202 
HUMIDITY Or THE CLIMATE. 
Cataracts seated on the ground, playing at cards, and 
smoking tobacco in long pipes. Their ample blue garments, 
their shaven heads, and their long beards, might have led us 
to mistake them for natives of the East. These poor priests 
received us in the kindest manner, giving us every inlorma- 
tion necessary for the continuation of our voyage. They 
had suffered from tertian fever for some months ; and their 
pale and emaciated aspect easily convinced us that the 
countries we were about to visit were not without danger to 
the health of travellers. 
The Indian pilot, who had brought us from San Eemando 
de Apure as far as the shore of Pararuma, was unacquainted 
with the passage of the rapids* of the Orinoco, and would 
not undertake to conduct our bark any farther. We were 
obliged to conform to his will. Happily for us, the mis- 
sionary of Carichana consented to sell us a fine canoe at a 
very moderate price: and Father Bernardo Zca, missionaiy 
of the Atures and Maypures near the great cataracts, 
offered, though still unwell, to accompany us as far as the 
frontiers of Brazil. The number of natives who can assist m 
guiding boats through the Baudales is so inconsiderable that, 
but for the presence of the monk, we should have risked 
spending whole weeks in these humid and unhealthy 
regions. On the banks of the Orinoco, the forests of the 
Bio Nem-o are considered as delicious spots. _ The air is 
indeed cooler and more healthful. The river is free from 
crocodiles ; one may bathe without apprehension, and Of 
night as well as by day there is less torment from the sting 
of insects than on the Orinoco. Bather Zea hoped to re 
establish his health by visiting the Missions of Bio ISegrO' 
He talked of those places with that enthusiasm which is ted 
in all the colonies of South America for everything far off 
The assemblage of Indians at Pararuma again excited 
in us that interest, which everywhere attaches man in » 
cultivated state to the study of man in a savage condition- 
and the successive development of his intellectual faculties- 
How difficult to recognize in this infancy of society, in tm- 
assemblage of dull, silent, inanimate Indians, the primitiv 
character of our species! Human nature does not here 
manifest those features of artless simplicity, of wtoc" 
* Little cascades (chorros raudalitos). 
