BOOK VII. CHAPTER XIX. Junction of the Apure and the Oroonoko.-Mountains of Encaramada.-Uruana.-Baraguan. -Carichana.-Mouth of the Meta.-Island of Panumana. On leaving the Rio Apure, we found ourselves in a country of a totally different aspect. An immense plain of water stretched before us like a lake, as far as we could see. White-topped waves rose to the height of several feet, from the conflict of the breeze and the current. The air resounded no longer with the piercing cries of the herons, the flamingoes, and the spoonbills, crossing in long files from one shore to the other. Our eyes sought in vain those water fowls, the inventive snares of which vary in each tribe. All nature appears less animated. Scarcely could we discover in the hollows of the waves a few large crocodiles, cutting obliquely, by the help of their long tails, the surface of the agitated waters. The horizon was bounded by a zone of forests, but these forests no where reached so far as the bed of the river. A vast beach constantly parched by the heat of the Sun, desert and bare as the shores of the sea, resembled at a distance, from the effect of the mirage, pools of stagnant water. These sandy shores, far from fixing the limits of the river, rendered them uncertain, by approaching or withdrawing them alternately, according to the variable action of the inflected rays. In these scattered features of the landscape, in this character of solitude and of greatness, we recognize the course of the Oroonoko, one of the most majestic rivers of the New World. The water, like the land, displays every where a characteristic and peculiar aspect. The bed of the Oroonoko resembles not the bed of the Meta, the Guaviare, the Rio Negro, or the Amazon. These differences do not depend altogether on the breadth or the velocity of the current: they are connected with a multitude of impressions, which it is easier to perceive upon the spot, than to define with precision. Thus the mere form of the waves, the tint of the waters, the aspect of the sky and the clouds, would lead an experienced navigator to guess, whether he were in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, or in the equinoctial part of the Great Ocean. The wind blew fresh from East-North-East. It's direction was favourable for our sailing up the Oroonoko, toward the mission of Encaramada; but our canoes were so ill calculated to resist the shocks of the waves, that, from the violence of the motion, those who suffered habitually at sea were incommoded on the river. The short, broken waves are caused by the conflict of the waters at the junction of the two rivers. This conflict is very violent, but far from being so dangerous as Father Gumilla asserts *. We passed the Punta Curiquima, which is an isolated mass of quartzose granite, a small promontory composed of rounded blocks. There, on the right bank of the Oroonoko, Father Rotella founded, in the time of the Jesuits, a mission of Palenka and Viriviri or Guire Indians. At the period of inundations, the rock Curiquima and the village placed at it's foot were surrounded every where by water. This serious inconvenience, and the sufferings of the missionaries and Indians from the innumerable quantity of moschettoes and niguas, led them to forsake this humid spot. It is now entirely desert, while opposite to it, on the right bank of the river, the little mountains of Coruato are *Orinoco illustrado, vol. i, p. 47. + The chego, pulex penetrans, which penetrates under the nails of the toes in men and monkeys, and there deposits it's eggs. the retreat of wandering Indians, expelled either from the missions, or from tribes that are not subjected to the government of the monks. Struck with the extreme breadth of the Oroonoko, between the mouth of the Apure and the rock Curiquima, I ascertained it by means of a base measured twice on the western beach. The bed of the Oroonoko in it's present state of En low water, was 1906* toises broad; but this os box breadth attains 5517+ toises, when, in the rainy in Jurlory. season, the rock Curiquima, and the farm of Capuchino near the hill of Pocopocori, become islands. The swelling of the Oroonoko is augmented by the impulse of the waters of the Apure, which far from forming, like other rivers, an acute angle with the upper part of that into which it flows, meets it at right angles. The temperature of the waters of the Oroonoko, measured in several parts of it's bed, was in the middle of the thalweg, or deepest part of the channel, where the current has the most swiftness, 28.3°, and toward the banks, 29.2°. We went up first toward the South-West, as far as the shore of the Guaricoto Indians, on the left bank of the Oroonoko, and then toward the South. The river is so broad, that the moun * 3714 metres, or 4441 varas, supposing 1 metre = 0·51307 of a toise 1·19546 vara. +10753 metres, or 12855 varas. tains of Encaramada appear to rise from the water, as if they were seen above the horizon of the sea. They form a continued chain from East to West. As you approach them, the aspect of the country becomes more picturesque. These mountains are composed of enormous blocks of granite, cleft and piled one upon another. Their division into blocks is the effect of decomposition. What contributes above all to embellish the scene at Encaramada is the force of vegetation, that covers the sides of the rocks, leaving bare only their rounded summits. They look like ancient ruins rising in the midst of a forest. The mountain immediately at the back of the mission, the Tepupano* of the Tamanack Indians, is covered by three enormous granitic cylinders, two of which are inclined, while the third, worn away at it's basis, and more than eighty feet high, has preserved a vertical position. This rock, which calls to mind the form of the Schnarcher in the Hartz, or that of the Organs of Actopan in Mexico †, composed *Tepu-pano," place of stones," in which we recognize tepu, "stone, rock," as in tepu-iri, mountain. We here again perceive that Lesgian Oigour-Tatar root tep (stone), found in America among the Mexicans, in tepetl; among the Caribbees, in tebou; among the Tamanacks, in tepuiri; a striking analogy between the languages of Caucasus and Upper-Asia and those of the banks of the Oroonoko. + In Captain Tuckey's Voyage on the River Congo, we |