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Duida, though lower than the height assigned to it by popular belief, is however the most prominent point of the whole group of mountains that separate the basin of the Lower Orinoco from that of the Amazon. These mountains lower still more rapidly on the north-east, toward the Purunama, than on the east, toward the Padamo and the Rio Ocamo.
At the sources of the latter live the Guainares, who are much less copper-coloured, or tawny, than the other inhabitants of those countries. Near the mouth of the Ocamo, travellers are shown a rock, which is the wonder of the country. It is a granite passing into gneiss, and remarkable for the peculiar distribution of the black mica, which forms little ramified veins.
It would be useless, after these considerations, to insist on the distance of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco from the shores inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that descendants of fugitive negroes may have been seen among the Caribs, at the sources of the Essequibo; but no white man ever went from the eastern coast to the Rio Gehette and the Ocamo, in the interior of Guiana.
The four nations of the Upper Orinoco, which appeared to me to be the fairest, are the Guaharibos of the Rio Gehette, the Guainares of the Ocamo, the Guaicas of Cano Chiguire, and the Maquiritares of the sources of the Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari.
It begins to be found after a journey of four days east of Esmeralda, between the Padamo and Ocamo, at the foot of the Cerro Mapaya, on the right bank of the Orinoco. It is still more abundant on the left bank, at the Cerro Guanaja, between the Rio Amaguaca and the Gehette. They do not envy them the productions with which nature has enriched their own soil.