NIGHT IN THE FOREST. 173 



the largest and fiercest mosquitos, at lengtli gradually 

 acknowledged that the sting of the insects of the Cassi- 

 quiare was the most painfal he had ever felt. Thev ex- 

 perienced great difficulty, amid a thick forest, in finding 

 wood to make a fire, the branches of the trees being so 

 full of sap that they would scarcely burn. There being 

 no bare shore, it was hardly possible to procure old 

 wood, which the Indians called wood hahed in the sun. 

 However, fire was necessary to them only as a defence 

 against the beasts of the forest ; for they had such a 

 scarcity of provision that they had little need of fuel for 

 the purpose of preparing their food. 



On the 18th of May, towards evening, they discovered 

 a spot where wild cocoa-trees were growing on the bank 

 of the river. It rained violently, but the pothoses, arums, 

 and lianas, furnished so thick a natural trellis, that they 

 were sheltered as under a vault of foliage. The Indians, 

 whose hammocks were placed on the edge of the river, 

 interwove the heliconias, so as to form a kind of roof 

 over them. Their fires lighted up, to the height of fifi:y or 

 sixty feet, the palm-trees, the lianas loaded with flowers, 

 and the columns of white smoke, which ascended in a 

 straight line towards the sky. 



They passed the night of the 20th, the last of their 

 passage on the Cassiquiare, near the point of the bifur- 

 cation of the Orinoco. They had some hope of being able 

 to make an astronomical observation, as falling-stars of 

 remarkable magnitude were visible through the vapours 

 that veiled the sky ; whence they concluded that the stra- 

 tum of vapours must be very thin, since meteors of this 

 kind were scarcely ever seen below a cloud. Those they 

 now beheld shot towards the north, and succeeded each 



