On The 4th Of May, I Saw The Sun For Some Minutes; And Found By The Chronometer And The Horary Angles The Longitude Of Javita To Be 70 Degrees 22 Minutes, Or 1 Degree 15 Minutes Farther West Than The Longitude Of The Junction Of The Apure With The Orinoco.

This result is interesting for laying down on our maps the unknown country lying between the Xie and the sources of the Issana, situated on the same meridian with the mission of Javita.

The Indians of Javita, whose number amounts to one hundred and sixty, now belong for the most part to the nations of the Poimisanos, the Echinavis, and the Paraganis. They are employed in the construction of boats, formed of the trunks of sassafras, a large species of laurel, hollowed by means of fire and the hatchet. These trees are more than one hundred feet high; the wood is yellow, resinous, almost incorruptible in water, and has a very agreeable smell. We saw them at San Fernando, at Javita, and more particularly at Esmeralda, where most of the canoes of the Orinoco are constructed, because the adjacent forests furnish the largest trunks of sassafras.

The forest between Javita and the Cano Pimichin, contains an immense quantity of gigantic trees, ocoteas, and laurels, the Amasonia arborea,* (* This is a new species of the genus taligalea of Aublet. On the same spot grow the Bignonia magnoliaefolia, B. jasminifolia, Solanum topiro, Justicia pectoralis, Faramea cymosa, Piper javitense, Scleria hirtella, Echites javitensis, Lindsea javitensis, and that curious plant of the family of the verbenaceae, which I have dedicated to the illustrious Leopold von Buch, in whose early labours I participated.) the Retiniphyllum secundiflorum, the curvana, the jacio, the iacifate, of which the wood is red like the brazilletto, the guamufate, with its fine leaves of calophyllum from seven to eight inches long, the Amyris carana, and the mani.

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