1-30 THE GEEAT CATAEACTS OF THE OEINOCO. 



In this humid climate, so destructive to wliatever 

 moisture can affect, our watches became useless. But 

 wliat need of such contrivances when the hour of the day 

 can be determined by animated life, which so thickly 

 swarms these districts ? Each species of insect alternately 

 comes and disappears at invariable hours. Between the 

 departing of some species, and the aj^pearing of the one 

 Avhich succeeds, there is a short intermission ; others over- 

 lap each other. Each produces a peculiar sensation by 

 its sting, that cannot be mistaken, so that, even though 

 clouds obscure the sun, or darkness veil the night, one 

 may be assured how far upon its course the day or night 

 has gone. The seasons, too, in sections of this tropical 

 clime where no alternating periods of rains and drought 

 note their passage, but where vegetation is ever ^reen, 

 and falling showers moisten the earth throughout the 

 year, can be known by the migration of birds, as, driven 

 by swelling rivers inundating the land, they seek other 

 sections where food may be found, returning at their ap- 

 jiointed time, when the subsiding of the waters invites them 

 back to their favorite haunts. Thus the Indian of these 

 equatorial regions reads from Nature the times and sea- 

 sons : the opening flowers, the birds and insects, all tell 

 him of the fleeting hours and years. 



Early on the second day from Maypnrcs, we passed 

 the Maiidal de Camcji ; farther on, and to our left, the 

 Sipapo River ; and a little later we arrived opposite the 

 mouth of Rio Vichada, next to the Guaviare and Meta, 

 the largest of the western tributaries of the Orinoco. The 

 following morning we passed on the west, first the Zema, 

 then the Mataveni — rivers which have aguas negras, or 

 black waters. Our progress was slow against the broad, 

 strong current of the river, although to avoid its force we 

 kept close to the banks, which rose abruptly, in places 

 tvrenty to thirty feet high. Along these cliffs Ave observed 



