From the villages of Xiramena and Cabullaro
to those of Guanapalo and Santa Rosalia de Cabapuna, a distance of
sixty leagues, the banks of the Meta are more inhabited than those of
the Orinoco. We find in this space fourteen Christian settlements, in
part very populous; but from the mouths of the rivers Pauto and
Casanare, for a space of more than fifty leagues, the Meta is infested
by the Guahibos, a race of savages.* (* I find the word written
Guajibos, Guahivos, and Guagivos. They call themselves Gua-iva.)
The navigation of this river was much more active in the time of the
Jesuits, and particularly during the expedition of Iturriaga, in 1756,
than it is at present. Missionaries of the same order then governed
the banks of the Meta and of the Orinoco. The villages of Macuco,
Zurimena, and Casimena, were founded by the Jesuits, as well as those
of Uruana, Encaramada, and Carichana.
These Fathers had conceived the project of forming a series of
Missions from the junction of the Casanare with the Meta to that of
the Meta with the Orinoco. A narrow zone of cultivated land would have
crossed the vast steppes that separate the forests of Guiana from the
Andes of New Grenada.
At the period of the harvest of turtles' eggs, not only the flour of
Santa Fe descended the river, but the salt of Chita,* (* East of
Labranza Grande, and the north-west of Pore, now the capital of the
province of Casanare.) the cotton cloth of San Gil, and the printed
counterpanes of Socorro.
