443 



nice in the fabrication of their chocolate. "This 

 is the Puerto del Cacao," said the pilot ; "it is 

 here our Padres sleep, when they go to Esme- 

 ralda to buy sarbacans and juvia (the pleasant 

 nuts of the bertholletia)." Not five boats how- 

 ever pass annually by the Cassiquiare ; and 

 since we left Maypures, that is for a whole 

 month, we had not met one living soul on the 

 rivers which we went up, except in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of the missions. To the 

 south of lake Duractumuni we slept in a forest 

 of palm trees. It rained violently, but the 

 pothoses, arums, and lianas, furnished so thick a 

 natural trellis, that we were sheltered as under a 

 vault of foliage. The Indians, whose hammocks 

 were placed on the edge of the river, interwove 

 the heliconias and other musacese, so as to form 

 a kind of roof over them. Our fires lighted up 

 to the height of fifty or sixty feet the palm trees, 

 the lianas loaded with flowers, and the columns 

 of white smoke, which ascended in a straight 

 line toward the sky. The whole exhibited a 

 magnificent spectacle; but, to enjoy it with tran- 

 quillity, we should have breathed an air free 

 from insects. 



The most discouraging of all physical suffer- 

 ings are those, which, uniform in their duration, 

 can be combated only by long patience. It is 

 probable, that in the exhalations of the forests of 

 the Cassiquiare Mr. Bonpland imbibed the seeds 



