When, in the summer of 1800, we ascended the Upper Orinoco, we passed the mission of Esmeralda, and reached the mouths of the Sodomoni and the Guapo. Here soars high above the clouds, the mighty peak of the Yeonnamari or Duida; a mountain which presents one of the grandest spectacles in the natural scenery of the tropical world. Its altitude, according to my trigonometrical measurement, is 8278 (8823 English) feet above the level of the sea. Its southern slope is a treeless grassy plain, redolent with the odour of pine-apples, whose fragrance scents the humid evening air. Among lowly meadow plants rise the juicy stems of the _anana_, whose golden yellow fruit gleams from the midst of a bluish green diadem of leaves. Where the mountain springs break forth from beneath the grassy covering, rise isolated groups of lofty fan-palms, whose leaves, in this torrid region, are never stirred by a cooling breeze. To the east of the Duida mountain, begins a thicket of wild cacao trees, among which are found the celebrated almond tree, _Bertholletia excelsa_, the most luxurious product of a tropical vegetation[59]. Here the Indians collect colossal stalks of grass, whose joints measure upwards of 18 feet from knot to knot, which they use as blow-pipes for the discharge of their arrows[60]. Some Franciscan monks have penetrated as far as the mouth of the Chiguire, where the river is already so narrow that the natives have suspended over it, near the waterfall of the Guaharibes, a bridge woven of the stems of twining plants. The Guaicas, of palish complexion and short stature, armed with poisoned arrows, oppose all further progress eastward. Therefore, all that has been advanced to prove that the Orinoco derives its source from a lake must be regarded as a fable[61]. In vain the traveller seeks to discover the Lake of El Dorado, which, in Arrowsmith’s maps, is set down as an inland sea measuring upwards of 20 geographical (80 English) miles. Can the little reed-covered lake of Amucu, near which rises the Pirara (a branch of the Mahu), have given rise to this myth? This swamp lies, however, 4° to the east of the region in which we may suppose the sources of the Orinoco to be situated. Here tradition placed the island of Pumacena, a rock of micaceous schist, whose shining brightness has played a memorable, and, for the deluded adventurers, often a fatal, part in the fable of _El Dorado_, current since the sixteenth century. According to the belief of many of the natives, the Magellanic clouds of the southern sky, and even the glorious nebulæ in the constellation Argo, are mere reflections of the metallic brilliancy of these silver mountains of the Parime. It was besides an ancient custom of dogmatising geographers to make all the most considerable rivers of the world originate in lakes.