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Updated: June 14, 2025
While the unconscious crew were proceeding, as usual, to catch seals on this island, lying about three leagues from the main land of Arauca, an armed body of men rushed from the woods, and overpowering them, tied their hands behind them, and left them under a guard on the beach.
In the countries we had just passed through, between the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, there were found, at the time of the first expeditions to the Orinoco, in 1535, those mute dogs, called by the natives maios, and auries. This fact is curious in many points of view. We cannot doubt that the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert, is indigenous in South America.
The banks of the Upper Guainia in general abound much less in fishing-birds than those of Cassiquiare, the Meta, and the Arauca, where ornithologists would find sufficient to enrich immensely the collections of Europe. However, the Indians of these countries, during two periods of the year, feed on birds of passage, which repose in their long migrations on the waters of the Rio Negro.
The captain of the Herculia, with the mate of the Ocean, and several men, after suffering great hardships, landed at Valparaiso, and gave notice of the proceedings of Benavides; and in consequence, Sir Thomas Hardy directed Captain Hall to proceed to Arauca with the convoy, to set the captives free, if possible. It was for the accomplishment of this service that Capt.
Captain Hall returned to Conception on the 23d of October, reached Valparaiso on the 26th, and in two weeks thereafter, the men of whom he was in search, made their appearance. The bloody career of Benavides now drew near to a close. The defeat on the Chilian side of the Biobio, and the burning of Arauca with the loss of his vessels, he never recovered.
On the following day, the 7th, we passed, on our right, the mouth of the great Rio Arauca, celebrated for the immense number of birds that frequent it; and, on our left, the Mission of Uruana, commonly called La Concepcion de Urbana. This small village, which contains five hundred souls, was founded by the Jesuits, about the year 1748, by the union of the Ottomac and Cavere Indians.
At this point of the war, Paez again distinguished himself by an act of supreme daring. With 150 of his horsemen, he crossed the river Arauca, which separated the independent army from the royalists, and then feigned a retreat along the river, which in very few places could be waded.
During the season of rains large vessels go from Angostura as far as San Fernando de Apure, and by the Rio Santo Domingo as far as Torunos, the port of the town of Varinas. At that period the inundations of the rivers, which form a labyrinth of branches between the Apure, the Arauca, the Capanaparo, and the Sinaruco, cover a country of nearly four hundred square leagues.
Till the second half of the eighteenth century the names of the great rivers Apure, Arauca, and Meta were scarcely known in Europe: certainly less than they had been in the two preceding centuries, when the valiant Felipe de Urre and the conquerors of Tocuyo traversed the Llanos, to seek, beyond the Apure, the great legendary city of El Dorado, and the rich country of the Omeguas, the Timbuctoo of the New Continent.
Then came the stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along the Pacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old Arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the Country of the Blind for ever from the exploring feet of men.
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