368 



all those with black and limpid waters) is ill 

 stored with fish. The best of their provision 

 comes from the Portugueze settlements on the 

 Rio Negro, where more ease and industry reign 

 among the Indians ; and yet the trade with the 

 Portugueze is scarcely an object of two thousand 

 piastres of annual importation *. 



The banks of the Upper Guainia will be more 

 productive, when the destruction of the forests 

 has diminished the excessive humidity of the air 

 and the soil, and the insects, which devour the 

 roots and leaves of the herbaceous plants, are 

 reduced in number. In their present state of 

 culture, maize scarcely grows, and the tobacco*}-, 

 which is of the finest quality, and much cele- 

 brated on the coast of Caraccas, is well culti- 

 vated only on spots amid old ruins, remains of 

 the huts of the pueblo viejo. Thanks to the 

 nomade habits of the natives, enough of these 

 ruins are found, where the earth has been dug 

 and exposed to the air, without producing 

 plants. The tobacco sowed in forests recently 



* Price at San Carlos ; maize, the fanega, three piastres and 

 a half ; coffee, the pound (thirty-two Castillian ounces) one 

 rial of plate ; sarsaparilla, the pound, one piastre ; rice, the 

 almuda, five reals. 



+ By the names of andullos del Rio Negro, y del Alto Ori- 

 noco. At the Rio Negro fifteen tobacco plants furnish two 

 pounds of excellent tobacco. The leaves are carefully dried, 

 and formed into carrots fifteen inches long, which are tied 

 round with packthread. 



