198 PASSAGE OF B/.RA GUAff. 



nearly to the confluence of the Rio Suapure. From these 

 granite mountains the natives heretofore gave the name of 

 Baraguan to that part of the Orinoco comprised between 

 the mouths of the Arauca and the Atabapo. Among 

 savage nations great rivers bear different denominations 

 in the different portions of their course. The Passage 

 of Baraguan presents a picturesque scene. The granite 

 rocks are perpendicular. They form a range of mountains 

 lying north-west and south-east ; and the river cutting this 

 dyke nearly at a right angle, the summits of the mountains 

 appear like separate peaks. Their elevation in general does 

 not surpass one hundred and twenty toises ; but their situa- 

 tion in the midst of a small plain, their steep declivities, and 

 their flanks destitute of vegetation, give them a majestic 

 character. They are composed of enormous masses of 

 granite of a parallelopipedal figure, but rounded at the 

 edges, and heaped one upon another. The blocks are often 

 eighty feet long, and twenty or thirty broad. They would 

 seem to have been piled up by some external force, if the 

 proximity of a rock identical in its composition, not sepa- 

 rated into blocks but filled with veins, did not prove that 

 the parallelopipedal form is owing solely to the action of 

 the atmosphere. These veins, two or three inches thick, 

 are distinguished by- a fine-grained quartz-granite crossing a 

 coarse-grained granite almost porphyritic, and abounding in 

 fine crystals of red feldspar. I sought in vain, in the 

 Cordillera of Baraguan, for hornblende, and those steatitic 

 masses that characterise several granites of the Higher Alps 

 in Switzerland. 



We landed in the middle of the strait of Baraguan to 

 measure its breadth. The rocks project so much towards 

 the river that I measured with difficulty a base of eighty 

 toises. I found the river eight hundred and eighty-nine 

 toises broad. In order to conceive how this passage bears 

 the name of a strait, we must recollect that the breadth of 

 the river from Uruana to the junction of the Meta is in 

 general from 1500 to 2500 toises. In this place, which is 

 extremely hot and barren, I measured two granite summits, 

 much rounded : one was only a hundred and ten, and the 

 other eighty-five, toises. There are higher summits in the 



