416 



ing-instrurnents, and fire-arms, a few casks of 

 brandy, to serve as a medium of barter with the 

 Indians of the Oroonoko. 



We departed from San Fernando * on the 

 30th of March, at four in the afternoon. The 

 weather was extremely hot ; the thermometer 

 rising in the shade to 34°, though the breeze 

 blew very strongly from the South-East. Owing 

 to this contrary wind we could not set our sails. 

 We were accompanied in the whole of this 

 voyage on the Apure, the Oroonoko, and the 

 Rio Negro, by the brother-in-law of the gover- 

 nor of the province of Varinas, Don Nicolas 

 Sotto, who, recently arrived from Cadiz, had 

 made an excursion to San Fernando. Desirous 

 of visiting countries so calculated to excite the 

 curiosity of a European, he did not hesitate to 

 confine himself with us during seventy-four days 

 in a narrow boat, infested with moschettoes. 



* I found, by meridian altitudes of a in the Southern 

 Cross, the latitude of San Fernando de Apure (at the house 

 of the missionary) 7° 53> 12". (Obs. Ast., vol. i, p. 216.) 

 The longitude by the timekeeper was 70° 21' 10"; the dip 

 of the needle, 36 71°, cent. div. The intensity of magnetic 

 action manifested itself, as at Calabozo, by two hundred and 

 twenty-two oscillations in 10'. The name of San Fernando 

 is not yet found on modern maps, for instance on the fine 

 maps of Arrowsmith and Bru6, notwithstanding the astrono- 

 mical position of this town was published twelve years ago 

 m my Conspectus Longitudinum et Latitudinum America aqui- 

 noctialis. 



