COAST SCENERY OF THE ORINOCO. I 



products of the manufacturing industry of Europe. I have 

 seen long boats (lanchas) set oft', the cargoes of which were 

 valued at eight or ten thousand piastres. These boats went 

 first up the Orinoco to Cabruta ; then along the Apure to 

 San Vicente ; and finally, on the Ilio Santo Domingo, as far 

 as Torunos, which is the port of Variuas Nuevas. The little 

 town of San Fernando de Apure, of which I have already 

 given a description, is the magazine of this river-trade, which 

 might become more considerable by the introduction of 

 steamboats. 



I have now described the country through which we 

 nassed during a voyage of five hundred leagues ; it remains 

 tor me to make known the small space ot three degrees fifty- 

 two minutes of longitude, that separates the present capital 

 from the mouth of the Orinoco. Exact knowledge of the 

 delta, and the course of the Bio Carony, is at once interest- 

 ing to hydrography and to European commerce. 



When a vessel coming from sea would enter the prin- 

 cipal mouth ol the Orinoco, the Boca de Navios, it should 

 make the land at the Punta Barima. The right or southern 

 bank is the highest : the granitic rock pierces the marshy 

 soil at a small distance in the interior, between the Cane 

 Barima, the Aquire, and the Cuyuni. The left, or northern 

 bank of the Orinoco, which stretches along the delta towards 

 the Boca de Mariusas and the Punta Baxa, is very low, 

 and is distinguishable at a distance only by the clumps of 

 moriche palm-trees which embellish the passage. This is 

 the sago-tree* of the country ; it yields the flour ot which 



* The nutritious fecula or medullary flour of the sago-trees is found 

 principally in a group of palms which M. Kunth has distinguished by 

 the name of calanicce. It is collected, however, in the Indian Arclw- 

 pelago, as an article of trade, from the trunks of the Cycas revoluta, the 

 .ix farinifi-ru, the Corypha umbraculifera, and the Caryota urens. 

 (Ainslie, Materia Medico of Hindostan, Madras, 1813.) The quantity 

 of nutritious matter which the real sago-tree of Asia affords (Sagus 

 Rumpliii, or Metroxylon sagu, Roxb.) exceeds that which is furnished by 

 any other plant useful to man. One trunk of a tree in its fifteenth year 

 sometimes yields six hundred pounds weight of sago, or meal (for the 

 word sago signifies meal in the dialect of Amboyna). Mr. Crawford, who 

 resided a long time in the Indian Archipelago, calculates that an English 

 acre could contain four hundred and thirty- five eago-trees, which would 

 yirld one hundred and twenty thousand five hundred pounds avoirdupois 

 t feeulaj or more than e'ght thousand pounds yearly. (History of the 



