Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 37 - Chapter 3.32, Part 7

4. GROUP OF THE MOUNTAINS OF PARIME.

It is essential to mineralogical geography to designate by one name all the mountains that form one system.

To attain this end, a denomination belonging to a partial group only may be extended over the whole chain; or a name may be employed which, by reason of its novelty, is not likely to give rise to homogenic mistakes.

Mountaineers designate every group by a special denomination; and a chain is generally considered as forming a whole only when it is seen from afar bounding the horizon of the plains.

We find the name of snowy mountains (Himalaya, Imaus) repeated in every zone, white (Alpes, Alb), black and blue.

The greater part of the Sierra Parime is, as it were, edged round by the Orinoco.

I have, however, avoided a denomination having reference to this circumstance, because the group of mountains to which I am about to direct attention extends far beyond the banks of the Orinoco.

It stretches south-east, towards the banks of the Rio Negro and the Rio Branco, to the parallel of 1 1/2 degrees north latitude.

The geographical name of Parime has the advantage of reviving recollections of the fable of El Dorado, and the lofty mountains which, in the sixteenth century, were supposed to surround the lake Rupunuwini, or the Laguna de Parime.

The missionaries of the Orinoco still give the name of Parime to the whole of the vast mountainous country comprehended between the sources of the Erevato, the Orinoco, the Caroni, the Rio Parime* (a tributary of the Rio Branco) and the Rupunuri or Rupunuwini, a tributary of the Rio Essequibo.

(* The Rio Parime, after receiving the waters of the Uraricuera, joins the Tacutu, and forms, near the fort of San Joacquim, the Rio Branco, one of the tributary streams of the Rio Negro.

) This country is one of the least known parts of South America and is covered with thick forests and savannahs; it is inhabited by independent Indians and is intersected by rivers of dangerous navigation, owing to the frequency of shoals and cataracts.

The system of the mountains of Parime separates the plains of the Lower Orinoco from those of the Rio Negro and the Amazon; it occupies a territory of trapezoidal form, comprehended between the parallels of 3 and 8 degrees, and the meridians of 61 and 70 1/2 degrees.

I here indicate only the elements of the loftiest group, for we shall soon see that towards south-east the mountainous country, in lowering, draws near the equator, as well as to French and Portuguese Guiana.

The Sierra Parime extends most in the direction north 85 degrees west and the partial chains into which it separates on the westward generally follow the same direction.

It is less a Cordillera or a continuous chain in the sense given to those denominations when applied to the Andes and Caucasus than an irregular grouping of mountains separated the one from the other by plains and savannahs.

I

visited the northern, western and southern parts of the Sierra Parime, which is remarkable by its position and its extent of more than 25,000 square leagues.

From the confluence of the Apure, as far as the delta of the Orinoco, it is uniformly three or four leagues removed from the right bank of the great river; only some rocks of gneiss-granite, amphibolic slate and greenstone advance as far as the bed of the Orinoco and create the rapids of Torno and of La Boca del Infierno.

* (* To this series of advanced rocks also belong those which pierce the soil between the Rio Aquire and the Rio Barima; the granitic and amphibolic rocks of the Vieja Guayana and of the town of Angostura;

the Cerro de Mono on the south-east of Muitaco or Real Corono; the Cerro of Taramuto near the Alta Gracia, etc. ) I shall name successively, from north-north-east to south-south-west, the different chains seen by M. Bonpland and myself as we approached the equator and the river Amazon.

First.

The most northern chain of the whole system of the mountains of Parime appeared to us to be that which stretches (latitude 7 degrees 50 minutes) from the Rio Arui, in the meridian of the rapids of Camiseta, at the back of the town of Angostura, towards the great cataracts of the Rio Carony and the sources of the Imataca.

In the missions of the Catalonian Capuchins this chain, which is not 300 toises high, separates the tributary streams of the Orinoco and those of the Rio Cuyuni, between the town of Upata, Cupapui and Santa Marta.

Westward of the meridian of the rapids of Camiseta (longitude 67 degrees 10 minutes) the high mountains in the basin of the Rio Caura only commence at 7 degrees 20 minutes of latitude, on the south of the mission of San Luis Guaraguaraico, where they occasion the rapids of Mura.

This chain stretches westward by the sources of the Rio Cuchivero, the Cerros del Mato, the Cerbatana and Maniapure, as far as Tepupano, a group of strangely-formed granitic rocks surrounding the Encaramada.

The culminant points of this chain (latitude 7 degrees 10 minutes to 7 degrees 28 minutes) are, according to the information I gathered from the Indians, situated near the sources of Cano de la Tortuga.

In the chain of the Encaramada there are some traces of gold.

This chain is also celebrated in the mythology of the Tamanacs; for the painted rocks it contains are associated with ancient local traditions.

The Orinoco changes its direction at the confluence of the Apure, breaking a part of the chain of the Encaramada.

The latter mountains and scattered rocks in the plain of the Capuchino and on the north of Cabruta may be considered either as the vestiges of a destroyed spur or (on the hypothesis of the igneous origin of granite) as partial eruptions and upheavings.

I

shall not here discuss the question whether the most northerly chain, that of Angostura and of the great fall of Carony, be a continuation of the chain of Encaramada.

Third.

In navigating the Orinoco from north to south we observe, alternately, on the east, small plains and chains of mountains of which we cannot distinguish the profiles, that is, the sections perpendicular to their longitudinal axes.

From the mission of the Encaramada to the mouth of the Rio Qama I counted seven recurrences of this alternation of savannahs and high mountains.

First, on the south of the isle Cucuruparu rises the chain of Chaviripe (latitude 7 degrees 10 minutes); it stretches, inclining towards the south (latitude 6 degrees 20 minutes to 6 degrees 40 minutes), by the Cerros del Corozal, the Amoco, and the Murcielago, as far as the Erevato, a tributary of the Caura.

It there forms the rapids of Paru and is linked with the summits of Matacuna.

Fourth.

The chain of Chaviripe is succeeded by that of the Baraguan (latitude 6 degrees 50 minutes to 7 degrees 5 minutes), celebrated for the strait of the Orinoco, to which it gives its name.

The Saraguaca, or mountain of Uruana, composed of detached blocks of granite, may be regarded as a northern spur of the chain of the Baraguan, stretching south-west towards Siamacu and the mountains (latitude 5 degrees 50 minutes) that separate the sources of the Erevato and the Caura from those of the Ventuari.

Fifth.

The chain of Carichana and of Paruaci (latitude 6 degrees 25 minutes), wild in aspect, but surrounded by charming meadows.

Piles of granite crowned with trees and insulated rocks of prismatic form (the Mogote of Cocuyza and the Marimaruta or Castillito of the Jesuits) belong to this chain.

Sixth.

On the western bank of the Orinoco, which is low and flat, the Peak of Uniana rises abruptly more than 3000 feet high.

The spurs (latitude 5 degrees 35 minutes to 5 degrees 40 minutes) which this peak sends eastward are crossed by the Orinoco in the first Great Cataract (that of Mapura or the Atures); further on they unite together and, rising in a chain, stretch towards the sources of the Cataniapo, the rapids of Ventuari, situated on the north of the confluence of the Asisi (latitude 5 degrees 10 minutes) and the Cerro Cunevo.

Seventh.

Five leagues south of the Atures is the chain of Quittuna, or of Maypures (latitude 15 degrees 13 minutes), which forms the bar of the Second Great Cataract.

None of those lofty summits are situated on the west of the Orinoco;

on the east of that river rises the Cunavami, the truncated peak of Calitamini and the Jujamari, to which Father Gili attributes an extraordinary height.

Eighth.

The last chain of the south-west part of the Sierra Parime is separated by woody plains from the chain of Maypures; it is the chain of the Cerros de Sipapo (latitude 4 degrees 50 minutes); an enormous wall behind which the powerful chief of the Guaypunabi Indians intrenched himself during the expedition of Solano.

The chain of Sipapo may be considered as the beginning of the range of lofty mountains which bound, at the distance of some leagues, the right bank of the Orinoco, where that river runs from south-east to north-west, between the mouth of the Ventuari, the Jao and the Padamo (latitude 3 degrees 15 minutes).

In ascending the Orinoco, above the cataract of Maypures, we find, long before we reach the point where it turns, near San Fernando del Atabapo, the mountains disappearing from the bed of the river, and from the mouth of the Zama there are only insulated rocks in the plains.

The chain of Sipapo forms the south-west limit of the system of mountains of Parime, between 70 1/2 and 68 degrees of longitude.

Modern geologists have observed that the culminant points of a group are less frequently found at its centre than towards one of its extremities, preceding, and announcing in some sort, a great depression* of the chain.

(* As seen in Mont Blanc and Chimborazo.

) This phenomenon is again observed in the group of the Parime, the loftiest summits of which, the Duida and the Maraguaca, are in the most southerly range of mountains, where the plains of the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro begin.

These plains or savannahs which are covered with forests only in the vicinity of the rivers do not, however, exhibit the same uniform continuity as the Llanos of the Lower Orinoco, of the Meta and of Buenos Ayres.

They are interrupted by groups of hills (Cerros de Daribapa) and by insulated rocks of grotesque form which pierce the soil and from a distance fix the attention of the traveller.

These granitic and often stratified masses resemble the ruins of pillars or edifices.

The same force which upheaved the whole group of the Sierra Parime has acted here and there in the plains as far as beyond the equator.

The existence of these steeps and sporadic hills renders it difficult to determine the precise limits of a system in which the mountains are not longitudinally ranged as in a vein.

As we advance towards the frontier of the Portuguese province of the Rio Negro the high rocks become more rare and we no longer find the shelves or dykes of gneiss-granite which cause rapids and cataracts in the rivers.

Such is the surface of the soil between 68 1/2 and 70 1/2 degrees of longitude, between the meridian of the bifurcation of the Orinoco and that of San Fernando de Atabapo; further on, westward of the Upper Rio Negro, towards the source of that river, and its tributary streams the Xie and the Uaupes (latitude 1 to 2 1/4 degrees, longitude 72 to 74 degrees) lies a small mountainous tableland, in which Indian traditions place a Laguna de oro, that is, a lake surrounded with beds of auriferous earth.

* (* According to the journals of Acunha and Fritz the Manao Indians (Manoas) obtained from the banks of the Yquiari (Iguiare or Iguare) gold of which they made thin plates.

The manuscript notes of Don Apollinario also mention the gold of the Rio Uaupes.

La Condamine, Voyage a l'Amazone.

We must not confound the Laguna de Oro, which is said to be found in going up the Uaupes (north latitude 0 degrees 40 minutes) with another gold lake (south latitude 1 degree 10 minutes) which La Condamine calls Marahi or Morachi (water), and which is merely a tract often inundated between the sources of the Jurubech (Urubaxi) and the Rio Marahi, a tributary stream of the Caqueta.

) At Maroa, the most westerly mission of the Rio Negro, the Indians assured me that that river as well as the Inirida (a tributary of the Guavare) rises at the distance of five days' march, in a country bristled with hills and rocks.

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.

This western branch of the mountains of Pacaraina separates the basin of Rio Branco from that of the Upper Orinoco, the sources of which are probably not found east of the meridian of 66 15 minutes: it is linked with the mountains of Unturan and Yumariquin, situated south-east of the mission of Esmeralda.

Thence it results that, while on the west of the Cassiquiare, between that river, the Atabapo, and the Rio Negro, we find only vast plains, in which rise some little hills and insulated rocks; real spurs stretch eastward of the Cassiquiare, from north-west to south-east, and form a continued mountainous territory as far as 2 degrees north latitude.

The basin only, or rather the transversal valley of the Rio Branco, forms a kind of gulf, a succession of plains and savannahs (campos) several of which penetrate from south to north, into the mountainous land between the eastern and western branches of the chain of Pacaraina, to the distance of eight leagues north of the parallel of San Joaquin.