INSULATED DOCKS. 
339 
towards one of its extremities, preceding, and announcing 
in some sort, a great depression* of the chain. This phe- 
nomenon is again ohseiTcd in the group of the Parime, the 
loftiest summits of ■which, the Duida and the Maraguaca, 
are in the most southerly range of mountains, where the 
plains of the Cassiquiarc and the Eio Negro begin. 
These plains or savannahs, which are covered with forests 
only in the vicinity of the rivers, do not, however, exhibit 
the same uniform continuity as the Llanos of the Lower 
Orinoco, of the Meta, and of Buenos Ayres. They are 
interrupted by groups of hills (Cen’os de llaribapa), and by 
insulated rocks of grotesque fonn which pierce the soil, and 
from a distance fix the attention of the traveller. These 
granitic, and often stratified masses, resemble tbe ruins of 
pillars or edifices. The same force which upheaved the 
■whole group of the Sierra Parime, has acted here and there 
in the plains as far as beyond the equator. The existence of 
these steeps and sporadic hills, renders it difficult determine 
the precise limits of a system in which the mountains are 
not longitudinally ranged as in a vein. As we advance 
towards the frontier of the Portuguese province of the Kio 
Negro the high rocks become more rare, and we no longer 
find the shelves or dykes of gneiss-granite which cause rapids 
and cataracts in the rivers. 
Such is the surface of the soil between 68i and 70| 
of longitude, between the meridian of the bifurcation of the 
Orinoco, and that of San Pernando de Atabapo; further on,^ 
Westward of the Upper Itio Negro, towards the source of 
that river, and its tributary streams the Xie and the Uaiipes 
(lat. 1°— 2i°, long. 72° — 74°) lies a small mountainous table- 
land, in which Indian traditions place a de oro, that 
is a lake, surrounded with beds of auriferous earth. f At 
Maroa, the most westerly mission of the Itio Negro, the 
Indians assured me that that river, as well as the Inirida (a 
tributary of the Guavarc), rises at the distance of five days 
* As seen in Mont Blanc and Chimborazo. 
t According to the journals of Anuidia and Fritz, the Manao Indians 
(Manoas) obtained from the banks of the Yqniari (Iguiare or Iguare), gold 
of which they made thin plates. The manuscript notes of Don Apolli- 
nario also mention the gold of the Rio Uaupes. (La Condamme. Voya^ 
4 TAmazone.) We must not confound the Laguna de Oro, which is said 
z 2 
