Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Portuguese Government Has Established Many Settlements Even In
This Remote Part Of Brazil.
Below the Glorieta, in the Portuguese
territory, there are eleven villages in an extent of twenty-five
leagues.
I know of nineteen more as far as the mouth of the Rio Negro,
beside the six towns of Thomare, Moreira (near the Rio Demenene, or
Uaraca, where dwelt anciently the Guiana Indians), Barcellos, San
Miguel del Rio Branco, near the river of the same name (so well known
in the fictions of El Dorado), Moura, and Villa de Rio Negro. The
banks of this tributary stream of the Amazon alone are consequently
ten times more thickly peopled than all the shores of the Upper and
Lower Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, and the Spanish Rio
Negro.
Among the tributary streams which the Rio Negro receives from the
north, three are particularly deserving of attention, because on
account of their branchings, their portages, and the situation of
their sources, they are connected with the often-discussed problem of
the origin of the Orinoco. The most southern of these tributary
streams are the Rio Branco,* which was long believed to issue
conjointly with the Orinoco from lake Parime (* The Portuguese name,
Rio Branco, signifies White Water. Rio Parime is a Caribbean name,
signifying Great Water. These names having also been applied to
different tributary streams, have caused many errors in geography. The
great Rio Branco, or Parime, often mentioned in this work, is formed
by the Urariquera and the Tacutu, and flows, between Carvoeyro and
Villa de Moura, into the Rio Negro. It is the Quecuene of the natives;
and forms at its confluence with the Rio Negro a very narrow delta,
between the principal trunk and the Amayauhau, which is a little
branch more to the west.), and the Rio Padaviri, which communicates by
a portage with the Mavaca, and consequently with the Upper Orinoco, to
the east of the mission of Esmeralda. We shall have occasion to speak
of the Rio Branco and the Padaviri, when we arrive in that mission; it
suffices here to pause at the third tributary stream of the Rio Negro,
the Cababury, the interbranchings of which with the Cassiquiare are
alike important in their connexion with hydrography, and with the
trade in sarsaparilla.
The lofty mountains of the Parime, which border the northern bank of
the Orinoco in the upper part of its course above Esmeralda, send off
a chain towards the south, of which the Cerro de Unturan forms one of
the principal summits. This mountainous country, of small extent but
rich in vegetable productions, above all, in the mavacure liana,
employed in preparing the wourali poison, in almond-trees (the juvia,
or Bertholletia excelsa), in aromatic pucheries, and in wild
cacao-trees, forms a point of division between the waters that flow to
the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro. The tributary streams
on the north, or those of the Orinoco, are the Mavaca and the
Daracapo; those on the west, or of the Cassiquiare, are the Idapa and
the Pacimoni; and those on the south, or of the Rio Negro, are the
Padaviri and the Cababuri.
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