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 Table Of An Army Of Omaguas Mounted On Llamas Served
To Embellish The Account Given By The Fellow-Travellers Of Felipe De
Urre Of Their Adventurous Expedition To The Upper Caqueta.
We cannot
be sufficiently attentive to these traditions, which seem to prove
that the domestic animals of Quito and Peru had already begun to
descend the Cordilleras, and spread themselves by degrees in the
eastern regions of South America.
Herrera, the treasurer of the expedition of Ordaz, was sent in 1553,
by the governor Geronimo de Ortal, to pursue the discovery of the
Orinoco and the Meta. He lost nearly thirteen months between Punta
Barina and the confluence of the Carony in constructing flat-bottomed
boats, and making the preparations indispensable for a long voyage. We
cannot read without astonishment the narrative of those daring
enterprises, in which three or four hundred horses were embarked to be
put ashore whenever cavalry could act on one of the banks. We find in
the expedition of Herrera the same stations which we already knew; the
fortress of Paria, the Indian village of Uriaparia (no doubt below
Imataca, on a point where the inundations of the delta prevented the
Spaniards from being able to procure firewood), Caroa, in the province
of Carora; the rivers Caranaca (Caura?) and Caxavana (Cuchivero?); the
village of Cabritu (Cabruta), and the Raudal near the mouth of the
Meta (probably the Raudal of Cariven and the Piedra de la Paciencia).
As the Rio Meta, on account of the proximity of its sources and of its
tributary streams to the auriferous Cordilleras of new Grenada
(Cundinamarca), enjoyed great celebrity, Herrera attempted to go up
this river.
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