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.

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