MISSION OF SAN BORJA. 



206 



succeeded in fixing his instruments, and in deter 

 mining the longitude of the embouchure of the Meta 

 a river which will one day be of great political im 

 portance to the inhabitants of Guiana and Venezuela 

 as it is navigable to the foot of the Andes of New 

 Grenada. Above this point the current was com 

 paratively free from shoals ; and in the evening the\ 

 reached the rapids of Tabaje. As the Indians 

 would not venture to pass them, they were obliged 

 to land, and repose on a craggy platform having a 

 slope of more than eighteen degrees, and having its 

 crevices filled with bats. The cries of the jaguar 

 were heard very near during the whole night ; the 

 sky was of a tremendous blackness ; and the hoarse 

 noise of the rapids blended with the thunder which 

 rolled at a distance among the woods. 



Early in the morning they cleared the rapids, and 

 disembarked at the new mission of San Borja, where 

 they found six houses inhabited by uncatechised 

 Guahiboes, who differed in nothing from the wild 

 natives. The faces of the young girls were marked 

 with black spots. This people had not painted their 

 bodies, and several of them had beards, of which 

 they seemed proud, taking the travellers by the 

 chin, and showing by signs that they were like 

 themselves. In continuing to ascend the river, they 

 found the heat less intense, the temperature during 

 the day being 79° or 80°, and at night about 75° ; 

 but the torment of the mosquitoes increased. The 

 crocodiles which they saw were all of the extraor- 

 dinary size of twenty-four or twenty-five feet. 



The night was spent on the beach ; but the suffer- 

 ings inflicted by the flies induced the travellers to 

 start at five in the morning. On the island of Gua- 

 chaco, where they stopped to breakfast, they found 

 the granite covered by a sandstone or conglomerate, 

 containing fragments of quartz and felspar cemented 

 by indurated clay, and exhibiting small veins of 

 brown iron-ore. Passing the mouth of the Rio Pa- 

 S 



