454 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
Cerro de Mono, on the left bank, where a rock 
slopes down into the water. Where the rock is 
hollowed so as to accumulate soil, there is a dense 
shrubbery whose upper edge is protected by 
Bromeliaceae tenaciously adhering to the rock, and 
whose lower margin is formed by a dense mass of a 
shining Selaginella bearing some resemblance to a 
closely cut box-edging. 
Owing to the trader crossing the river to sell 
some goods, it was dark when they approached 
Maypures, and only Lauriano and one Indian had 
been there before. The creek leading to the 
village was not easy to find even in the daytime, 
missing which the boats would be carried down the 
falls. Some torches, specially made to resist rain, 
were lighted and carried in the foremost boat, but a 
violent wind, with heavy rain, often extinguished 
them, and only after much trouble and anxiety the 
entrance was found and the port of Maypures 
reached. Thence in total darkness they had to 
walk over a partly-flooded savanna for about 300 
yards, which, in the absence of any track, seemed to 
Spruce to be a mile, and the exposure to wet in 
the canoes and afterwards probably led to the 
serious illness which soon attacked him. 
Maypures only contains half a dozen families of 
permanent inhabitants, all of mixed blood — white, 
Indian, and negro. But there are other occasional 
residents or visitors, mainly Indians of two tribes, 
the Piaroas and the Guahibos ; a number of the 
latter at this time occupying some open sheds on 
the ancient site of the village farther away from the 
river. Spruce here made one of his characteristic 
drawings of a very old woman of this tribe, of whom 
