THE CHIRIYA PALM-TREE. 
409 
mountains?* or have these nails of rock, these turrets of 
granite, been uphcaved by the elastic forces that still act in 
the interior of our planet ? Wc may be permitted to medi- 
tate a little on the origin of mountains, after having seen 
the position of the Mexican volcanos, and of trachyte 
summits on an elongated crevice ; having found in the 
Andes of South America primitive and volcanic rocks in a 
straight line in the same chain ; and when we recollect the 
island, three miles in circumference, and of a great height, 
which in modern times issued from the depths of the ocean 
near Oonalaska. 
The banks of the Cassiquiare are adorned with the chiriva 
palm-tree with pinnate leaves, silvery on the under part. The 
rest of the forest furnishes only trees with large, coriaceous, 
glossy leaves, that have plain edges. This peculiar physiog- 
nomy t of the vegetation of the Guainia, the Tuamim, and 
the Cassiquiare, is owing to the preponderance of the families 
of the guttifem, the sapot®, and the taurine®, in the equa- 
torial regions. The serenity of the sky promising us a tine 
night, we resolved, at five in the evening, to rest near the 
iHedra de Culimacari, a solitary granite rock, like all those 
which I have described between the Atabapo and the Cassi- 
quiare. We found by the bearings of the sinuosities ol the 
river, that this rock is nearly in the latitude of the mission 
of San Francisco Solano. In those desert countries, where 
man has hitherto left only fugitive traces of bis existence, I 
constantly endeavoured to make my observations near the 
mouth of a river, or at the foot of a rock distinguishable by 
its form. Such points only as are immutable by their 
nature can serve for the basis of geographical maps. I 
obtained, in the night of the 10th of May, a good observa- 
tion of latitude by a of the Southern Cross ; the longitude 
Was determined, but with less precision, by the chronometer, 
* The Sierra de la Parime, or of the Upper Orinoco, and the ^Sierra 
(o.- Campos) dos Pareeis, are part of the mountains of Matto Grosso, 
fi nd form the northern hack of the Sierra de Chiquitos. ! here name 
the two chains of mountains running from east to west, and bordering the 
Gains or basins of the Cassiquiare, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon, 
between 5° 30' north, and 14° south latitude. 
t This physiognomy struck us forcibly, in the vast forests of Spanish 
httiana, only between the second and third degrees of north latitudes. 
