DESOLATE APPEAEANCE OE THE E1VEE. 
471 
I believe, to fix our attention less on tbe transition from 
one colour to another in individuals, than on their habit o' 
separating themselves, and forming distinct bands. 
We left our resting place before sunrise on the 24th 
of May. In a rocky cove, which had been the dwelling of 
some Durimundi Indians, the aromatic odour of the plants 
was so powerful, that although sleeping in the open air, and 
the irritability of our nervous system being allayed by the 
habits of a life of fatigue, we were nevertheless incommoded 
by it. We eouldnot ascertain the flowers which diffused this 
perfume. The forest was impenetrable ; but M. Bonpland 
believed that large clumps of pancratium and other liliaceous 
plants were concealed in the neighbouring marshes. De- 
scendin< T the Orinoco by favour of the current, we passed 
first the mouth of the Iiio Cunueunumo, and then the 
Gfuanami and the Purinamc. The two banks of the prin- 
cipal river are entirely desert ; lofty mountains rise on the 
north, and on the south a vast plain extends far as the eye 
can reach beyond the sources of the Atacavi, which lower 
down takes the name of the Atabapo. there is something 
gloomy and desolate in this aspect of a river, on which not 
even a fisherman’s canoe is seen. Some independant tribes, 
the Abirianos and the Macpiiritares, dwell in the moun- 
tainous country ; but in the neighbouring savannahs ,* boun- 
ded by the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, the Orinoco, and the 
Kio Negro, there is now scarcely any trace of a human 
habitation/ I say now; for here, as in other parts of 
Ghiiana, rude figures representing the sun, the moon, and 
different animals, traced on the hardest rocks of granite, 
attest the anterior existence of a people, very different from 
those who became known to us on the banks of the Orinoco. 
According to the accounts of the natives, and of the most 
intelligent missionaries, these symbolic signs resemble per- 
fectly the characters we saw a hundred leagues more to the 
north, near Caycara, opposite the mouth of the Rio Apure.f 
In advancing from the plains of the Cassiquiare and the 
* They form a quadrilateral pmt of a thousand square leagues, the 
opposite sides of which have contrary slopes, the Cassiquiare flowing 
towards the south, the Atabapo towards the north, the Orinoco towards 
the north-west, and the Rio Negro towards the south-eaoc. 
+ See p. 183. 
