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This agreement proves the justness of a result which, however, I could only deduce from altitudes considerably distant from the meridian. A good observation of the stars at Guapasoso gave me 4 degrees 2 minutes for San Fernando de Atabapo. I was able to fix the longitude with much more precision in my way to the Rio Negro, and in returning from that river.
He availed himself amply of this permission; but his incursions had an object which was not altogether spiritual, that of making slaves to sell to the Portuguese. When Solano, the second chief of the expedition of the boundaries, arrived at San Fernando de Atabapo, he had Javita seized, in one of his incursions to the banks of the Temi.
We again found the Indians who had accompanied us in our herborizations; and we visited anew the fine spring that issues from a rock of stratified granite behind the house of the missionary: its temperature was not changed more than 0.3 degrees. From the mouth of the Atabapo as far as that of the Apure we seemed to be travelling as through a country which we had long inhabited.
What I saw of this country between the second and eighth degrees of latitude, and the sixty-sixth and seventy-first degrees of longitude, is entirely composed of granite, and of a gneiss passing into micaceous and talcous slate. These rocks appear naked in the lofty mountains of Parima, as well as in the plains of the Atabapo and the Cassiquiare.
It is also very remarkable, that this phenomenon of black waters, which might be supposed to belong only to the low regions of the torrid zone, is found also, though rarely, on the table-lands of the Andes. These waters, like those of the Atabapo, are of a coffee-colour by reflection, and pale yellow by transmission.
The tree bears fruit but once a year, but to the amount of three clusters, consequently from one hundred and fifty to two hundred fruits. San Fernando de Atabapo, San Carlos, and San Francisco Solano, are the most considerable settlements among the missions of the Upper Orinoco.
Having quitted San Fernando on the 27th of May, we arrived, by help of the rapid current of the Orinoco, in seven hours, at the mouth of the Rio Mataveni. Here, as on the banks of the Atabapo, we were struck by the sight of a small species of drosera, having exactly the appearance of the drosera of Europe.
The smallest fish are visible in them at a depth of twenty or thirty feet; and most commonly the bottom of the river may be distinguished, which is not a yellowish or brownish mud, like the colour of the water, but a quartzose and granitic sand of dazzling whiteness. Nothing can be compared to the beauty of the banks of the Atabapo.
Our Indian pilot, who had been recently at Mandavaca, promised us the sun, and those great stars that eat the clouds, as soon as we should have left the black waters of the Guaviare. We therefore carried out our first project of returning to San Fernando de Atabapo by the Cassiquiare; and, fortunately for our researches, the prediction of the Indian was verified.
If the insects of the genus Simulium abound in the Cassiquiare, which has white waters, the culices or zancudos are so much the more rare; you scarcely find any there; while on the rivers of black waters, in the Atabapo and the Rio, there are generally some zancudos and no mosquitos.
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