It seemed as if the declining sun had set the quivering world aflame; all day long the _Delta_, well remembered but unbeloved by voyagers on the Master River, had struggled on against the yellow flood toward her goal two hundred and forty miles above the Parian Gulf. Not a ripple stirred the placid water which glided ever onward, and no breeze stirred the heavy, dark vegetation that lined the river’s bank. It had been one of those days which only the traveller to tropical lands can adequately picture; when all the earth silently droops beneath the unrelenting glare of the lurid orb overhead, and eagerly awaits the coming of night which alone can bring relief. As the last vestige of the sullen disk dipped into the forest, and only a faint pink and violet glow lit up the banks of vapors hanging low in the west, the nightly gales from the ocean sprang up with unrestrained vigor; soon a choppy sea was raging, and as each white-capped wave struck her wooden sides with a muffled boom, the fragile, top-heavy steamer shuddered and threatened to capsize. Morning, however, found her still battling bravely with the somewhat subsided elements, and, not long after, the _Delta_ was slowly dragging herself alongside the high, sandy beach on which stands Ciudad Bolivar. The first white man to ascend the Orinoco was Ordaz, who in 1531–2 went as far as the mouth of the Meta; and after him came the usual bands of treasure-seekers in quest of El Dorado; but instead of wonderful golden cities they found yawning graves in a hostile wilderness. In the middle of the eighteenth century missions, founded by the Jesuit fathers, dotted the river-bank as far up as Esmeraldas; these have long since vanished. Humboldt made his memorable voyage to the Cassiquiare in 1800, and a number of other scientific expeditions followed in his wake at irregular intervals; to enumerate them all would be a tedious and unwarranted use of time. However, one remarkable fact must not be overlooked, namely, that even to this day the actual sources of the Orinoco have not been discovered. To trace this huge artery to its very beginning, supposedly somewhere in the Serrania de Parima on the Brazilian frontier was not the object of our expedition; but rather to explore the regions north of the inaccurately mapped Rio Cunucunuma, more particularly Mount Duida, thought by many to be the locality described in a widely read book entitled “The Lost World.” Of this country, and of the people and animal life inhabiting its virgin wilds, very little was known. With the tying up of the _Delta_ the first stage of our journey had been completed.