228 CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO. 



the right bank of the river, is the cave of Ataruipe, which 

 is widely celebrated among the Indians. The grand and 

 melancholy character of the scenery around fits it for the 

 burying-place of a deceased nation. We climbed with diffi- 

 culty, and not without danger of falling to a great depth 

 below, a steep and perfectly bare granite precipice. It 

 would be hardly possible to keep one's footing on the 

 smooth surface, if it were not for large crystals of feldspar, 

 which, resisting " weathering," project as much as an inch 

 from the face of the rock. 



On reaching the summit the traveller beholds a wide, 

 diversified, and striking prospect. From the foaming river- 

 bed rise wood-crowned hills, while beyond the western shore 

 of the Orinoco the eye rests on the boundless grassy plain of 

 the Meta, uninterrupted save where at one part of the 

 horizon the Mountain of Uniama rises like a threatening 

 cloud. Such is the distance ; the nearer prospect is deso- 

 late, and closely hemmed in by high and barren rocks. All 

 is motionless save where the vulture or the hoarse goat- 

 sucker hover solitarily in mid-air, or, as they wing their 

 flight through the deep-sunk ravine, their silent shadows 

 are seen gliding along the face of the bare rocky precipice 

 until they vanish from the eye. 



This precipitous valley is bounded by mountains on whose 

 rounded summits are enormous detached granite spheres of 

 more than 40 to 50 feet diameter : they appear to touch the 

 base on which they rest only in a single point, as if the 

 slightest movement, such as that of a faint earthquake shock, 

 must cause them to roll down. 



