TO CATARACTS OF MAYPURES 451 
dition and dangerous to cross, care not being taken 
to make them of good and durable timber. With 
the exception of a short breadth of caatinga at 
Pimichin, and another about three-fourths of the 
way to Javita, the forest is all lofty. Jebarie is very 
abundant, and there are some very fine specimens. 
There are also fine rubber trees {Sipkonia lutea) 
from which the people had lately begun to collect 
the gum. In some parts the road was covered with 
large patches of Leucobryum Martianum, and at one 
place were several tufts of a white species looking 
like L. glaucum, but with more elongated points 
to the leaves. About midway a cross is erected. 
As he only found two young men to help his own 
Indians, they were all rather heavily laden, and it 
took them the greater part of the day to reach 
Javita. 
Spruce remarks that Javita and Balthazar (the 
first village on the Atabapo river) are the neatest 
in the whole district, and their inhabitants the least 
demoralised, due chiefly to the teaching of an old 
man, a Zambo, resident in Balthazar, whose talent 
for singing masses and litanies and strict attention 
to religious observances have given him great 
influence, and gained for him the name of Padre 
Arnaoud. 
Having obtained the use of a boat belonging to 
a trader who had come up from the Orinoco, Spruce 
was able to go on at once from Javita, and in three 
days reached San Fernando de Atabapo, situated at 
the junction of that river with the Guaviare, one of 
the largest western tributaries of the Orinoco and 
only a few miles from its confluence with the great 
river. It is surrounded by very low lands, flooded 
