PIEJ1BA DEL TIG HE. 
343 
dred leagues, while from the Atabapo to the mouth of the 
Orinoco is more than three hundred and twenty. 
About noon we passed the mouth of the little river Ipuricha- 
pano on the east, and afterwards the granitic rock, known by 
the name of Piedra del Tigre. Between the fourth and fifth 
degrees of latitude, a little to the south of the mountains of 
Sipapo, we reach the southern extremity of that chain of 
cataracts, which I proposed, in a memoir published in 1800, 
to call the Chain of Parima. At 4° 20' it stretches from the 
right bank of the Orinoco toward the east and east-south- 
east. The whole of the land extending from the mountains 
of the Parima towards the river Amazon, which is traversed 
by the Atabapo, the Cassiquiare, and the Kio Negro, is an 
immense plain, covered partly with forests, and partly with 
grass. Small rocks rise here and there like castles. We 
regretted that we had uot stopped to rest near the Piedra 
del Tigre ; for on going up the Atabapo we had great diffi- 
culty to find a spot of dry ground, open and spacious enough 
to light a fire, and place eur instrument and our hammocks. 
On the 28th of April, it rained hard after simset, and we 
■"'ere afraid that our collections would be damaged. The 
poor missionary had his fit of tertian fever, and besought 
ns to re-einbark immediately after midnight. We passed at 
day-break the Piedra and the Ilaudalitos* of Guariuuina. 
The rock is on the east bank ; it is a shelf ol granite, 
covered with psora, cladonia, and other lichens. I could have 
fancied mystdf transported to the north of Europe, to the 
ridge of the mountains of gneiss and granite between Erei- 
bergand Marienberg in Saxony. The cladouias appeared, to 
me to be identical with the Lichen rangiferinus, the L. pixi- 
datus, and the L. polymorplius of Linn a; us. After having 
passed the rapids of Guarinuma, the Indians showed us in 
the middle of the forest, on our right, the ruins of the mis- 
sion of Mendaxari, which has been long abandoned. On the 
east bank of the river, near the little rock of Kemarumo, in 
the midst of Indian plantations, a gigantic bombaxf attracted 
our curiosity. We lauded to measure it ; the height was 
nearly one hundred and twenty feet, and the diameter 
between fourteen and fifteen. This enormous specimen of 
* The rock and little cascades. t Bomba* eeiba. 
