372 
THE BIO NEGRO. 
life in the missions of the Upper Orinoco, slept with us 
on the bank of the river. He was an intelligent man, who, 
during a calm and serene night, pressed me with questions 
on the magnitude of the stars, on the inhabitants of the 
moon, on a thousand subjects of which I was as ignorant 
as himself. Being unable by my answers to satisfy his 
curiosity, he said to me in a firm tone of the most positive 
conviction : “ with respect to men, I believe there are no 
more up there than you would have found if you had gone 
by land from Javita to Cassiquiare. I think I see in the 
stars, as here, a plain covered with grass, and a forest (mucho 
monte) traversed by a river.” In citing these words I 
paint the impression produced by the monotonous aaspect 
of those solitary regions. May this monotony not be found 
to extend to the journal of our navigation, and weary the 
reader accustomed to the description of the scenes and his- 
torical memorials of the old continent ! 
Chapter XXIII. 
The Rio Negro. — Boundaries of Brazil. — The Cassiquiare. — Bifurcation of 
the Orinoco. 
The Bio Negro, compared to the Amazon, the Bio de la 
Plata, or the Orinoco, is but a river of the second order. 
Its possession has been for ages of great political importance 
to the Spanish Government, because it is capable of furnish- 
ing a rival power, Portugal, with an easy passage into the 
missions of Guiana, and thereby disturbing the Capitania 
general of Caracas in its southern limits. Three hundred 
years have been spent in vain territorial disputes. Accord- 
ing to the difference of times, and the degree of civilization 
among the natives, resource has been had sometimes to 
the authority of the Pope, and sometimes the support of 
astronomy ; and the disputants being generally more inte- 
rested in prolonging than in terminating the struggle, the 
nautical sciences and the geography of the New Continent, 
have alone gained by this interminable litigation. "When 
the affairs of Paraguay, and the possession of the colony 
of Del Sacramento, became of great importance to the courts 
