150 ON THE RIVER CASSIQUIARE.

incident merely to show the artifices of those large
cats with spreckled coats.”

Solitude the most profound, fohage the most
luxuriant, and mosquitoes the most envenomed,
were the three most striking characteristics of the
river Cassiquiare. ‘‘ Not five boats pass annually
by its waters,” says our traveller; ‘and since we
left Maypures—that is, for a whole month—we had
not met one living soul on the rivers as we ascended,
except in the immediate neighbourhood of the
missions. ‘To the south of Lake Duractumuni we
slept in a forest of palm-trees. It rained violently,
but the pothoses, arums,and lianas furnished so thick
a natural trellis, that we were sheltered as under a
vault of foliage. The Indians, whose hammocks
were placed on the edge of the river, interwove the
heliconias and other plants so as to form a kind of
roof over them. Our fires lighted up, to the height
of fifty or sixty feet; the palm-trees, the lianas,
loaded with flowers; and the columns of white
smoke, ascending in a straight line towards the
sky—the whole exhibited a magnificent spectacle;
but, to enjoy it with tranquillity, we should have
breathed an air free from insects. The mosquitoes,
which tormented us during the day, accumulated
towards evening beneath the roof of palm-leaves.
Our hands and faces had never before been more
swelled; Father Zea, who until then boasted of