312 
BEJ1ED/E8 FOB THE FEVEB. 
The poor missionaries of the Orinoco, who are afflicted 
with tertian fevers during a great part of the year, sel- 
dom travel without a little bag filled with frutas de burro. 
1 have already observed, that between the tropics, the 
use of aromatics, for instance very strong coffee, the Croton 
cascarilla, or the pericarp of the Unona xvlopioides, is 
generally preferred to that of the astringent bark qf cin- 
chona, or of Bonplandia trifolatia, which is the Angostura 
bark. The people of America have the most inveterate 
prejudice against the employment of different kinds of 
cinchona; and in the very countries where this valuable 
remedy grows, they try (to use their own phrase) to cut 
off the fever, by infusions of Scoparia dulcis, and hot lemon- 
ade prepared with sugar and the small wild lime, the rm 
of which is equally oily and aromatic. 
The weather was unfavourable for astronomical obser- 
vations. I obtained, however, on the 20th of April, a good 
series of corresponding altitudes of the sun, according to 
whieh the chronometer gave 70° 37' 33 ' for the longitude 
of the mission of Maypures ; the latitude was found, by a 
star observed towards the north, to be 5° 13' 57" ; and by ® 
star observed towards the south, 5° 13' 7". The error o 
the most recent maps is half a degree of longitude and ban 
a degree of latitude. It would be difficult to relate the 
trouble and torments which these nocturnal observations 
cost us. Nowhere is a denser cloud of mosquitos to d 
found. It formed, as it were, a particular stratum sonic 
feet above the ground, and it thickened as we brought light 
to illumine our artificial horizon. The inhabitants of May 
pures, for the most part, quit the village to sleep in 1 1 
islets amid the cataracts, where the number of insects 1 
less; others make a fire of brushwood in their huts, an 
suspend their hammocks in the midst of the smoke. . 
“We spent two days and a half in the little village 0 
Maypures, on the banks of the great "Upper Cataract, an 
on the 21st April we embarked in the canoe we had 0 ' 
tained from the missionary of Carichana. It was mn ° 
damaged by the shoals it had struck against, and the car ' 
lessness of the Indians ; but still greater dangers await 
it. It was to be dragged over land, across an isthmus 
thirty-six thousand feet ; from the Rio Tuamini to 
