242 
PREVALENCE OF FEVERS. 
turned to the woods, weary of the regulations of the mission. 
Epidemic fevers, which prevailed with violence at the en* 
trance of the rainy season, contributed greatly to this unex- 
pected flight. In 1709 the mortality was very considerable 
at Carichana, on the banks of the Meta, and at the Eaudal 
Df Atures. The Indian of the forest conceives a horror oi 
the life of the civilized man, when, I will not say any mis- 
fortune befalls his family settled in the mission, but merely 
any disagreeable or unforeseen accident. Natives, who were 
neophytes, have been known to desert for ever the Christian 
establishments, on account of a great drought; as if tin* 
calamity would not have reached them equally in their plan- 
tations, had they remained in their primitive independence. 
The fevers which prevail during a great part of the ye* 0 * 
in the villages of Atures and Maypures, around the tw° 
Great Cataracts of the Orinoco, render these spots highly 
dangerous to European travellers. They are caused b' 
violent heats, in combination with the excessive humidity oI 
the air, bad nutriment, and, if we may believe the native* 
the pestilent exhalations rising from the hare rocks of the 
Baudales. These fevers of the Orinoco appeared to us to 
resemble those which prevail every year between New Bar- 
celona, La Guayra, and Porto Cabello, in the vicinity of t»® 
sea; and which often degenerate into adynamic fevers. „ 
have had my little fever (mi calenturita) only eight months, 
said the good missionary of the Atures, who accompanied u 
to the Rio Negro ; speaking of it as of an habitual evil, easy 
to he borne. The fits were violent, but of short duration- 
He was sometimes seized with them when lying along 
the boat under a shelter of branches of trees, sometn 11 _ 
when exposed to the burning rays of the sun on an op® 
beach. These tertian agues are attended with great debib , 
of the muscular system; yet we find poor ecclesiastics 0 
the Orinoco, who endure for several years these calenturrfC' 
or tercianas : their effects are not so fatal as those which » _ 
experienced from fevers of much shorter duration in tef° 
perate climates. _ _ , u , 
1 have just alluded to the noxious influence on the sa* 
brityofthe atmosphere, which is attributed by the nattf ' 
and even the missionaries, to tho hare rocks. This opm 1 , 
is the more worthy of attention, as it is connected " 
