PUERTO SEDETTO. 
513 
period of the high waters, several months are lost in contend- 
ing with the currents of the Orinoco, the Apure, and the Bio 
de Santo Domingo. The boatmen are forced to carry out 
ropes to the trunks of trees, and thus warp their canoes up. 
In the great sinuosities of the river whole days are some- 
times passed without advancing more than two or three 
hundred toises. Since my return to Europe, the communi- 
cations between the mouth of the Orinoco and the provinces 
situated on the eastern slope of the mountains of Merida, 
Pamplona, and Santa Fe de Bogota, have become more 
active ; and it may be hoped that steamboats will facilitate 
these long voyages on the Lower Orinoco, the Portuguesa, 
the ltio Santo Domingo, the Orivante, the Meta, and the 
Gruaviare. Magazines of cleft wood might be formed, as on 
the banks of the great rivers of the United States, shelter- 
ing them under sheds. This precaution would be indispen- 
sible, as, in the country through winch we passed, it is not 
easy to procure dry fuel fit to keep up a fire beneath the 
boiler of a steam-engine. 
We disembarked below San Bafael del Capuchino, on the 
right, at the Villa de Caycara, near a cove called Puerto 
Sedeno. The Villa is merely a few houses grouped to- 
gether. Alta Gracia, la Ciudad de la Piedra, Beal Corona, 
Borbon, in short all the towns or villas lying between the 
mouth of the Apure and Angostura, are equally miserable. 
The presidents of tho missions, and the governors of the pro- 
vinces, were formerly accustomed to demand the privileges of 
villas and evudades at Madrid, the moment the first founda- 
tions of a church were laid. This was a means of persuading 
the ministry, that the colonies were augmenting rapidly in 
population and prosperity. Sculpt ured figures of the sun an d 
moon, such as I have already mentioned, are found near 
Caycara, at the Cerro del Tirano * It is “ the worJc of the old 
•people" (that is of our fathers), say the natives. On a rock 
* The tyrant after whom these mountains are named is not Lope de 
kguirre, but probably, as the name of the neighbouring cove seems to 
prove, the celebrated conquistador Antonio Sedeno, who, after the expe- 
dition of Herrera, sought to penetrate by the Orinoco to the Kio Meta. 
He was in a state of rebellion against the audiencia of Santo Domingo. 
I know not how Sedeno came to Caycara ; for historians relate that he 
■was poisoned on the banks of the Rio Tisnado, one of the tributary 
etreams of the Portuguesa. 
VOL. II. 2 L 
