VILLAGE OF MAYPURES. 15 5 



century, it is said that the suifei-ing occasioned by them 

 was so unendurable, that tlie inhabitants of the village 

 were accustomed to retire to sleep amid the rocks and 

 islands of the cataracts, as there the insects were less nu- 

 merous. We now see the wretched natives, in order to 

 escape in a degree their torments, build a fire within their 

 huts and suspend their hammocks in the smoke. A few 

 coffee-shrubs and plantains are cultivated, while here and 

 there an orange or cocoa-nut tree is seen growing about 

 the deserted and decayed village ; but the cliief subsistence 

 of the fev,^ inhabitants is the game of the forest, fish and 

 turtles of the river, together with yuca raised by the 

 neighboi'ing Indian tribes. The cultivation of maize on 

 the Upper Orinoco is now entirely neglected ; and the 

 herds of cattle, which at one time grazed upon the savan- 

 nas, have disappeared. 



"We spent but one day at Maypures, and at noon of the 

 29th we again embarked, having been fortunate enough 

 to secure a large canoe above the cataracts, which spared 

 us the labor of dragging our own boat through the rapids, 

 and saved us a delay of two or three days. Paddling 

 down a winding caiio but a few yards in width, that flows 

 through a majestic woodland, we soon emerged upon the 

 Orinoco, which, for more than a, league, was divided into 

 two channels by a chain of islands in the middle of the 

 stream. The atmosphere we breathed seemed as if drawn 

 from a furnace. Not the slightest motion in the lower 

 strata of air was perceptible ; for, from the Great Cataracts 

 of the Orinoco to the celebrated Falls of the Kio 'Negro, a 

 perpetual calm prevails. On the Lower Orinoco and Ama- 

 zons, where the streams take the direction of the trade- 

 winds, which are from east to west, breezes are constant, 

 and the climate more salubrious than where the air is stag- 

 nant through the absence of atmospheric currents, as upon 

 the Upper Orinoco and Rio Negro. 



