In This Region I Determined, By Means Of A Chronometer By Berthoud, And By The Meridional Heights Of Stars, The Situation Of San Balthasar De Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos Del Rio Negro, The Rock Culimacavi, And Esmeralda.

When no roads exist save tortuous and intertwining rivers, when little villages are hidden amid thick forests, and when,

In a country entirely flat, no mountain, no elevated object is visible from two points at once, it is only in the sky that we can read where we are upon the earth.

San Fernando de Atabapo stands near the confluence of three great rivers; the Orinoco, the Guaviare, and the Atabapo. Its situation is similar to that of Saint Louis or of New Madrid, at the junction of the Mississippi with the Missouri and the Ohio. In proportion as the activity of commerce increases in these countries traversed by immense rivers, the towns situated at their confluence will necessarily become bustling ports, depots of merchandise, and centre points of civilization. Father Gumilla confesses, that in his time no person had any knowledge of the course of the Orinoco above the mouth of the Guaviare.

D'Anville, in the first edition of his great map of South America, laid down the Rio Negro as an arm of the Orinoco, that branched off from the principal body of the river between the mouths of the Meta and the Vichada, near the cataract of Atures. That great geographer was entirely ignorant of the existence of the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo; and he makes the Orinoco or Rio Paragua, the Japura, and the Putumayo, take their rise from three branchings of the Caqueta.

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