CHAPTER XVII - VOYAGE UP THE ORINOCO

Summary

Leaving the Rio Apure the travellers entered the Orinoco, and presently found themselves in a country of an entirely different aspect. As far as the eye could reach there lay before them a sheet of water, the waves of which, from the conflict of the breeze and the current, rose to the height of several feet. The long files of herons, flamingoes, and spoonbills, which were observed on the Apure, had disappeared; and all that supplied the place of those multitudes of animated beings by whom they had been lately accompanied, was here and there a crocodile swimming in the agitated stream. The horizon was bounded by a girdle of forests, separated from the river by a broad beach, the bare and parched surface of which refracted the solar rays into the semblance of pools.

The wind was favourable for sailing up the Orinoco; but the short broken waves at the junction of the two rivers were exceedingly disagreeable. They passed the Punta Curiquima, a granitic promontory, between which and the mouth of the Apure, the breadth of the stream was ascertained to be 4063 yards, and in the rainy season it extends to 11,760. The temperature of the water was in the middle of the current 82·9°, and near the shores, 84·6°. They first went up toward the southwest as far as the shore of the Guaricoto Indians on the left bank, and then toward the south.