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We regretted that we had not stopped to rest near the Piedra del Tigre; for on going up the Atabapo we had great difficulty to find a spot of dry ground, open and spacious enough to light a fire, and place our instrument and our hammocks. On the 28th of April, it rained hard after sunset, and we were afraid that our collections would be damaged.
This passage is reputed to be dangerous when the water is very high; but we found the surface of the river beyond the raudal as smooth as glass. We passed the night in a rocky island called Piedra Raton, which is three-quarters of a league long, and displays that singular aspect of rising vegetation, those clusters of shrubs, scattered over a bare and rocky soil, of which we have often spoken.
On navigating more to the east, between the mouth of the Carony and Angostura, the pilot should avoid the rocks of Guarampo, the sandbank of Mamo, and the Piedra del Rosario.
En el septentrional, que es el mas inmediata á Gualpi hay dos anillos distantes entre si un tiro de piedra. En la cima del primero está situado el pueblo de Mosasnabi compuesto de 50 familias poco mas ó menos. Xipaolabi
It was only three leagues to the Bolivian town of Piedra Blanca, but the "Bahia do Marengo" took three hours to steam the short distance, for five times we had to stop on the way, owing to the bearings becoming heated. These the Brazilian engineer cooled with pails of water. In the beautiful Bay of Caceres, much of which was grown over with lotus and Victoria Regia, we finally anchored.
He was a fast workman, and on every stone he split from the mother ledge, he sang out, "Otro piedra por Don Tomas!" And within a few minutes' time some one else would cry out, "Otro cillar por Fidel y Juana," or "Otro piedra por padre Norquin." A week passed and there was no return of the hunters.
I doubt the secondary formations of the Llanos being continued southward as far as the valley of Caura. On the 11th of June we landed on the right bank of the Orinoco at Puerto de los Frailes, at the distance of three leagues above the Ciudad de la Piedra, to take altitudes of the sun.
We passed two hours on a large rock, standing in the middle of the Orinoco, and called the Piedra de la Paciencia, or the Stone of Patience, because the canoes, in going up, are sometimes detained there two days, to extricate themselves from the whirlpool caused by this rock.
A Brazilian, clothed only in his black skin, came down the house ladder and stared at us as we passed. The compliment was returned, although we had become somewhat accustomed to that style of dress or undress. A little farther up the bay, a white stone shone out in the sunlight, marking the Bolivian boundary, and giving the name of Piedra Blanca to the village.
We disembarked below San Rafael del Capuchino, on the right, at the Villa de Caycara, near a cove called Puerto Sedeno. The Villa is merely a few houses grouped together. Alta Gracia, la Ciudad de la Piedra, Real Corona, Borbon, in short all the towns or villas lying between the mouth of the Apure and Angostura, are equally miserable.
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