SA LUIS DEL ENCAEAM1DA. 177 



far beyond the mouth of the Apure. TVe had begun to 

 observe it in this latter river as far off as Algodonal and the 

 Cano del Manati. The spangles of mica come, no doubt, 

 from the granite mountains of Curiquima and Encaramada ; 

 since further north-east we find only quartzose sand, sand- 

 stone, compact limestone, and gypsum. Alluvial earth car- 

 ried successively from south to north need not surprise us 

 in the Orinoco; but to what shall we attribute the same 

 phenomenon in the bed of the Apure, seven leagues west of 

 its mouth ? In the present state of things, notwithstanding 

 the swellings of the Orinoco, the waters of the Apure never 

 retrograde so far ; and, to explain this phenomenon, we are 

 forced to admit that the micaceous strata were deposited at 

 a time when the whole of the very low country lying be- 

 tween Caycara, Algodonal, and the mountains of Encara- 

 mada, formed the basin of an inland lake. 



We stopped some time at the port of Encaramada, which 

 is a sort of embarcadero, a place where boats assemble. A 

 rock of forty or fifty feet hign forms the shore. It is com- 

 posed of blocks of granite, heaped one upon another, as 

 at the Schneeberg in Franconia, and in almost all the 

 granitic mountains of Europe. Some of these detached 

 masses have a spheroidal form; they are not balls with 

 concentric layers, but merely rounded blocks, nuclei se- 

 parated from their envelopes by the effect of decompo- 

 sition. This granite is of a greyish lead-colour, often black, 

 as if covered with oxide of manganese ; but this colour does 

 not penetrate one fifth of a line into the rock, which is of a 

 reddish white colour within, coarse-grained, and destitute of 

 hornblende. 



The Indian names of the Mission of San Luis del Encara- 

 mada, are Guaja and Caramana* This wnall village was 



* All the Missions of South America have names composed of two 

 words, the first of which is necessarily the name of a saint, the patron of 

 the church, and the second an Indian name, that of the nation, or the 

 spot where the establishment is placed. Thus we say, San Jose de 

 Maypures, Santa Cruz de Cachipo, San Juan Nepomuceno de los Atures, 

 &c. These compound names appear only in official documents r the 

 inhabitants adopt but one of the two names, and generally, provided it 

 be sonorous, the Indian. As the names of saints are several times 

 repeated in neighbouring places, great confusion in geography arises from 

 these repetitions. The names of San Juau, San Diego, and San Pedro* 



VOL. II. IT 



