THE INDIAN CANOES. 
355 
Out considerably hotter than that of the Gnainia or Rio 
Negro. The centigrade thermometer kept up in the day to 
twenty-sis or twenty-seven degrees; and in the night to 
twenty-one degrees. 
From the 30th of April to the 11th of May, I had not 
been able to see any star in the meridian so as to determine 
the latitude of places. I watched whole nights in order to 
make use of the method of double altitudes ; but all my 
efforts were useless. The fogs of the north of Europe are 
not more constant than those of the equatorial regions of 
Guiana. On the 4th of May, I saw the sun for some 
minutes ; and found by the chronometer and the horary 
angles the longitude of Javita to be 70° 22', or 1° 15' farther 
West than the longitude of the junction of the Apure with 
the Orinoco. This result is interesting for laying down on 
our maps the unknown country lying between the Xie and 
the sources of the Issana, situated on the same meridian 
with the mission of Javita. ' 
The Indians of Javita, whose number amounts to one 
Hundred and sixty, now belong for the most part to the na- 
tions of the Poimisanos, the Echinavis, and the Paraganis. 
They are employed in the construction of boats, formed 
of the trunks of sassafras, a large species of laurel, hoi* 
lowed by means of fire and the hatchet. These trees are 
more than one hundred feet high ; the wood is yellow, 
resinous, almost incorruptible in water, and has a very agree- 
a ble smell. We saw them at San Fernando, at Javita, and 
more particularly at Esmeralda, where most of the canoes of 
the Orinoco are constructed, because the adjacent forests 
furnish the largest trunks of sassafras. 
•The forest between Javita and the Cafio Pimichin, contains 
®u immense quantity of gigantic trees, ocoteas, and laurels, 
the Amasonia arborea,* the Retiniphyllum secundiflorum, 
the curvana, the jacio, the iacifate, of which the wood is red 
hie the brazilletto, the guamufate, with its fin’ leaves of 
* This is a new species of the genus taligalea of Aublet. On the same 
®P°t grow the Bignonia magnolimfolia, B. jasminifolia, Solanum topiro, 
usticia pectoralis, Faramea cymosa, Piper javitense, Sclcria hirtella, 
ehites javitensis, Lindsea javitensis, and that curious plant of the family 
" the verbenacese, which I have dedicated to the illustrious Leopold von 
ech, in whose early labours I participated- 
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