45(> JSA.STE11N COTJBSE OE THE OBINOCO. 
a term which truly expresses their position. The whole 
weight of labour being supported by these unhappy women, 
we must not be surprised if, in some nations, their number 
is extremely small. Where this happens, a kind of poly 
andry is formed, which we find more fully displayed m 
Thibet, and on the lofty mountains at the extremity of the 
Indian peninsula. Among the Avanos and Maypures, 
brothers have often but one wife. When an Indian, who 
lives in polygamy, becomes a Christian, he is compelled by 
the missionaries, to choose among his wives her whom he 
prefers, and to reject the others. At the moment of separa- 
tion the new convert sometimes discovers the most valuable 
qualities in the wives he is obliged to abandon. One under- 
stands gardening perfectly ; another knows how to prepare 
chiza, an intoxicating beverage extracted from the root of cas- 
sava ; all appear to him alike clever and useful. Sometimes 
the desire of preserving his wives overcomes in the Indian 
his inclination to Christianity ; but most frequently, in his 
perplexity, the husband prefers submitting to the choice of 
the missionary, as to a blind fatality. 
The Indians, who from May to August take journeys to 
the east of Esmeralda, to gather the vegetable productions 
of the mountains of Yumariquin, gave us precise notions of 
the course of the Orinoco to the east of the mission. This 
part of my itinerary may differ entirely from the maps that 
preceded it. I shall begin the description of this country 
with the granitic group of Duida, at the foot of which we 
sojourned. This group is bounded on the west by the Eio 
Tamatama, and on the east by the Eio Gmapo. Eetween 
these two tributary streams of the Orinoco, amid the 
morichales, or clumps of mauritia palm-trees, which sur- 
round Esmeralda, the Eio Sodom oni flows, celebrated for 
the excellence of the pine-apples that grow upon its banks. 
I measured, on the 22nd of May, in the savannah at the 
foot of Duida, a base of four hundred and seventy-five 
metres in length; the angle, under which the summit of 
the mountain appeared at the distance of thirteen thousand 
three hundred and twenty-seven metres, was still nine 
degrees. A trigonometric measurement, made with great 
care, gave me for Duida (that is, for the most elevated peak, 
which is south-west of the Cerro Maraguaca) two thousand 
