VOYAGE ON THE ATABAPO. 329 



CHAPTER XXII. 



Stn Fernando de Atabapo. San Balthasar. The riverg Temi and 

 Tuamini. Javita. Portage from the Tuamini to the Rio Negro. 



DUEING the night, we had left, almost imperceived, the 

 waters of the Orinoco ; and at sunrise found ourselves as if 

 transported to a new country, on the banks of a river the 

 name of which we had scarcely ever heard pronounced, and 

 which was to conduct us, by the portage of Pimichin, to the 

 Rio Negro, on the frontiers of Brazil. " You will go up," 

 said the president of the missions, who resides at San 

 Fernando, "first the Atabapo, then the Temi, and finally, 

 the Tuamini. When the force of the current of 'black 

 waters ' hinders you from advancing, you will be conducted 

 out of the bed of the river through forests, which you will 

 find inundated. Two monks only are settled in those desert 

 places, between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro ; but at 

 Javita you will be furnished with the means of having your 

 canoe drawn over land in the course of four days to Cano 

 Pimichin. If it be not broken to pieces you will descend 

 the Rio Negro withDut any obstacle (from north-west to 

 south-east) as far as the little fort of San Carlos ; you will 

 go up the Cassiquiare (from south to north), and then 

 return to San Fernando in a month, descending the Upper 

 Orinoco from east to west." Such was the plan traced for 

 our passage, and we carried it into effect without danger, 

 though not without some suffering, in the space of thirty- 

 three days. The Orinoco runs from its source, or at least 

 from Esmeralda, as far as San Fernando de Atabapo, from 

 east to west ; from San Fernando, (where the junction of 

 the Gruaviare and the Atabapo takes place,) as far as the 

 mouth of the Rio Apure, it flows from south to north, 

 forming the Great Cataracts ; and from the mouth of the 

 Apure as far as Angostura and the coast of the Atlantic its 

 direction is from west to east. In the first part of its 

 course, where the river flows from east to west, it forms that 

 celebrated bifurcation so often disputed by geographers, of 

 which I was the Erst enabled to determine the situation by 



