Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Natives Of San
Marcellino Speak Of A Sierra Tunuhy, Nearly Thirty Leagues West Of
Their Village, Between The Xie And The Icanna.
La Condamine learned
also from the Indians of the Amazon that the Quiquiari comes from a
country of mountains and mines.
Now, the Iquiari is placed by the
French astronomer between the equator and the mouth of the Xie (Ijie),
which identifies it with the Iguiare that falls into the Icanna. We
cannot advance in the geologic knowledge of America without having
continually recourse to the researches of comparative geography. The
small system of mountains, which we may provisionally call that of the
sources of the Rio Negro and the Uaupes, and the culminant points of
which are not probably more than 100 or 120 toises high, appears to
extend southward to the basin of Rio Yupura, where rocky ridges form
the cataracts of the Rio de los Enganos and the Salto Grande de Yupura
(south latitude 0 degrees 40 minutes to north latitude 0 degrees 28
minutes), and the basin of the Upper Guaviare towards the west. We
find in the course of this river, from 60 to 70 leagues west of San
Fernando del Atabapo, two walls of rocks bounding the strait (nearly 3
degrees 10 minutes north latitude and 73 3/4 degrees longitude) where
father Maiella terminated his excursion. That missionary told me that,
in going up the Guaviare, he perceived near the strait (angostura) a
chain of mountains bounding the horizon on the south. It is not known
whether those mountains traverse the Guaviare more to the west, and
join the spurs which advance from the eastern Cordillera of New
Grenada, between the Rio Umadea and the Rio Ariari, in the direction
of the savannahs of San Juan de los Llanos. I doubt the existence of
this junction. If it really existed, the plains of the Lower Orinoco
would communicate with those of the Amazon only by a very narrow
land-strait, on the east of the mountainous country which surrounds
the source of the Rio Negro: but it is more probable that this
mountainous country (a small system of mountains, geognostically
dependent on the Sierra Parime) forms as it were an island in the
Llanos of Guaviare and Yupura. Father Pugnet, Principal of the
Franciscan convent at Popayan, assured me, that when he went from the
missions settled on the Rio Caguan to Aramo, a village situated on the
Rio Guayavero, he found only treeless savannahs, extending as far as
the eye could reach. The chain of mountains placed by several modern
geographers, between the Meta and the Vichada, and which appears to
link the Andes of New Grenada with the Sierra Parime, is altogether
imaginary.
We have now examined the prolongation of the Sierra Parime on the
west, towards the source of the Rio Negro: it remains for us to follow
the same group in its eastern direction. The mountains of the Upper
Orinoco, eastward of the Raudal of the Guaharibos (north latitude 1
degree 15 minutes longitude 67 degrees 38 minutes), join the chain of
Pacaraina, which divides the waters of the Carony and the Rio Branco,
and of which the micaceous schist, resplendent with silvery lustre,
figures so conspicuously in Raleigh's El Dorado. The part of that
chain containing the sources of the Orinoco has not yet been explored;
but its prolongation more to the east, between the meridian of the
military post of Guirior and the Rupunuri, a tributary of the
Essequibo, is known to me through the travels of the Spaniards Antonio
Santos and Nicolas Rodriguez, and also by the geodesic labours of two
Portuguese, Pontes and Almeida. Two portages but little frequented*
are situated between the Rio Branco and the Rio Essequibo, south of
the chain of Pacaraina; they shorten the land-road leading from the
Villa del Rio Negro to Dutch Guiana. (* The portages of Sarauru and
the lake Amucu.) On the contrary, the portage between the basin of the
Rio Branco and that of the Carony crosses the summit of the chain of
Pacaraina. On the northern slope of this chain rises the Anocapra, a
tributary of the Paraguamusi or Paravamusi; and on the southern slope,
the Araicuque, which, with the Uraricapara, forms the famous Valley of
Inundations, above the destroyed mission of Santa Rosa (latitude 3
degrees 46 minutes, longitude 65 degrees 10 minutes). The principal
Cordillera, which appears of little breadth, stretches on a length of
80 leagues, from the portage of Anocapra (longitude 65 degrees 35
minutes) to the left bank of the Rupunuri (longitude 61 degrees 50
minutes), following the parallels of 4 degrees 4 minutes and 4 degrees
12 minutes. We there distinguish from west to east the mountains of
Pacaraina, Tipique, Tauyana, among which rises the Rio Parime (a
tributary of the Uraricuera), Tubachi, Christaux (latitude 3 degrees
56 minutes, longitude 62 degrees 52 minutes) and Canopiri. The Spanish
traveller, Rodriguez, marks the eastern part of the chain by the name
of Quimiropaca; but preferring to adopt general names, I continue to
give the name of Pacaraina to the whole of this Cordillera which links
the mountains of the Orinoco to the interior of Dutch and French
Guiana, and which Raleigh and Keymis made known in Europe at the end
of the 16th century. This chain is broken by the Rupunuri and the
Essequibo, so that one of their tributary streams, the Tavaricuru,
takes its rise on the southern declivity, and the other, the Sibarona,
on the northern. On approaching the Essequibo, the mountains are more
developed towards the south-east, and extend beyond 2 1/2 degrees
north latitude. From this eastern branch of the chain of Pacaraina the
Rio Rupunuri rises near the Cerro Uassari. On the right bank of the
Rio Branco, in a still more southern latitude (between 1 and 2 degrees
north) is a mountainous territory in which the Caritamini, the
Padaviri, the Cababuri (Cavaburis) and the Pacimoni take their source,
from east to west.
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