An Impenetrable Pine-Appie Thicket 
213 
Yaya*, making its way along the eastern bank, diverts the river, coming 
here from the .West, entirely to the North, the course of which it follows 
some 40 miles throughout. The two rivers, the Demerara and Essequibo, 
are at their closest here as the intervening distance must amount to only 
about 8 miles. Five miles farther up we hit the approximately 200-foot 
high granite chain of Oumaia, which again deflects the river to the 
eastward, forming here the sharpest bend in its entire course. 
727. The pleasure which the smooth and tranquil stream with its 
wildly romantic and fertile banks had so far afforded us, was unfor- 
tunately to be soon dimmed. Hitherto, the charming riverside scenery 
with its 80 to 100-foot high wall-like fringe of vegetation, exactly 
resembled a giant hedge trimmed with shears, where, in addition to the 
creepers previously mentioned, one could distinguish the beautiful Petrea 
voiubilis with almost foot long flower-bunches, the glorious Clitoria 
Poitea ui DeC., Echites insignis Sp., Phaseolus lasiocarpus Mart., Securid- 
aca marginata Benth., and Cacoucia coccinea Aubl., while the resulting 
fairy flower-carpet beamed with all and every colour in which the pretty 
Calyptrion Aubletii , together with the new species C. nitidum, and the 
equally new Combretum aurantiacum Benth. stood pre-eminent. Now, 
however, the view soon became changed again into its former one of 
chaotic confusion of wave and rock. The menacing thunder of the 
second series of cataracts of Cumaka and Akramallali also resounded 
from the far distance through the virgin forests. We managed to get. 
over them all right and picked a camp on an island that was so thickly 
covered with pineapples that cutlass and axe Avere necessary to clean up 
a free space. The long saw-edged leaves formed at all events an im- 
penetrable thicket as if intended to prelect the small miserable looking 
but usually aromatic fruits; though, in spite of this, the largest propor- 
tion of them had been eaten both by insects as well as by marsupials 
(Didelphis) and proboscideans ( Nasua )■ 
72S. On the following morning we passed the Potaro which dis- 
charges its dark brown waters into the Essequibo from the South-West 
It also must be uncommonly rich in rapids and is only separated from 
the Mazarnni by a small portage. f 
729. Continuous thundering and Avhite foam flakes flowing on 
towards us betokened a new cataract, and there soon rose ahead a truly 
confused scene of granite boulders lying one over the other, the surfaces 
of which were covered with a thick crust of black brown-oxide of iron. 
The rocky dam crosses the river from North-East to South-West and 
thereby connects at the same time the two arms of the Curamucu Range 
which stretch towards both banks and rise to a height of 1,200 feet. We 
also managed these falls Avithout any loss. But hardly had we caught our 
breath again than the hateful noise threatened us anew, and a few mis- 
chievous foam-flakes came to meet us like harbingers of fresh danger. 
* The Arisaru Range consists of diabase, not granite, although some granite is seen at 
the foot of the range near the water edge. The Yaya Hills are diabase. (E.E.W.) 
t Tt was not until 1870 that Barrington Brown reported the existence of the grand 
Kaieteuk Fall in the Potaro (Ed.) 
