28 



those blocks of stone destitute of vegetable 

 mouldy and piled up to great heights, you are 

 suffocated as if you were placed before the 

 opening of a furnace. The winds, if they be 

 ever felt in those woody regions, far from bring- 

 ing coolness, appear more heated when they 

 have passed over beds of stone, and heaps of 

 rounded blocks of granite. This augmentation 

 of heat adds to the insalubrity of the climate. 



Among the causes of the depopulation of the 

 Raudales, I have not reckoned the small-pox, 

 that malady, which in other parts of America 

 makes such cruel ravages, that the natives, 

 seized with dismay, burn their huts, kill their 

 children, and renounce every kind of society*. 

 This scourge is almost unknown on the banks 

 of the Oroonoko, and should it penetrate to 

 them, it may be hoped, that it's effects would be 

 immediately countervailed by vaccination, the 

 blessings of which are daily felt along the coasts 

 of Terra Firma. What depopulates the Christian 

 settlements is the repugnance of the Indians for 

 the regulations of the missions, the insalubrity 

 of a climate at once hot and damp, bad nourish- 

 ment, want of care in the diseases of children, 

 and the guilty practice of mothers of preventing 

 pregnancy by the use of deleterious herbs. 



* As the Mahas in the plains of the Missoury, according 

 to the accounts of the American travellers, Clark and Lewis. 



