202 HUMiDirT or THE CLIMATE. 



Cataracts seated on the ground, playing at cards, and 

 smoking tobacco in long pipes. Their ample blue garments, 

 their shaven heads, and their long beards, might have led us 

 to mistake them for natives of the East. These poor priests 

 received us in the kindest manner, giving us every informa- 

 tion necessary for the continuation of our voyage. They 

 had suffered from tertian fever for some months ; and their 

 pale and emaciated aspect easily convinced us that the 

 countries we were about to visit were not without danger to 

 the health of travellers. 



The Indian pilot, who had brought us from San Fernando 

 de Apure as far as the shore of Pararuma, was unacquainted 

 with the passage of the rapids* of the Orinoco, and would 

 not undertake to conduct our bark any farther. We were 

 obliged to conform to his will. Happily for us, the mis- 

 sionary of Carichana consented to sell us a fine canoe at a 

 very moderate price: and Father Bernardo Zea, missionary 

 of the Atures and Maypures near the great cataracts, 

 offered, though still unwell, to accompany us as far as the 

 frontiers of Brazil. The number of natives who can assist in 

 guiding boats through the Haudales is so inconsiderable that, 

 but for the presence of the monk, we should have risked 

 spending whole weeks in these humid and unhealthy 

 regions. On the banks of the Orinoco, the forests of the 

 Bio Negro are considered as delicious spots. The air is 

 indeed cooler and more healthful. The river is free from 

 crocodiles; one may bathe without apprehension, and by 

 night as well as by day there is less torment from the sting 

 of insects than on the Orinoco. Father Zea hoped to re- 

 establish his health by visiting the Missions of Eio Negro. 

 He talked of those places with that enthusiasm which is felt 

 in all the colonies of South America for everything far off. 



The assemblage of Indians at Pararuma again excited 

 in us that interest, which everywhere attaches man in a 

 cultivated state to the study of man in a savage condition, 

 and the successive development of his intellectual faculties. 

 How difficult io recognize in this infancy of society, in this 

 assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate Indians, the primitive 

 character of our species ! Human nature does not here 

 manifest those features of artless simplicity, of whicb 

 * Little cascades (chorros raudalitoa). 



