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The latter plains, however, furnish some ledges of fragmentary rocks on the south-west of San Fernando de Atabapo, as well as on the south-east, in the lower part of the Rio Negro and the Rio Branco. I saw in the plains of Jaen de Bracamoros a sandstone which alternates with ledges of sand and conglomerate nodules of porphyry and Lydian stone.
We discover, between Calabozo, Uritucu, and the Mesa de Pavones, wherever there are excavations of some feet deep, the geological constitution of the Llanos. We shall find it again in the vast plains of the Amazon, on the eastern boundary of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros.
This group occupies the vast territory between Guancabamba, Avayaca, Ona and the ruined towns of Zamora and Loyola, between latitude 5 1/2 and 3 1/4 degrees. Eastward, in the direction of the Rio Santiago and the Rio de Chamaya, two tributary streams of the Amazon, the mountains lower rapidly: between San Felipe, Matara, and Jaen de Bracamoros, they are not more than 500 or 300 toises.
We crossed the territory in its whole extent; on one hand from the mountains of Paria as far as Esmeralda on the Upper Orinoco, and San Carlo del Rio Negro, situated near the frontiers of Brazil; and on the other, from Rio Sinu and Carthagena as far as the snowy summits of Quito, the port of Guayaquil on the coast of the Pacific, and the banks of the Amazon in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros.
Humboldt, in his "Views of Nature," says: "There is hardly any physiognomical character of exotic vegetation that produces a more singular and ineffaceable impression on the mind of the traveller than an arid plain, densely covered with columnar or candelabra-like stems of Cactuses, similar to those near Cumana, New Barcelona, Cora. and in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros."
Bonpland identified it on the Upper Orinoco, and again in the county of Caraccas; though nowhere does it appear to be in such plenty as to the east of the Cordilleras of Ecuador and Peru throughout the provinces of Quixos, Macas, and Jean de Bracamoros. In these provinces it is found forming extensive woods, and filling the air with the delicious aroma of its flowers.
In the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, at the foot of the western declivity of the Cordilleras, this Atlantic breeze rises sometimes to a tempest. It is highly probable that the great salubrity of the Amazon is owing to this constant breeze. In the stagnant air of the Upper Orinoco the chemical affinities act more powerfully, and more deleterious miasmata are formed.
We found forests of them mingled with crotons, covering a great space of arid land to the east of the Andes, in the province of Bracamoros, towards the Upper Maranon. The arborescent ferns seem to fail entirely near the cataracts of the Orinoco; we found no species as far as San Fernando de Atabapo, that is, to the confluence of the Orinoco and the Guaviare.
We have made drawings of some ruins of great edifices east of the Cordilleras, when going down from Loxa towards the Amazon, in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros; and thus far the Incas had carried their arms, their religion, and their arts.
It stretches at first northward by Huacrachuco, Chachapoyas, Moyobamba, and the Paramo of Piscoguannuna; then it progressively lowers toward Peca, Copallin, and the Mission of Santiago, at the eastern extremity of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros. The third, or easternmost chain, skirts the right bank of the Rio Guallaga, and loses itself in the seventh degree of latitude.