615 



himself superior to the people of his tribe. How 

 then could he fail to forget a girl born in the 

 forest ? 



On the 31st of May we passed the rapids of 

 Guahiboes and Garcita. The islands, which 

 rise in the middle of the waters of the river, 

 shone with the purest verdure. The rains of 

 winter had unfolded the spathes of the vadgiai 

 palm-tree, the leaves of which rise straight 

 toward the sky *. The eye is never wearied of 

 the view of those scenes, where the trees and 

 rocks give the landscape that great and severe 

 character, which is marked in the arts by the 

 name of the heroic landscape. We landed before 

 sunset on the eastern bank of the Oroonoko, at 

 the Puerto de la Expedition, in order to visit the 

 cavern of Ataruipe, of which I have spoken 

 above and which is the place of sepulchre of 

 a whole nation destroyed. I shall attempt to 

 describe this cavern, so celebrated among the 

 natives. 



We climbed with difficulty, and not without 

 some danger, a steep rock of granite, entirely 

 bare. It would have been almost impossible to 

 fix the foot on it's smooth and sloping surface, 

 if large crystals of feldspar, resisting decompo- 

 sition, did not stand out from the rock, and fur- 



* See above, chap, xx, p. 50. 

 + See above, chap, xx, p. 72 ; and chap, xxi, p. 119. 



