THE INDIAN CANOES. 355 



but considerably hotter than that of the Gkminia or Rio 

 Negro. The centigrade thermometer kept up in the day to 

 twenty-six or twenty-seven degrees; and in the night to 

 twenty-one degrees. 



From the 30th of April to the llth of May, I had not 

 been able to see any star in the meridian so as to determine 

 the latitude of places. I watched whole nights in order to 

 make use of the method of double altitudes ; but all my 

 efforts were useless. The fogs of the north of Europe are 

 not more constant than those of the equatorial regions of 

 Guiana. On the 4th of May, I saw the sun for some 

 minutes; and found by the chronometer and the horary 

 angles the longitude of Javita to be 70 22', or 1 15' farther 

 west than the longitude of the junction of the Apure with 

 the Orinoco. This result is interesting for laying down on 

 our maps the unknown country lying between the Xie and 

 the sources of the Issana, situated on the same meridian 

 with the mission of Javita. 



The Indians of Javita, whose number amounts to one 

 hundred and sixty, now belong for the most part to the na- 

 tions of the Pohnisanos, the Echinavis, and the Paraganis. 

 They are employed in the construction of boats, formed 

 of the trunks of sassafras, a large species of laurel, hol- 

 lowed by means of fire and the hatchet. These trees are 

 more than one hundred feet high ; the wood is yellow, 

 resinous, almost incorruptible in water, and has a very agree- 

 able smell. We saw them at San Fernando, at Javita, and 

 more particularly at Esmeralda, where most of the canoes of 

 the Orinoco are constructed, because the adjacent forests 

 furnish the largest trunks of sassafras. 



The forest between Javita and the Cafio Pimichin, contains 

 an immense quantity of gigantic trees, ocoteas, and laurels, 

 the Amasonia arborea,* the Retiniphyllum secundiflorum, 

 the curvana, the jacio, the iacifate, of which the wood is red 

 like the brazilletto, the guamufate, with its fim leaves of 



* This is a new species of the genus taligalea of Aublet. On the same 

 pot grow the Bignonia magnoliaefolia, B. jasminifolia, Solanum topiro, 

 Juaticia pectoralis, Faramea cymosa, Piper javitense, Scleria hirtella, 

 Echites javitensis, Lindsea javitensis, and that curious plant of the family 

 of the verbenaceae, which I have dedicated to the illustrious Leopold vou 

 Buch, in whose early labours I participated. 



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