The Guamoes are a race of Indians very difficult to fix on a settled spot. They have great similarity of manners with the Achaguas, the Guajiboes, and the Otomacoes, partaking their disregard of cleanliness, their spirit of vengeance, and their taste for wandering; but their language differs essentially. The greater part of these four tribes live by fishing and hunting, in plains often inundated, and situated between the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare. The nature of these regions seems to invite the nations to a wandering life. On entering the mountains of the Cataracts of the Oroonoko we shall soon find among the Piraoas, the Macoes, and the Maquiritares, milder manners, the love of agriculture, and great cleanliness in the interior of their huts. On the backs of mountains, in the midst of impenetrable forests, man is compelled to fix himself, and cultivate a small spot of land.—This cultivation requires little care; while in a country where there are no other roads than rivers, the life of the hunter is laborious and difficult. The Guamoes of the mission of Santa Barbara could not furnish us with the provision we wanted. They cultivate only a little cassava. They appeared hospitable; and, when we entered their huts, offered us dried fish and water (in their tongue cub.) This water was cooled in porous vessels.

Beyond the Vuelta del Cochino roto, in a spot where the river has scooped itself a new bed, we passed the night on a bare and very extensive strand. The forest being impenetrable, we had the greatest difficulty to find dry wood to light fires, near which the Indians believe themselves in safety from the nocturnal attacks of the tiger. Our own experience seems to depose in favour of this opinion; but M. d'Azzara asserts, that in his time a tiger in Paraguay carried off a man who was seated near a fire lighted in the savannah.

The night was calm and serene, and there was a beautiful moonlight. The crocodiles were stretched along the shore. They placed themselves in such a manner as to be able to see the fire. We thought we observed, that its splendour attracted them, as it attracts fishes, crayfish, and other inhabitants of the water. The Indians showed us the traces of three tigers in the sand, two of which were very young. A female had no doubt conducted her little ones to drink at the river. Finding no tree on the strand, we

* Their Indian name is Guaiva pronounced Guahiva.

stuck our oars in the ground, and to these we fastened our hammocks Every thing passed tranquilly till eleven at night; and then a noise so terrific arose in the neighbouring forest, that it was almost impossible to close our eyes. Amid the cries of so many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated such only as were heard separately. These were the little soft cries of the sapajous, the moans of the alouates, the howlings of the tiger, the couguar, or American lion without mane, the pecari, and the sloth, and the voices of curassoa, the parraka, and some other gallinaceous birds. When the jaguars approached the skirt of the forest, our dog, which till then had never ceased barking, began to howl and seck for shelter beneath our hammocks. Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of the tiger came from the tops of the trees; and in this case it was followed by the sharp and long whist ling of the monkeys, which appeared to flee from the danger that threatened them

I notice every circumstance of these noctuinal scenes, because, being recently embarked on the Rio Apure, we were not yet accustomed to them. We heard the same noises repeated, during the course of whole months, whenever the forest approached the bed of the rivers. The security displayed by the Indians inspires travellers with confidence. You persuade yourself with them, that the tigers are afraid of fire, and do not attack a man lying in his hammock. These attacks are in fact extremely rare ; and, during a long abode in South America, I remember only one example of a Llanero, who was found torn in his hammock opposite the island of Achaguas.

When the natives are interrogated on the causes of this tremendous noise made by the beasts of the forest, at certain hours of the night, they reply gaily, "they are keeping the feast of the fuil moon!"

I believe this agitation is most frequently the effect of some contest, that has arisen in the depths of the forest. The jaguars, for instance, pursue the pecaris and the tapirs, which, having no defence but in their numbers, flee in close troops, and break down the bushes they find in their way. Affrighted at this struggle, the timid and mistrustful monkies answer from the tops of the trees, the cries of the large animals. They awaken the birds that live in society, and by degrees the whole assembly is in movement.— We shall soon find, that it is not always in a tine moonlight, but

more particularly at the time of a storm and violent showers, that this tumult takes place among the wild beasts. "May heaven grant them a quiet night and repose, and us also !" said the monk who accompanied us to the Rio Negro, when, sinking with fatigue, he assisted in arranging our accomodations for the night. It was indeed a strange situation, to find no silence in the solitude of woods. In the inns of Spain we dread the sharp sounds of guitars from the next apartment; in those of the Oroonoko, which are an open beach, or the shelter of a solitary tree, we are afraid of being disturbed in our sleep by voices issuing from the forest.

April 2d. We set sail before sunrise. The morning was beautiful and cool, according to the feelings of those, who are accustomed to the heats of these climates. The thermometer rose to 28° only in the air; but the dry and white sand of the beach, notwithstanding its radiation toward a sky without a cloud, retained a temperature of 36°. The porpoises (tonina) ploughed the river in long files. The shore was covered with fishing birds.— Some of these embarked on the floating wood, that passed down the river, and surprized the fish that preferred the middle of the stream. Our canoe touched several times during the morning. These shocks, when violent, are capable of splitting a light bark. We struck on the points of several large trees, which remain for years in an oblique position, sunk in the mud. These trees descend from Sarare, at the period of great inundations. These so fill the bed of the river, that canoes in going up find it difficult sometimes to make their way over the shoals, or wherever there are eddies. We reached a spot near the island of Carizales, where we saw trunks of the locust tree of an enormous size above the surface of the water. They were covered with a species of plotus nearly approaching the anhinga, or white-bellied darter. These birds perch in files, like pheasants and parrakas. They remain for hours entirely motionless, with the beak raised toward the sky, which gives them a singular air of stupidity.

Below the island of Carizales we observed a diminution of the waters of the river, at which we were so much the more surprised, as, after the bifurcation at la Boca de Arichuna, there is no branch, no natural drain, that takes away water from the Apure. The loss is solely the effect of evaporation, and of filtration on a sandy and wet shore. We may form an idea of the magnitude of these effects, when we recollect, that we found the heat of the dry sands,

at different hours of the day, from 360 to 52o and that of sands covered with three or four inches of water 32°. The beds of rivers are heated as far as the depth, to which the solar rays can penetrate without having undergone too great an extinction in their passage through the super incumbent strata of water. Besides, the effect of filtration extends far beyond the bed of the river; it may be said to be lateral. The shore, which appears dry to us, imbibes water as far as the level of the surface of the river. We saw water gush out at the distance of 50 toises from the shore, every time that the indians stuck their oars into the ground; now these sands, wet underneath, but dry above, and exposed to the solar rays, act like a sponge. They are losing the infiltrated water every instant by evaporation. The vapour, that is emitted, traverses the upper stratum of sand strongly heated, and becomes sensible to the eye when the air cools toward the evening. As the beach dries, it draws from the rivers new portions of water; and it may be considered, that this continual alternation of vaporization and lateral imbibition must cause an immense loss, difficult to submit to exact calculation. The increase of these losses would be in proportion to the length of the course of the rivers, if from their source to their mouth they were equally surrounded by a flat shore; but these shores being formed by depositions from the water, and the water having less velocity in proportion as it is more remote from its source, deposing necessarily more in the lower than in the upper part of its course, many rivers of hot climates undergo a diminution in the quantity of their water, as they approach their mouth. Mr. Barrow has observed these curious effects of sands in the southern part of Africa, on the banks of Orange river. They are even become the subject of a very important discussion, in the various hypotheses that have been formed on the course of the Niger.

Near the Vuelta de Basilio, where we landed to collect plants, we saw on the top of a tree, two beautiful little monkies, black as jet, of the size of the sai, with prehensile tails. Their physiognomy and their movements sufficiently showed, that they were neither the quato [simia beelzebub, L.], nor the chamek, nor any of the ateles. Our Indians themselves had never seen any that resembled them. These forests abound in sapajous unknown to the naturalists of Europe; and as monkeys, especially those that live in troops, and for this reason are more enterprising, make

long emigrations, at certain periods, it happens, that at the beginning of the rainy season the natives discover round their huts different kinds, which they had never before observed. On this same bank, our guides showed us a nest of young iguanas, that were only four inches long. It was difficult to distinguish them from a common lizard. There was nothing yet formed but the dew. lap below the throat. The dorsal spines, the large erect scales, all those appendages, that render the iguana so monstrous when it attains the length of three or four feet, were scarcely traced.

The flesh of this animal of the saurien family appeared to us to have an agreeable taste in every country, where the climate is very dry; we even found it so at periods when we where not in want of other food. It is extremely white, and next to the flesh of the armadillo, here called cachicamo, one of the best eatables to be found in the huts of the natives.

It rained towards the evening. Before the rain fell, swallows, exactly resembling our own, skimmed over the surface of the water. We saw also a flock of paroquets pursued by little goshawks without crests. The piercing cries of these paroquets contrasted singularly with the whistling of the birds of prey. We passed the night in the open air, upon the beach, near the island of Carizales. There were several Indian huts in the neighbourhood, surrounded with plantations. Our pilots assured us before hand, that we should not hear the cries of the jaguar, which, when not extremely pressed by hunger, withdraws from places where he does not rule alone. "Men put him out of humour,” los hombres lo enfadan, say the people in the missions, a pleasant, and simple expression, that marks a well observed fact.

April 3d. Since our departure from San Fernando we have not met a single boat on this fine river. Every thing denotes the most profound solitude. In the morning our Indians caught with a hook the fish known in the country by the name of caribe, or caribito, because no other fish has such a thirst for blood. It attacks bathers and swimmers, from whom it often carries away considerable pieces of flesh. When a person is only slightly wounded, it is difficult for him to get out of the water without receiving a severer wound. The Indians dread extremely these caribes ; and several of them shewed us the scars of deep wounds, in the calf of the leg and in the thigh, made by these little animals, which the Maypures call umati. They live at the bottom of rivers; but