592 



We could not. discover what the flowers were^ 

 that diffused this perfume. The forest was im- 

 penetrable : M. Bonpland believed, that large 

 clumps of pancratium and other liliaceous 

 plants were concealed in the neighbouring 

 marshes. Descending the Oroonoko by the 

 favour of the current, we passed first the mouth 

 of the Rio Cunucunumo, and then the Guanami 

 and the Puruname. The two banks of the prin- 

 cipal river are entirely desert ; lofty mountains 

 rise toward the north, and on the south a vast 

 plain extends far as the eye can reach beyond 

 the sources of the Atacavi, which lower down 

 takes the name of the Atabapo. There is some- 

 thing melancholy and painful in this aspect of a 

 river, on which not even a fisherman's canoe is 

 seen. Some independant tribes, the Abirianoes 

 and the Maquiritares, dwell in the mountainous 

 country ; but in the neighbouring savannahs*, 

 bounded by the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, the 

 Oroonoko, and the Rio Negro, there is now 

 scarcely any trace of a human habitation. I 

 say now ; for here, as in other parts of Guayana, 

 rude figures -j- representing the Sun, the Moon, 



* They form a quadrilateral plot of a thousand square 

 leagues, the opposite sides of which have contrary slopes, the 

 Cassiquiare flowing toward the south, the Atabapo toward 

 the north, the Oroonoko toward the north-west, and the Rio 

 Negro toward the south-east. 



t Compare vol. iv, p. 473 j and p. 382 of the present vo- 

 lume. 



