UNEXPLORED REGIONS. 
801 
sometimes preferred to the passage h y sea, to avoid the 
adverse current. The postman from Caracas is nine days in 
performing this journey. "We often saw persons, who had 
followed him, arrive at Oumana ill of nervous and miasmatic 
fevers. The tree of which the bark* furnishes a salutary 
remedy for those fevers, grows in the same valleys, and upon 
the edge of the same forests which send forth the pernicious 
exhalations. M. Bonpland recognised the cuspare in the 
vegetation of the gulf of Santa Fe, situated between the ports 
of Cum ana and Barcelona. The sickly traveller may per- 
ehance repose in a cottage, the inhabitants of which are 
ignorant of the febrifuge qualities of the trees that shade 
tbe surrounding valleys. 
Having proceeded by sea from Cumana to La Guayra, we 
intended to take up our abode in the town of Caracas, till 
the end of the rainy season. From Caracas we proposed to 
direct our course across the great plains or llanos, to the 
Missions of the Orinoco; to go up that vast river, to the south 
of the cataracts, as far as the Eio Negro and the frontiers 
of Brazil ; and thence to return to Cumana by the capital of 
Spanish Guiana, commonly called, on account of its situation, 
Angostura, or tlie Strait. We could not determine the time 
we might require to accomplish a tour of seven hundred 
leagues, more than two-thirds of that distance having to be 
traversed in boats. The only parts of the Orinoco known on 
the coasts are those near its mouth. No commercial inter- 
course is kept up with the Missions. The whole of the 
country beyond the llanos is unknown to the inhabitants of 
Cumana and Caracas. Some think that the plains of C'ala- 
bozo, covered with turf, stretch eight hundred leagues south- 
ward, communicating with the Steppes or Pampas of Buenos 
Ayres ; others, recalling to mind the great mortality which 
prevailed among the troops of Iturriaga and Solano, during 
their expedition to the Orinoco, consider the whole country, 
south of the cataracts of Atures, as extremely pernicious 
to health. In a region where travelling is so uncommon, 
people seem to feel a pleasure in exaggerating to strangers 
the difficulties arising from the climate, the wild animals, and 
the Indians. Nevertheless we persisted in the project we 
* Cortex Angostura: of our pharmacopseias, the bark of the Bonplandii 
trifoliate. 
