a moTmuB-rosT. 
391 
the almonds of the Amazon, or Brazil-nuts. ¥e have made 
it known by the name of Bertholletia excelsa. The trees 
attain after eight years’ growth the height of thirty feet. 
The military establishment of this frontier consisted of 
seventeen soldiers, ten of whom were detached for the secu- 
rity of the neighbouring missions. Owing to the extreme 
humidity of the air there are not four muskets in a con- 
dition to be fired. The Portuguese have from twenty-five 
to thirty men, better clothed and armed, at the little fort 
of San Jose de Maravitanos. "We found in the mission of 
San Carlos but one garita ,* a square house, constructed 
with unbaked bricks, and containing six field-pieces. The 
little fort, or, as they think proper to call it here, the 
Castillo de San Felipe, is situated opposite San Carlos, on 
the western bank of the Bio Negro. 
The banks of the Upper G-uainia will be more productive 
when, by the destruction of the forests, the excessive 
humidity of the air and the soil shall be diminished. In 
their present state of culture maize scarcely grows, and 
the tobacco, which is of the finest quality, and much cele- 
brated on the coast of Caracas, is well cultivated only on 
spots amid old ruins, remains of the huts of the pueblo viejo 
(old town). Indigo grows wild near the villages of Maroa, 
Davipe, and Tomo. Under a different system from that 
which we found existing in these countries, the Bio Negro 
will produce indigo, coffee, cacao, maize, and rice, in abun- 
dance. 
The passage from the mouth of the Bio Negro to Grand 
Para occupying only twenty or twenty-five days, it would 
not have taken us much more time to have gone down the 
Amazon as far as the coast of Brazil, than to return by the 
Cassiquiare and the Orinoco to the northern coast of Ca- 
racas. We were informed at San Carlos that, on account 
of political circumstances, if; was difficult at that moment 
to pass from the Spanish to the Portuguese settlements; 
hut we did not know till after our return to Europe the 
extent of the danger to which we should have been exposed 
in. proceeding as far as Barcellos. It was known at Brazil, 
possibly through the medium of the newspapers, that I was 
* This word literally signifies a sentry-box ; but it is here employed in 
Uie sense of store-house or arsenal. 
