DANGEBS OE BITEE-NAVIGATION. 
423 
menaced. The view of the river, and the hum of the insects, 
were a little monotonous; but some remains of our natural 
cheerfulness enabled us to find sources of relief during our 
wearisome passage. We discovered, that by eating small 
portions of dry cacao ground without sugar, and drinking a 
large quantity of the river water, we succeeded in appeasing 
our appetite ‘for several hours. The ants and the mosquitos 
troubled us more than the humidity and the want of food. 
Notwithstanding the privations to which we were exposed 
during our excursions in the Cordilleras, the navigation from 
Mandavaea to Esmeralda has always appeared to us the 
most painful part of our travels in America. I advise those 
who are not very desirous of seeing the great bifurcation of 
the Orinoco, to take the way of the Atabapo in preference to 
that of the Cassiquiare. 
Above the Cano Duractumuni, the Cassiquiare pursues a 
uniform direction from north-east to south-west. We were 
surprised to see how much the high steep banks of the 
Cassiquiare had been undermined on each side by the 
sudden risings of the water. Uprooted trees formed as it 
were natural rafts; and being half-buried in the mud, they 
were extremely dangerous for canoes. We passed the night 
of the 20th of May, the last of our passage on the Cassi- 
quiare, near the point of the bifurcation of the Orinoco. 
We had some hope of being able to make an astronomical 
observation, as falling-stars of remarkable magnitude were 
visible through the vapours that veiled the sky; whence we 
concluded that the stratum of vapours must be very thin, 
since meteors of this kind have scarcely ever been seen 
below a cloud. Those we now beheld shot towards the 
north, and succeeded each other at almost equal intervals. 
The Indians, who seldom ennoble by their expressions the 
wanderings of the imagination, name the falling-stars the 
urine; and the dew the spittle of the stars. The clouds 
thickened anew, and we discerned neither the meteors, nor 
the real stars, for which we had impatienly waited during 
several days. 
We had been told, that we should find the insects at 
Esmeralda “still more cruel and voracious,” than in the 
branch of the Orinoco which we were going up; nevertheless 
