GUMS AND BUSINS. 
357 
(where there is neither pine, thuya, taxodium, nor even a 
podocarpus,) resins, balsams, and aromatic gums, are fur. 
nished by the maronobea, the icica, and the amyris. Tha 
collecting of these gummy and resinous substances is a 
trade in the village of Javita. The most celebrated resin 
bears the name of mani ; and of this we saw masses of 
several hundred-weight, resembling colophony and mastic. 
The tree called mani by the Paraginis, which M. Bonpland 
believes to be the Moronobasa coccinea, furnishes but a 
small quantity of the substance employed in the trade with 
Angostura. The greatest part comes from the mararo or 
caragna , which is an amyris. It is remarkable enough, that 
the name mani, which Aublet heard among the Galibis* of 
Cayenne, was again heard by us at J avita., three hundred 
leagues distant from Trench Guiana. The moronobasa or 
symphonia of Javita yields a yellow resin; the caragna, a 
resin strongly odoriferous, and white as snow; the latter 
beomes yellow where it is adherent to the internal part of 
old bark. 
We went every day to see how our canoe advanced on 
the portages. Twenty-three Indians were employed in 
dragging it by land, placing branches of trees to serve 
as rollers. In this manner a small boat proceeds m a 
day or a day and a half, from the waters of the Tuamun 
to those of the Cano Pimichin, which flow into the 
Kio Negro. Our canoe being very large, and having to 
pass the cataracts a second time, it was necessary to avoid 
with particular care any friction on the bottom ; conse- 
quently the passage occupied more than four days. It is only 
since 1795 that a road has been traced through the forest. 
By substituting a canal for this portage, as I proposed to 
the ministry of king Charles IV, the communication between 
the Rio Negro and Angostura, between tbe Spanish Orinoco 
and the Portuguese possessions on the Amazon, would he 
singularly facilitated. . . „ . 
In this forest we at length obtained precise information 
* The Galibis or Caribis (the r has been changed into l, as often 
happens) are of the great stock of the Carib nations. The products use- 
ful in commerce and" in domestic life lw?e received the same denomina- 
tion in every part of America which this warlike and commercial peopls 
have overrun. 
