TJNEXPL3EED EEGIONb. 321 



of several trerman and Spanish Jesuits, who in 173d fe N 

 victims to their zeal for religion, by the hands of the Caribs 

 on the now desert banks of the Vichada. 



Having passed the Cafio Pirajavi on the east, and then a 

 email river on the west, which issues, as the Indians say, 

 from a lake called Na,o, we rested for the night on the shore 

 of the Orinoco, at the mouth of the Zama, a very conside- \ 

 rable river, but as little known as the Vichada. Notwithstand- ! 

 ing the * black waters' of the Zama, we suffered greatly from . 

 insects. The night was beautifiL., without a breath of wind 

 in the lower regions of the atmosphere, but towards two in 

 the morning we saw thick clouds crossing the zenith rapidly 

 from east to west. When, declining toward the honzon, 

 they traversed the great nebulaB of Sagittarius and the Ship, 

 they appeared of a dark blue. The light of the nebulae is 

 never more splendid than when they are in part covered by 

 sweeping clouds. We observe the same phenomenon in 

 Europe in the Milky Way, in the aurora borealis when it 

 beams with a silvery light ; and at the rising and setting of 

 the sun in that part of the sky that is whitened* from causes 

 which philosophers have not yet sufficiently explained. 



The vast tract of country lying between the Meta, the 

 Vichada, and the Ghiaviare, is altogether unknown a league 

 from the banks ; but it is believed to be inhabited by wild 

 Indians of the tribe of Chiricoas, who fortunately build no 

 boats. Formerly, when the Caribs, and their enemies the 

 Cabres, traversed these regions with their little fleets of 

 rafts and canoes, it would have been imprudent to have 

 passed the night near the mouth of a river running from the 

 west. The little settlements of the Europeans having now 

 caused the independent Indians to retire from the banks of 

 the Upper Orinoco, the solitude of these regions ia such, 

 that from Carichana to Javita, and from Esmeralda to San 

 Fernando de Atabapo, during a course of one hundred and 

 eighty leagues, we did not meet a single boat. 



At the mouth of the Rio Zama we approach a class of 

 rivers, that merits great attention. The Zama, the Mata- 

 veni, the Atabapo, the Tuamini, the Temi, and the Guainia, 

 are aguas negras, that ia, their waters, seen in a large body, 



* The dawn : ii French (alia, qlbente calo.) 

 VOL. II. I 



