Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 3 | Page 4

place yourself under a doorway that
communicates from one apartment to another; if you be in the open air
and feel the ground opening beneath you, extend both your arms, and
try to support yourself on the edge of the crevice." Thus, in savage
regions or in countries exposed to frequent convulsions, man is
prepared to struggle with the beasts of the forest, to deliver himself
from the jaws of the crocodile, and to escape from the conflict of the
elements.
The town of Angostura, in the early years of its foundation, had no
direct communication with the mother-country. The inhabitants were
contented with carrying on a trifling contraband trade in dried meat and
tobacco with the West India Islands, and with the Dutch colony of
Essequibo, by the Rio Carony. Neither wine, oil, nor flour, three
articles of importation the most sought after, was received directly from
Spain. Some merchants, in 1771, sent the first schooner to Cadiz; and
since that period a direct exchange of commodities with the ports of
Andalusia and Catalonia has become extremely active. The population
of Angostura,* after having been a long time languishing, has much
increased since 1785. (* Angostura, or Santo Thome de la Nueva
Guayana, in 1768, had only 500 inhabitants. Caulin page 63. They were

numbered in 1780 and the result was 1513 (455 Whites, 449 Blacks,
363 Mulattoes and Zamboes, and 246 Indians). The population in the
year 1789 rose to 4590; and in 1800 to 6600 souls. Official Lists
manuscript. The capital of the English colony of Demerara, the town of
Stabroek, the name of which is scarcely known in Europe, is only fifty
leagues distant, south-east of the mouths of the Orinoco. It contains,
according to Bolingbroke, nearly 10,000 inhabitants.) At the time of
my abode in Guiana, however, it was far from being equal to that of
Stabroek, the nearest English town. The mouths of the Orinoco have an
advantage over every other part in Terra Firma. They afford the most
prompt communications with the Peninsula. The voyage from Cadiz to
Punta Barima is performed sometimes in eighteen or twenty days. The
return to Europe takes from thirty to thirty-five days. These mouths
being placed to windward of all the islands, the vessels of Angostura
can maintain a more advantageous commerce with the West Indies than
La Guayra and Porto Cabello. The merchants of Caracas, therefore,
have been always jealous of the progress of industry in Spanish Guiana;
and Caracas having been hitherto the seat of the supreme government,
the port of Angostura has been treated with still less favour than the
ports of Cumana and Nueva Barcelona. With respect to the inland trade,
the most active is that of the province of Varinas, which sends mules,
cacao, indigo, cotton, and sugar to Angostura; and in return receives
generos, that is, the products of the manufacturing industry of Europe. I
have seen long boats (lanchas) set off, the cargoes of which were
valued at eight or ten thousand piastres. These boats went first up the
Orinoco to Cabruta; then along the Apure to San Vicente; and finally,
on the Rio Santo Domingo, as far as Torunos, which is the port of
Varinas Nuevas. The little town of San Fernando de Apure, of which I
have already given a description, is the magazine of this river-trade,
which might become more considerable by the introduction of
steamboats.
I have now described the country through which we passed during a
voyage of five hundred leagues; it remains for me to make known the
small space of three degrees fifty-two minutes of longitude, that
separates the present capital from the mouth of the Orinoco. Exact
knowledge of the delta and the course of the Rio Carony is at once
interesting to hydrography and to European commerce.

When a vessel coming from sea would enter the principal mouth of the
Orinoco, the Boca de Navios, it should make the land at the Punta
Barima. The right or southern bank is the highest: the granitic rock
pierces the marshy soil at a small distance in the interior, between the
Cano Barima, the Aquire, and the Cuyuni. The left, or northern bank of
the Orinoco, which stretches along the delta towards the Boca de
Mariusas and the Punta Baxa, is very low, and is distinguishable at a
distance only by the clumps of moriche palm-trees which embellish the
passage. This is the sago-tree* of the country (* The nutritious fecula or
medullary flour of the sago-trees is found principally in a group of
palms which M. Kunth has distinguished by the name of calameae. It is
collected, however, in the Indian Archipelago, as an article of trade,
from the trunks of the Cycas revoluta, the Phoenix farinifera, the
Corypha umbraculifera, and the Caryota urens. (Ainslie,