398 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
pueblos of his nation all the way up the Orinoco 
to its head-waters. He has never been to the latter, 
but knows that they lie on one side of a serrania, 
and that when one crosses these the Rio Branco 
is reached in about a day. Above the Raudal de 
Guaharibos there are mountains higher than Duida. 
All the way up there are many mosquitoes and 
zancudos. Little could I learn of their customs. 
Only one wife was allowed to each man. They 
burn the bodies of their dead, collect the calcined 
bones, and pound them in a mortar, and keep them 
in their houses in globular baskets of closely-woven 
mamuri. When they move their residence or 
travel, they carry with them the bones of their 
ancestors. Monagas found several of these mapires 
(baskets) in the house he entered. 
When Monagas revisited the same place two or 
three years afterwards with several companions, 
hoping to catch more Guaharibos, the pueblo had 
disappeared and the roads were grown up. 
When Schomburgk descended the Casiquiari, 
Monagas was residing in Quirabuena and had the 
Guaharibo with him, but he says the traveller did 
not land there. 
Dec. 1 8. — We left Monagas a little before noon. 
In about an hour and a half we passed the mouth 
of the Cafio de Dorotomuni. The Indians assured 
me there is no lake in this cano. 
At the Cano de Dorotomuni nearly all the Rio Negro plants 
have disappeared. Campsia?idra Imirifolia and Oiitea acacicefolia 
hold their way throughout and appear also on the shores of the 
Orinoco. There are also two or three twining Phaseoleae which 
I cannot distinguish from the species gathered on the Rio Negro, 
and which occur here and throughout the Casiquiari. Swartzia 
argentea is as frequent as on the Rio Negro until somewhere 
