During the night we had left the waters of the Orinoco, and at
sunrise found ourselves as if transported to a new country, on
the banks of a river the name of which we had scarcely ever heard
pronounced, and which was to conduct us by the portage of Pimichin
to the Rio Negro, on the frontiers of Brazil. “You will go up,” said
the president of the missions, who resides at San Fernando, “first
the Atabapo, then the Temi, and finally the Tuamini. When the force
of the current of ‘black waters’ hinders you from advancing you
will be conducted out of the bed of the river through forests which
you will find inundated. Two monks only are settled in those desert
places between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro, but at Javita you will
be furnished with the means of having your canoe drawn overland in
the course of four days to Caño Pimichin. If it be not broken to
pieces you will descend the Rio Negro without any obstacle, as far as
the little fort of San Carlos; you will go up the Cassiguiare, and
then return to San Fernando in a month, descending the upper Orinoco
from east to west.” Such was the plan traced for our passage, and
we carried it into effect without danger, though not without some
suffering, in the space of thirty-three days.