312 BEMEDIES FOE THE FEVEH. 



The poor missionaries of the Orinoco, who are afflicted 

 with tertian fevers during a great part of the year, sel- 

 dom travel without a little bag filled with frutas de biwro. 

 I have already observed, that between the tropics, the 

 use of aromatics, for instance very strong coffee, the Croton 

 casearilla, or the pericarp of the Unona xylopioides, is 

 generally preferred to that of the astringent bark of cin- 

 chona, or of Bonplandia trifolatia, which is the Angostura 

 bark. The people of America have the most inveterate 

 prejudice against the employment of different kinds of 

 cinchona; and in the very countries where this valuable 

 remedy grows, they try (to use their own phrase) to cut 

 off the fever, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and hot lemon- 

 ade prepared with sugar and the small wild lime, the rind 

 of which is equally oily and aromatic. 



The weather was unfavourable for astronomical obser- 

 vations. I obtained, however, on the 20th of April, a good 

 series of corresponding altitudes of the sun, according to 

 which the chronometer gave 70 37' 33' for the longitude 

 of the mission of Maypures ; the latitude was found, by a 

 star observed towards the north, to be 5 13' 57" ; and by a 

 star observed towards the south, 5 13' 7". The error of 

 the most recent maps is half a degree of longitude and half 

 a degree of latitude. It would be difficult to relate the 

 trouble and torments which these nocturnal observations 

 cost us. Nowhere is a denser cloud of mosquitos to be 

 found. It formed, as it were, a particular stratum some 

 feet above the ground, and it thickened as we brought lights 

 to illumine our artificial horizon. The inhabitants of May- 

 pures, for the most part, quit the village to sleep in the 

 islets amid the cataracts, where the number of insects is 

 less; others make a fire of brushwood in their huts, and 

 suspend their hammocks in the midst of the smoke. 



We spent two days and a half in the little village of 

 Maypures, on the banks of the great Upper Cataract, and 

 on the 21st April we embarked in the canoe we had ob- 

 tained from the missionary of Carichana. It was much 

 damaged by the shoals it had struck against, and the care- 

 lessness of the Indians ; but still greater dangers awaited 

 it. It was to be dragged over land, across an isthmus of 

 thirty-six thousand feet; from the Rio Tuamini to the 



