•62 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



Above Ciudad-Bolivar flat-bottomed steamers of the 

 same type as those running to Trinidad, but smaller in 

 size, do the carrying trade as far as the towns on the 

 Apure and Meta. Up to some three years ago these lines 

 of steamers were in different hands, but the companies 

 have been amalgamated ; so that to-day the Orinoco 

 Shipping and Trading Company own the bulk of the 

 steamers on the Orinoco. 



Between the months of January and March, or April, 

 there is no steam communication with the towns on the 

 Upper Orinoco. The river and its tributaries are then at 

 their lowest, and their navigation becomes difficult, owing 

 to the ever-shifting sandbanks which encumber their 

 beds. During these months, therefore, the steamers 

 remain idle. By the beginning of April there is generally 

 a sufficiency of water to allow of the resumption of traffic. 

 In August and September the rivers reach their highest 

 point, and it is not unusual during an excessively rainy 

 season for considerable tracts of country to get flooded. 

 When this occurs a good deal of damage is the result. 

 One of the most remarkable overflows in recent times 

 occurred in 1891, when the ground floors of all the stores 

 along the quay at Ciudad-Bolivar were under water to a 

 depth of two or three feet. A stone pillar marks the 

 height attained by the waters during that disastrous flood. 

 The difference between the highest and lowest points of 

 the water during the rainy and dry seasons is usually 

 about eighty feet. Mr. Spence, in his work, ' The Land 

 of Bolivar,' has attributed the rising of the Orinoco to 

 the melting of the snows in the Andes (vol. i. p. 78),^ but 

 this explanation is absurd, for in tropical countries where 



' ' The waters at Ciudad-Bolivar rise 80 ft. when the melted snow from 

 the Andes cumes down.' 



