THE AMAZON VALLEY. 



289 



is laid down with tolerable accuracy. I have narrated in my 

 Journal how I was prevented from descending on the north 

 side of it, and thus completing my survey of its course. 



The most remarkable feature is the enormous width to 

 which it spreads, — first, between Barra and the mouth of the 

 Rio Branco, and from thence to near St. Isabel. In some 

 places, I am convinced, it is between twenty and thirty 

 miles wide, and, for a very great distance, fifteen to twenty. 

 The sources of the rivers Uaupes, Isanna, Xie, Rio Negro, and 

 Guaviare, are very incorrectly laid down. The Serra Tunuhy 

 is generally represented as a chain of hills cutting off these 

 rivers ; it is, however, a group of isolated granite peaks, about 

 two thousand feet high, situated on the north bank of the river 

 Isanna, in about 1° north latitude and 70° west longitude. 

 The river rises considerably beyond them, in a flat forest- 

 country, and further west than the Rio Negro, for there is a 

 path across to the Iniriza, a branch of the Guaviare which does 

 not traverse any stream, so that the Rio Negro does not there 

 exist. 



My own journey up the Uaupes extended to near 72° west 

 longitude. Five days further in a small canoe, or about a 

 hundred miles, is the Jurupari caxoeira, the last fall on the river. 

 Above that, traders have been twelve days^ journey on a still, 

 almost currentless river, which, by the colour of its water, and 

 the aspect of its vegetation, resembles the Upper Amazon. For 

 all this distance, which must reach very nearly to the base of 

 the Andes, the river flows through virgin forest. But the 

 Indians in the upper part say there are campos, or plains, 

 and cattle, further up; and they possess Spanish knives 

 and other articles, showing that they have communications 

 with the civilised inhabitants of the .country to the east of 

 Bogota. 



I am therefore strongly inclined to believe that the rivers 

 Ariari and others, rising about a hundred miles south of Bogota, 

 are not, as shown in all our maps, the sources of the Guaviare, 

 but of the Uaupes, and that the basin of the Amazon must 

 therefore be here extended to within sixty miles of the city of 

 Bogoti. This opinion is strengthened by information obtained 

 from the Indians of Javita, who annually ascend the Guaviare 

 to fish in the dry season, and who state that the river is very 

 small, and in its upper part, where some hills occur and the 



