GUMS AND BESIXS. 357 



(where there is neither pine, thuya, taxodium, nor even a 

 podocarpus,) resins, balsams, and aromatic gums, are fur. 

 nished oy the maronobea, the icica, and the amyris. Th& 

 collecting of these gummy and resinous substances is a 

 trade in the village of Javita. The most celebrated resin 

 bears the name of mani; and of this we saw masses of 

 several hundred-weight, resembling colophony and mastic. 

 The tree called mani by the Paraginis, which M. Bonpland 

 believes to be the Moronobsea coccinea, furnishes out a 

 small quantity of the substance employed in the trade with 

 Angostura. The greatest part comes from the mararo or 

 caragna, which is an amyris. It is remarkable enough, that 

 the name mani, which Aublet heard among the Gralibis* of 

 Cayenne, was again heard by us at Javita, three hundred 

 leagues distant from French Gruiana. The moronobaea or 

 symphonia of Javita yields a yellow resin; the caragna, a 

 resin strongly odoriferous, and white as snow; the latter 

 beomes yellow where it is adherent to the internal part of 

 old bark. 



We went every day to see how our canoe advanced on 

 the portages. Twenty-three Indians were employed in 

 dragging it by land, placing branches of trees to serve 

 as rollers. In this manner a small boat proceeds in a 

 day or a day and a half, from the waters of the Tuamini 

 to those of the Cano Pimichin, which flow into the 

 Bio Negro. Our canoe being very large, and having to 

 pass the cataracts a second time, it was necessary to avoid 

 with particular care any friction on the bottom; conse- 

 quently the passage occupied more than four days. It is only 

 since 1795 that a road has been traced through the forest. 

 By substituting a canal for this portage, as I proposed to 

 the ministry of king Charles IV, the communication between 

 the Bio Negro and Angostura, between the Spanish Orinoco 

 and the Portuguese possessions on the Amazon, would be 

 singularly facilitated. 



In this forest we at length obtained precise information 



* The Galibis or Caribi* (the r has been changed into /, as often 

 happens) are of the great stock of the Carib nations. The products use- 

 ful in commerce and in domestic life hi ?e received the same denomina- 

 tion in every part of America which this wa-v.ke and commercial peoplt 

 have overrun. 



