COAST SCENE KY OF THE OKINOCO. 
7 
products of the manufacturing industry of Europe. I have 
seen long boats (lanchas) set olf, the cargoes of which were 
valued at eight or ten thousand piastres. These boats went 
first up the Orinoco to Cabruta ; then along the Apure to 
oan Vicente; and tinally, on the Eio Santo Domingo, as far 
Torunos, which is the port of Variuas Nuevas. The little 
town of San Fernando de Apure, of which I have already 
given a description, is the magazine of this river-trade, which 
might become more considerable by the introduction of 
steamboats. 
I have now described the country through which we 
passed during a voyage of five hundred leagues ; it remains 
tor me to make known the small space ot three degrees fifty- 
two minutes of longitude, that separates the present capital 
trom the mouth of the Orinoco. Exact knowledge of the 
delta, and the course of the Eio Garony, is at once interest- 
iiig to hydrography and to European commerce. 
When a vessel coming from sea would enter the priu- 
eipal mouth ot the Orinoco, the Boca de Navios, it should 
make the land at the Punta Barima. The right or southern 
unk is the highest : the granitic rock pierces the marshy 
^il at a small distance in the interior, between the Cano 
arima., the Aquire, and the Cuyuni. The left, or northern 
. ^dk ot the Orinoco, which stretches along the delta towards 
e Boca de Mariusas and the Punta Baxa, is very low, 
Hu IS distinguishable at a distance only by the clumps of 
monche palm-trees which embellish the passage. This is 
e sago-tree* of the country; it yields the flour ot which 
fecula or medullary flour of the sago-trees is found 
the '» a group of palms which M. Kunth has distinguished by 
ueHo-n™* calamea. It is collected, however, in the Indian Archi- 
PhoMi ' .®*^dcle of trade, from the trunks of the Cycas revoluta, the 
{Ain^r Corypha umbraculifera, and the Caryota mens, 
of ni 0 / Madras, 1813.) The quantity 
Rumol " which the real sago-tree of Asia affords ^Sagus 
any i^hp’ *^®*'™-vylon sagn, Roxb.) exceeds that which is furnished by 
somerim*^ plant useful to man. One trunk of a tree in its fifteenth year 
word saiT* ywws six hundred pounds weight of sago, or meal (for the 
resided a*! meal in the dialect of Amboyna). Mr. Crawford, who 
»cre coni 1°**° Indian Archipelago, calculates that an English 
yield nne E v°main four hundred and thirty, five sago-trecs, which would 
®f feciil ®*'d twenty thousand five hundred pounds avoirdupois 
a, or more than eight thousand pounds yearly. (History of the 
