DESOLATE APPEARANCE OF T1IE 111VEE. 471 



I believe, to fix our attention less on the transitkn from 

 one colour to another in individuals, than on their habit o* 

 Bt'parating themselves, and forming distinct bands. 



We left our resting place before sunrise on the 24th 

 of May. In a rocky cove, which had been the dwelling of 

 some Durimundi Indians, the aromatic odour of the plants 

 was so powerful, that although sleeping in the open air, and 

 the irritability of our nervous system being allayed by the 

 habits of a life of fatigue, we were nevertheless incommoded 

 by it. We could not ascertain the flowers which diffused this 

 perfume. The forest was impenetrable ; but M. Bonpland 

 believed that large clumps of pancratium and other liliaceous 

 plants were concealed in the neighbouring marshes. De- 

 scending the Orinoco by favour of the current, we passed 

 first the mouth of the Rio Cunucunumo, and then the 

 Gruanami and the Purinaine. The two banks of the prin- 

 cipal river are entirely desert ; lofty mountains rise on the 

 north, and on the south a vast plain extends far as the eye 

 can reach beyond the sources of the Atacavi, which lower 

 down takes the name of the Atabapo. There is something 

 gloomy and desolate in this aspect of a river, on which not 

 even a fisherman's canoe is seen. Some independant tribes, 

 the Abirianos and the Maquiritares, dwell in the moun- 

 tainous count ry ; but in the neighbouring savannahs,* boun- 

 ded by the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, the Orinoco, and the 

 Rio Negro, there is now scarcely any trace of a human 

 habitation. I say now; for here, as in other parts of 

 Guiana, rude figures representing the sun, the moon, and 

 different animals, traced on the hardest rocks of granite, 

 attest the anterior existence of a people, very different from 

 those who became known to us on the banks of the Orinoco. 

 According to the accounts of the natives, and of the most 

 intelligent missionaries, these symbolic signs resemble per- 

 fectly the characters we saw a hundred leagues more to the 

 north, near Caycara, opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure.f 



In advancing from the plains of the Cassiquiare and the 



* They form a quadrilateral pioi of a thousand square leagues, the 

 opposite sides of which have contrary slopes, the Cassiquiare flowing 

 towards the south, the Atabapo towards the north, the Orinoco toward* 

 the north-west, and the Rio Negro towards the south-east. 

 t See p. 183. 



