If You Address Yourself To The Missionaries, They Reply, As If They Had The Most Convincing Proofs Of The Fact, That The Waters Are Coloured By Washing The Roots Of The Sarsaparilla.

The Smilaceae no doubt abound on the banks of the Rio Negro, the Pacimony, and the Cababury; their roots, macerated in the water, yield an extractive matter, that is brown, bitter, and mucilaginous; but how many tufts of smilax have we seen in places, where the waters were entirely white.

In the marshy forest which we traversed, to convey our canoe from the Rio Tuamini to the Cano Pimichin and the Rio Negro, why, in the same soil, did we ford alternately rivulets of black and white water? Why did we find no river white near its springs, and black in the lower part of its course? I know not whether the Rio Negro preserves its yellowish brown colour as far as its mouth, notwithstanding the great quantity of white water it receives from the Cassiquiare and the Rio Blanco.

Although, on account of the abundance of rain, vegetation is more vigorous close to the equator than eight or ten degrees north or south, it cannot be affirmed, that the rivers with black waters rise principally in the most shady and thickest forests. On the contrary, a great number of the aguas negras come from the open savannahs that extend from the Meta beyond the Guaviare towards the Caqueta. In a journey which I made with Senor Montufar from the port of Guayaquil to the Bodegas de Babaojo, at the period of the great inundations, I was struck by the analogy of colour displayed by the vast savannahs of the Invernadero del Garzal and of the Lagartero, as well as by the Rio Negro and the Atabapo.

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