PIEDEA IjEL TIG RE. 340 



dred leagues, while from the Atabapo to the mouth of the 

 Orinoco is more than three hundred and twenty. 



About noon we passed the mouth of the little river Ipuricha- 

 pano on the east, and afterwards the granitic rock, known by 

 the name of Plectra del Tigre. Between the fourth and fifth 

 degrees of latitude, a little to the south of the mountains of 

 Sipapo, we reach the southern extremity of that chain of 

 cataracts, which I proposed, in a memoir published in 1800, 

 to call the Chain of Parima. At 4 20' it stretches from thft 

 right bank of the Orinoco toward the east and east-south- 

 east. The whole of the land extending from the mountains 

 of the Parima towards the river Amazon, which is traversed 

 by the Atabapo, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is an 

 immense plain, covered partly with forests, and partly with 

 grass. Small rocks rise here and there like castles. We 

 regretted that we had not stopped to rest near the Piedra 

 del Tigre ; for on going up the Atabapo we had great diffi- 

 culty to find a spot of dry ground, open and spacious enough 

 to light a fire, and place ur instrument and our hammocks. 



On the 28th of April, it rained hard after sunset, and we 

 were afraid that our collections would be damaged. The 

 poor missionary had his fit of tertian fever, and besought 

 us to re-embark immediately after midnight. "We passed at 

 day-break the Pied/ra and the Itattdalitos* of Guarinuma. 

 The rock is on the east bank ; it is a shelf of granite, 

 covered with psora, cladonia, and other lichens. I could have 

 fancied myself transported to the north of Europe, to the 

 ridge of the mountains of gneiss and granite between Frei- 

 berg and Marienberg in Saxony. The cladonias appeared to 

 me to be identical with the Lichen rangiferinus, the L. pixi- 

 datus, and the L. polymorphus of Linnaeus. After having 

 passed the rapids of Guarinuma, the Indians showed us in 

 the middle of the forest, on our right, the ruins of the mis- 

 sion of Mendaxari, winch has been long abandoned. On the 

 east bank of the river, near the little rock of Kemarumo, in 

 the midst of Indian plantations, a gigantic bombaxf attracted 

 our curiosity. We landed to measure it ; the height was 

 nearly one hundred and twenty feet, and the diameter 

 between fourteen and fifteen. This enormous specimen of 

 * The rock and little cascade*. f Borobax ceiba. 



