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Updated: May 3, 2025
Each man loading himself with as large an amount of provisions and stores as he could carry, the troops quickly again retreated, and succeeded in conveying their booty to their starving friends. On the arrival in the country of a large army under General Morillo, Paez gave him battle on the plains of Apure, and by a stratagem pretending to fly induced the Spanish cavalry to follow.
Here, therefore, as almost everywhere within the tropics, it was less the absolute degree of heat than its duration that affected our sensations. The eastern part of the Llanos through which we passed, between Angostura and Nueva Barcelona, presents the same wild aspect as the western part, through which we had passed from the valleys of Aragua to San Fernando de Apure.
On the 7th of June, good absolute altitudes of the sun gave me 69 degrees 40 minutes for the longitude. We had advanced from Esmeralda 1 degree 17 minutes toward the west, and this chronometric determination merits entire confidence on account of the double observations, made in going and returning, at the Great Cataracts, and at the confluence of the Atabapo and of the Apure.
Lower down we passed the point where the Rio Arichuna, an arm of the Apure, branches off to the Cabulare, carrying away a considerable body of its waters. We stopped, on the right bank, at a little Indian mission, inhabited by the tribe of the Guamos, called the village of Santa Barbara de Arichuna. The Guamos* are a race of Indians very difficult to fix on a settled spot.
At the period of the high waters, several months are lost in contending with the currents of the Orinoco, the Apure, and the Rio 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 sometimes passed without advancing more than two or three hundred toises.
The notions he gave us of the time requisite for going from Valencia by Varinas to the Sierra Nevada, and thence by the port of Torunos, and the Rio Santo Domingo, to San Fernando de Apure, were of infinite value to us.
The flood of successful rebellion was rolled back from the coast, and Bolívar, with his dauntless partisans, was soon confined to the Llanos, which stretch away in level immensity from the marshy banks of the Orinoco, the Apure, and their tributaries. Our readers have already been introduced to these Llanos, and have beheld their wild inhabitants amid the monotonous avocations of a time of peace.
Those Llanos extend, in the form of an arch, from the mouth of the Orinoco, by San Fernando de Apure, to the confluence of the Rio Caguan with the Jupura, consequently along a length of more than 360 leagues. The general slope is eastward, and the mean height from 40 to 50 toises. Of this number are the Paramos del Almorzadero, Cacota, Laura, Porquera, Mucuchies, Timotes, and Las Rosas.
It will scarcely be believed, that the Villa de Fernando de Apure, only fifty leagues distant in a direct line from that part of the coast of Caracas which has been longest inhabited, was founded at no earlier a date than 1789. We were shown a parchment, full of fine paintings, containing the privileges of this little town.
The longitude of this point is 67 degrees 26 minutes 20 seconds, or 1 degree 41 minutes east of the mouth of the Apure. Farther on, between the towns of La Piedra and Muitaco, or Real Corona, are the Torno and Boca del Infierno, two points formerly dreaded by travellers. The Orinoco suddenly changes its direction; it flows first east, then north-north-west, and then again east.
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