456 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
Orinoco ; and I thought how, fifty years previously, 
Humboldt had probably looked upon the same 
picture, which at that time revolutionary troubles 
and sacrilegious iconoclasts had not so defaced as to 
render its identification impossible." 
I will now give Spruce's description of Maypures 
and the falls.] 
Extract from the Journal 
No part of the river is visible from the village, a 
narrow fringe of forest concealing it. To the west- 
ward extend wide savannas with interspersed 
clumps and patches of forest, while on every side, 
and sometimes rising in the midst of the savanna, 
are bold black cerros only partially covered with 
vegetation. I climbed the cerro bounding the 
savanna of Maypures on the west ; it rises out of 
the plain to a height of about looo feet, its sides 
abruptly swelling and naked save in hollows, its 
summit crowned with low dense forest, among 
which the foliage of Corozito is very conspicuous. 
From this cerro a magnificent view is obtained. At 
its foot, to the north, is a broad black river (the 
Tuparo) which enters the falls, and is seen winding 
round a broad sheet of granite at the base of the 
mountains ; while its upward course can be traced, 
first, among broken hills soon subsiding into a level 
plain, and then across the latter through an alter- 
nation of savanna and forest to the uttermost limits 
of vision. Looking directly west, not a single 
elevation appears upon the horizon. To the east- 
ward of the Orinoco appears the whole range of the 
mountains of Sipapo, of which a remarkable triune 
