off. We dissected one of these animals, which was nine feet long, at Carichana, a Mission of the Orinoco. The upper lip was four inches longer than the lower one. It was covered with a very fine skin, and served as a proboscis. The inside of the mouth, which has a sensible warmth in an animal newly killed, presented a very singular conformation. The tongue was almost motionless; but in front of the tongue there was a fleshy excrescence in each jaw, and a cavity lined with a very hard skin, into which the excrescence fitted. The manatee eats such quantities of grass, that we have found its stomach, which is divided into several cavities, and its intestines, (one hundred and eight feet long,) filled with it. On opening the animal at the back, we were struck with the magnitude, form, and situation of its lungs. They have very large cells, and resemble immense swimming-bladders. They are three feet long. Filled with air, they have a bulk of more than a thousand cubic inches. I was surprised to see that, possessing such considerable receptacles for air, the manatee comes so often to the surface of the water to breathe. Its flesh is very savoury, though, from what prejudice I know not, it is considered unwholesome and apt to produce fever. It appeared to me to resemble pork rather than beef. It is most esteemed by the Guamos and the Ottomacs; and these two nations are particularly expert in catching the manatee. Its flesh, when salted and dried in the sun, can be preserved a whole year; and, as the clergy regard this mammiferous animal as a fish, it is much sought during Lent. The vital principal is singularly strong in the manatee; it is tied after being harpooned, but is not killed till it has been taken into the canoe. This is effected, when the animal is very large, in the middle of the river, by filling the canoe two-thirds with water, sliding it under the animal, and then baling out the water by means of a calabash. This fishery is most easy after great inundations, when the manatee has passed from the great rivers into the lakes and surrounding marshes, and the waters diminish rapidly. At the period when the Jesuits governed the Missions of the Lower Orinoco, they assembled every year at Cabruta, below the mouth of the Apure, to have a grand fishing for manatees, with the Indians of their Missions, at the foot of the mountain now called El Capuchino. The fat of the animal, known by the name of manatee-butter (manteca de manati,) is used for lamps in the churches; and is also employed in preparing food. It has not the fetid smell of whale-oil, or that of the other cetaceous animals which spout water. The hide of the manati, which is more than an inch and a half thick, is cut into slips, and serves, like thongs of ox-leather, to supply the place of cordage in the Llanos. When immersed in water, it has the defect of undergoing a slight degree of putrefaction. Whips are made of it in the Spanish colonies. Hence the words latigo and manati are synonymous. These whips of manatee-leather are a cruel instrument of punishment for the unhappy slaves, and even for the Indians of the Missions, though, according to the laws, the latter ought to be treated like freemen.

We passed the night opposite the island of Conserva. In skirting the forest we were surprised by the sight of an enormous trunk of a tree seventy feet high, and thickly set with branching thorns. It is called by the natives barba de tigre. It was perhaps a tree of the berberideous family.* (* We found, on the banks of the Apure, Ammania apurensis, Cordia cordifolia, C. grandiflora, Mollugo sperguloides, Myosotis lithospermoides, Spermacocce diffusa, Coronilla occidentalis, Bignonia apurensis, Pisonia pubescens, Ruellia viscosa, some new species of Jussieua, and a new genus of the composite family, approximating to Rolandra, the Trichospira menthoides of M. Kunth.) The Indians had kindled fires at the edge of the water. We again perceived that their light attracted the crocodiles, and even the porpoises (toninas), the noise of which interrupted our sleep, till the fire was extinguished. A female jaguar approached our station whilst taking her young one to drink at the river. The Indians succeeded in chasing her away, but we heard for a long time the cries of the little jaguar, which mewed like a young cat. Soon after, our great dog was bitten, or, as the Indians say, stung, at the point of the nose, by some enormous bats that hovered around our hammocks. These bats had long tails, like the Molosses: I believe, however, that they were Phyllostomes, the tongue of which, furnished with papillae, is an organ of suction, and is capable of being considerably elongated. The dog's wound was very small and round; and though he uttered a plaintive cry when he felt himself bitten, it was not from pain, but because he was frightened at the sight of the bats, which came out from beneath our hammocks. These accidents are much more rare than is believed even in the country itself. In the course of several years, notwithstanding we slept so often in the open air, in climates where vampire-bats,* (* Verspertilio spectrum.) and other analogous species are so common, we were never wounded. Besides, the puncture is no-way dangerous, and in general causes so little pain, that it often does not awaken the person till after the bat has withdrawn.

The 4th of April was the last day we passed on the Rio Apure. The vegetation of its banks became more and more uniform. During several days, and particularly since we had left the Mission of Arichuna, we had suffered cruelly from the stings of insects, which covered our faces and hands. They were not mosquitos, which have the appearance of little flies, or of the genus Simulium, but zancudos, which are really gnats, though very different from our European species.* (* M. Latreille has discovered that the mosquitos of South Carolina are of the genus Simulium (Atractocera meigen.) These insects appear only after sunset. Their proboscis is so long that, when they fix on the lower surface of a hammock, they pierce through it and the thickest garments with their sting.

We had intended to pass the night at the Vuelta del Palmito, but the number of jaguars at that part of the Apure is so great, that our Indians found two hidden behind the trunk of a locust-tree, at the moment when they were going to sling our hammocks. We were advised to re-embark, and take our station in the island of Apurito, near its junction with the Orinoco. That portion of the island belongs to the province of Caracas, while the right banks of the Apure and the Orinoco form a part, the one of the province of Varinas, the other of Spanish Guiana. We found no trees to which we could suspend our hammocks, and were obliged to sleep on ox-hides spread on the ground. The boats were too narrow and too full of zancudos to permit us to pass the night in them.

In the place where we had landed our instruments, the banks being steep, we saw new proofs of the indolence of the gallinaceous birds of the tropics. The curassaos and cashew-birds* have the habit of going down several times a day to the river to allay their thirst. (* The latter (Crax pauxi) is less common than the former.) They drink a great deal, and at short intervals. A vast number of these birds had joined, near our station, a flock of parraka pheasants. They had great difficulty in climbing up the steep banks; they attempted it several times without using their wings. We drove them before us, as if we had been driving sheep. The zamuro vultures raise themselves from the ground with great reluctance.

We were singularly struck at the small quantity of water which the Rio Apure furnishes at this season to the Orinoco. The Apure, which, according to my measurements, was still one hundred and thirty-six toises broad at the Cano Rico, was only sixty or eighty at its mouth.* (* Not quite so broad as the Seine at the Pont Royal, opposite the palace of the Tuileries, and a little more than half the width of the Thames at Westminster Bridge.) Its depth here was only three or four toises. It loses, no doubt, a part of its waters by the Rio Arichuna and the Cano del Manati, two branches of the Apure that flow into the Payara and the Guarico; but its greatest loss appears to be caused by filtrations on the beach, of which we have before spoken. The velocity of the Apure near its mouth was only 3.2 feet per second; so that I could easily have calculated the whole quantity of the water if I had taken, by a series of proximate soundings, the whole dimensions of the transverse section.

We touched several times on shoals before we entered the Orinoco. The ground gained from the water is immense towards the confluence of the two rivers. We were obliged to be towed along by the bank. What a contrast between this state of the river immediately before the entrance of the rainy season, when all the effects of dryness of the air and of evaporation have attained their maximum, and that autumnal state when the Apure, like an arm of the sea, covers the savannahs as far as the eye can reach! We discerned towards the south the lonely hills of Coruato; while to the east the granite rocks of Curiquima, the Sugar Loaf of Caycara, and the mountains of the Tyrant* (Cerros del Tirano) began to rise on the horizon. (* This name alludes, no doubt, to the expedition of Antonio Sedeno. The port of Caycara, opposite Cabruta, still bears the name of that Conquistador.) It was not without emotion that we beheld for the first time, after long expectation, the waters of the Orinoco, at a point so distant from the coast.