48 



which flows into the Oroonoko above the conflu- 

 ence of the Carony, and which D'Anville (I 

 know not on what authority) has marked in the 

 first edition of his great map as issuing from the 

 lake of Valencia, and receiving- the waters of the 

 Guayra, could never have served as a natural 

 canal between ttoo basins of rivers. No bifur- 

 cation of this kind exists in the steppe. A 

 great number of Caribbee Indians, who now 

 inhabit the missions of Piritoo, were settled for- 

 merly at the north and east of the table-land of 

 Amana, between Maturin, the mouth of the Rio 

 Arco, and the Guarapiche ; it was by the incur- 

 sions of don Joseph Careno, one of the most 

 enterprising governors of the province of Cu- 

 mana, that a general migration of independant 

 Caribbees toward the banks of the Lower Oroo- 

 noko in 1720 was occasioned. 



The whole of this vast plain consists, as we 

 have shown above of secondary formations ; 

 which toward the South rest immediately on the 

 granitic mountains of the Oroonoko. Toward 

 the north-west they are separated by a narrow 

 band of transition rocks -j- from the primitive 

 mountains of the shore of Caraccas. This abun- 

 dance of secondary rocks, which cover without 

 interruption a space of more than seven thou- 



* Vol iv, p. 384—7. 

 + Vol. iv, p. 279—82. 



