420 



are so transparent, that the fish may be seen at 

 the bottom of the river *. 



We passed some turbulent rapids before we 

 reached the mission of Mandavaca. The vil- 

 lage, which bears also the name of Quirabuena, 

 contains only sixty natives. The state of the 

 Christian settlements is in general so miserable, 

 that, in the whole course of the Cassiquiare, on 

 a length of 50 leagues, not 200 inhabitants are 

 found. The banks of this river were indeed 

 more peopled before the arrival of the mission- 

 aries ; the Indians have withdrawn into the 

 woods, toward the east ; for the plains of the 



* Et. Quatremere, Mem. sur VEgypte, vol. ii, p. 7 j Burck- 

 hardty Tr. p. 498. It is very remarkable, that the Blue Nile 

 ( Bahar el Azrek ) is called by some Arabian geographers the 

 Green Nile, and that thePersian poets often term the sky green 

 (akhzar), as the berylblue (zarkj. It cannot be supposed, 

 that the people of Semitic race confound green and blue in 

 their sensations, as their ear sometimes confounds the vowels 

 o and w, e and a. The word azrek is applied to all water 

 which is very limpid, and not milky ; and abi-rank, (colour 

 of water) signifies blue. Abd-Allatif, speaking of that green 

 and transparent branch of the Nile, which comes from a lake 

 in the mountains south-east of Sennaar, attributed the green 

 colour of this Alpine lake " to the vegetable substances, 

 which abound in stagnant waters." Account of Egypt, trans- 

 lated by M. Silvestre de Sacy, p. 337. This is the explana- 

 tion which I gave above (p. 191) of those coloured waters, 

 falsely called aguas negras. The most limpid and transparent 

 waters are every where those that are not white. 



