CHAPTER XIX - ROUTE FROM ESMERALDA TO ANGOSTURA

Summary

Opposite the point where the division of the river takes place, there rises in the form of an amphitheatre a group of granitic mountains, of which the principal one bears the name of Duida. It is about 8500 feet high; and being perpendicular on the south and west, bare and stony on the summit, and clothed on its less steep declivities with vast forests, presents a magnificent spectacle. At the foot of this huge mass is placed the most solitary and remote Christian settlement on the Upper Orinoco,—the mission of Esmeralda, containing eighty inhabitants. It is surrounded by a beautiful plain, covered with grasses of various species, pine-apples, and clumps of Mauritia palm, and watered by limpid rills.

There was no monk at the village; but the travellers were received with kindness by an old officer, who, taking them for Catalonian shopkeepers, admired their simplicity when he saw the bundles of paper in which their plants were preserved, and which he supposed they intended for sale. Notwithstanding the smallness of the mission three Indian languages were spoken in it; and among the inhabitants were some Zaniboes, mulattoes, and copper-coloured people. A mineralogical error gave celebrity to Esmeralda, the rock-crystals and chloritic quartzes of Duida having been mistaken for diamonds and emeralds. The converts live in great poverty, and their misery is augmented by prodigious swarms of mosquitoes.