Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 3 | Page 9

which the principal trunk
receives.
The people believe that every five years the Orinoco rises three feet
higher than common; but the idea of this cycle does not rest on any
precise measures. We know by the testimony of antiquity, that the
oscillations of the Nile have been sensibly the same with respect to
their height and duration for thousands of years; which is a proof, well
worthy of attention, that the mean state of the humidity and the
temperature does not vary in that vast basin. Will this constancy in
physical phenomena, this equilibrium of the elements, be preserved in

the New World also after some ages of cultivation? I think we may
reply in the affirmative; for the united efforts of man cannot fail to have
an influence on the general causes on which the climate of Guiana
depends.
According to the barometric height of San Fernando de Apure, I find
from that town to the Boca de Navios the slope of the Apure and the
Lower Orinoco to be three inches and a quarter to a nautical mile of
nine hundred and fifty toises.* (* The Apure itself has a slope of
thirteen inches to the mile.) We may be surprised at the strength of the
current in a slope so little perceptible; but I shall remind the reader on
this occasion, that, according to measurements made by order of Mr.
Hastings, the Ganges was found, in a course of sixty miles (comprising
the windings,) to have also only four inches fall to a mile; that the mean
swiftness of this river is, in the seasons of drought, three miles an hour,
and in those of rains six or eight miles. The strength of the current,
therefore, in the Ganges as in the Orinoco, depends less on the slope of
the bed, than on the accumulation of the higher waters, caused by the
abundance of the rains, and the number of tributary streams. European
colonists have already been settled for two hundred and fifty years on
the banks of the Orinoco; and during this long period of time,
according to a tradition which has been propagated from generation to
generation, the periodical oscillations of the river (the time of the
beginning of the rising, and that when it attains its maximum) have
never been retarded more than twelve or fifteen days.
When vessels that draw a good deal of water sail up toward Angostura
in the months of January and February, by favour of the sea-breeze and
the tide, they run the risk of taking the ground. The navigable channel
often changes its breadth and direction; no buoy, however, has yet been
laid down, to indicate any deposit of earth formed in the bed of the
river, where the waters have lost their original velocity. There exists on
the south of Cape Barima, as well by the river of this name as by the
Rio Moroca and several estuaries (esteres) a communication with the
English colony of Essequibo. Small vessels can penetrate into the
interior as far as the Rio Poumaron, on which are the ancient
settlements of Zealand and Middleburg. Heretofore this communication
interested the government of Caracas only on account of the facility it
furnished to an illicit trade; but since Berbice, Demerara, and

Essequibo have fallen into the hands of a more powerful neighbour, it
fixes the attention of the Spanish Americans as being connected with
the security of their frontiers. Rivers which have a course parallel to the
coast, and are nowhere farther distant from it than five or six nautical
miles, characterize the whole of the shore between the Orinoco and the
Amazon.
Ten leagues distant from Cape Barima, the great bed of the Orinoco is
divided for the first time into two branches of two thousand toises in
breadth. They are known by the Indian names of Zacupana and Imataca.
The first, which is the northernmost, communicates on the west of the
islands Congrejos and del Burro with the bocas chicas of Lauran, Nuina,
and Mariusas. As the Isla del Burro disappears in the time of great
inundations, it is unhappily not suited to fortifications. The southern
bank of the brazo Imataca is cut by a labyrinth of little channels, into
which the Rio Imataca and the Rio Aquire flow. A long series of little
granitic hills rises in the fertile savannahs between the Imataca and the
Cuyuni; it is a prolongation of the Cordilleras of Parima, which,
bounding the horizon south of Angostura, forms the celebrated
cataracts of the Rio Caroni, and approaches the Orinoco like a
projecting cape near the little fort of Vieja Guyana. The populous
missions of the Caribbee and Guiana Indians, governed by the
Catalonian Capuchins, lie near the sources of the Imataca and the
Aquire. The easternmost