356 Account of Travels lettveen the Tropics. 



mouth in the river Amazon, calls a fresh water sea. Thirty 

 Indians carried their canoes through bushy trees of heveoy 

 hcythis, and the lauriis cinnamomoides , to Cano Piniichin. 

 By this small stream our travellers proceeded to the Rio Ne- 

 gro, which they descended as far as the small fortress of San 

 Carlos, which has been erroneously believed to be situated 

 under the equator, and as far as the frontiers of the Grand 

 Para, the captainry-general of Brazil. A canal from Temi 

 to Pimichin, which on account of the level nature of the 

 ground is very practicable, would form an interior com- 

 numication between the province of Caraccas and the ca- 

 pital of Para much shorter than that of Casquiare. By this 

 canal also, such is the astonishing disposition of the rivers 

 in this new continent, one might descend in a canoe from 

 Rio Guallaga, within three days journey of Lima, or the 

 South Sea, by the river Amazon and Rio Negro, as far as 

 the mouths of the Orenoko opposite to Trinidad, a navi- 

 gation of nearly 2000 leagues. The misunderstanding which 

 prevailed then between the courts of Madrid and Lisbon 

 prevented M. Humboldt from carry-ing his operations be- 

 vond St. Gabriel de las Cochuellas, in the captainry-general 

 of Great Para. 



La Condamine and Maldonado having determineda stro- 

 nomically the mouth of the Rio Negro, this obstacle was 

 less sensible, and it remained to fix a part more unknown, 

 which is the arm of the Orenoko called Casquiare, form- 

 inp' the communication between the Orenoko and the river 

 Amazon, and respecting the existence of which there have 

 been so many disputes for fifty years past. To execute this 

 labour, Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland ascended from the 

 Spanish fortress of St. Carlos along the Rio Negro and the 

 Casquiare to the Orenoko, and on the latter to the mission 

 of Esmeraldo, near the volcano Duida, or as far as the sources 

 of that river. 



The Guaica Indians, a verv white, small,., and almost 

 pigniv race of men, but cxccedinglv warlike, who inhabit 

 the country to the east of the Pasimoni ; and tho Guajaribes, 

 of a dark copper colour, extremely ferocious, lirid still an- 

 thropophagi, render fruitless every attempt to reach the 

 sources of the Orenoko, which the maps of Caulin, though 

 in other respects meritorious, place in a longitude much too 

 far east. 



From the mission of Esmeralda, an assemblage of huts 

 situated in the most remote and most solitary corner of this 

 Indian world, our travellers descended, with the assistance 

 of the floods, 340 leagues ; that is to say, the whole of the 



7 Oreuoko, 



