242 PREVALENCE OF FEYERS. 



turned to the woods, weary of the regulations of the mission. 

 Epidemic fevers, which prevailed with violence at the en- 

 trance of the rainy season, contributed greatly to this unex- 

 pected flight. In 1799 the mortality was very considerable 

 at Carichana, on the banks of the Meta, and at the Randal 

 of Atures. The Indian of the forest conceives a horror of 

 the life of the civilized man, when, I will not say any mis- 

 fortune befalls his family settled in the mission, but merely 

 any disagreeable or unforeseen accident. Natives, who were 

 neophytes, have been known to desert for ever the Christian 

 establishments, on account of a great drought; as if this 

 calamity would not have reached them equally in their plan- 

 tations, had they remained in their primitive independence. 



The fevers which prevail during a great part of the year 

 in the villages of Atures and Maypures, around the two 

 Great Cataracts of the Orinoco, render these spots highly 

 dangerous to European travellers. They are caused by 

 violent heats, in combination with the excessive humidity of 

 the air, bad nutriment, and, if we may believe the natives, 

 the pestilent exhalations rising from the bare rocks of the 

 Eaudales. These fevers of the Orinoco appeared to us to 

 resemble those which prevail every year between New Bar- 

 celona, La Guayra, and Porto CabeUo, in the vicinity of the 

 sea ; and which often degenerate into adynamic fevers. " I 

 have had my little fever (mi calenturita) only eight months," 

 said the good missionary of the Atures, who accompanied us 

 to the Bio Negro ; speaking of it as of an habitual evil, easy 

 to be borne. The fits were violent, but of short duration. 

 He was sometimes seized with them when lying along in 

 the boat under a shelter of branches of trees, sometimes 

 when exposed to the burning rays of the sun on an open 

 beach. These tertian agues are attended with great debility 

 of the muscular system ; yet we find poor ecclesiastics on 

 the Orinoco, who endure for several years these calentwritas, 

 or tercianas : their effects are not so fatal as those which are 

 experienced from fevers of much shorter duration in tem- 

 perate climates. 



1 have just alluded to the noxious influence on the salu- 

 brity of the atmosphere, which is attributed by the natives, 

 and even the missionaries, to the bare rocks. This opinion 

 is the more worthy of attention, as it is connected with 



