24 
FoKMEK Travellers Along oür Route. 
not only iuflammatiou Ijiit also regular abscesses. They could not how- 
ever be more numerous than they v. ere, so what wonder then that our 
faces already wounded and blistered by sunburn assumed a)i even luore 
shocking appearance to-day. A cool current of air now and agaiu took 
pity on us in the course of the forenoon and scared the hiiugiy merciless 
swarms aAvay for at least minutes at a time: though in the afternoon this 
also disappeared and the oppressive heat increased to such an extent 
that the thermometer recorded a tem]>erature of 108° F. in the shade. 
Beating olf, "shoo'"-ing away, iu short, evei-y attemipt at ridding our- 
selves of the pest remained fruitless, and with a truly despairing resig- 
nation we yielded to the inevitable . 
GO. During the afternoon we passed on the right bank the moutii 
of the small stream Sawara-auuru . Sawara is, as I have already re- 
marked, the Indian name for Aatrocaryuin Jauari, and auuru is the 
name for river in the AA'apisiana language.. By means of this stream 
and an insignificant portage, one can reach the Rupununi in 3 days. 
This path has an historical importance in that, according to ^Vlexander 
von Humboldt, it was the road taken by Surgeon Hortsmann in 1739 
Avhen he left Demerara to seai'ch for the gold and diamond mines in the 
interior, and was also the route followed, according to the same 
authority, by Francisco Jose Rodriguez Barata when in 1793 he twice 
had to take despatches from Para to Surinam. The Indians and Bra- 
zilians still use it, especially in the rainy season. The spread of the 
granite and gneiss beds continually ran from S. 10° E. to S. 10° W.. 
The gneiss almost generally shewed a black colour, and only now and 
then did it appear more yellowish . Here and there we again found those 
metamorphic slates with quartz-veins while other banks consisted of 
a weath€<red mica-schist, yellow jasper, and coarse and fine-grained 
quartz-rubble . 
61. There was a similar glut of fish as there Avas of saad-flies 
on the appearance of these rocky bars : amongst the former the beautiful 
Arowana {Osteo(jlo>isuiii hicirrJiosuin) already mentioned was extremely 
welcome. There was little difficulty in catching them in these stony 
labyrinths because we had only to close off the spaces between several of 
the rocks, when the Indians slashes.! away with their cutlasses at the 
fish that were shut off, or else shot them with their arrows, if the par- 
ticular spots did not permit of the butcliei*}'. A number of Pirapoco or 
Morowai [XipJio^toinu Cucieri) were associated with the Arowana and 
like them always swim on the surface. Their pretty variegated scaly 
dress takes on a uniform brown colour Avhen they are removed from the 
water.. I found here for the first time the Hydro] ijcus sco)iibcroides 
AIüll. Trosch., the I*atha of the Macusi, provided with two teeth 3 to 1 
inches long, which seem especially to like the rocky spots of the savannah 
rivers. Quite as astonishing to me as their teeth, was their muscular 
strength, which was rendered particularly noticeable by their swimming 
here and there for quite a time with the six foot long arrow that had 
transfixed them. The two powerful teeth, bent somewhat inwards, lie 
in the lower jaw and, when the fish shuts its mouth, slide each into a 
round hole situate in the upper one. The flesh is indeed not tasteless, 
