knowledge of the delta and the course of the Rio Carony is at once
interesting to hydrography and to European commerce.

When a vessel coming from sea would enter the principal mouth of the
Orinoco, the Boca de Navios, it should make the land at the Punta
Barima. The right or southern bank is the highest: the granitic rock
pierces the marshy soil at a small distance in the interior, between
the Cano Barima, the Aquire, and the Cuyuni. The left, or northern
bank of the Orinoco, which stretches along the delta towards the Boca
de Mariusas and the Punta Baxa, is very low, and is distinguishable at
a distance only by the clumps of moriche palm-trees which embellish
the passage. This is the sago-tree* of the country (* The nutritious
fecula or medullary flour of the sago-trees is found principally in a
group of palms which M. Kunth has distinguished by the name of
calameae. It is collected, however, in the Indian Archipelago, as an
article of trade, from the trunks of the Cycas revoluta, the Phoenix
farinifera, the Corypha umbraculifera, and the Caryota urens.
(Ainslie, Materia Medica of Hindostan, Madras 1813.)) The quantity of
nutritious matter which the real sago-tree of Asia affords (Sagus
Rumphii, or Metroxylon sagu, Roxb.) exceeds that which is furnished by
any other plant useful to man. One trunk of a tree in its fifteenth
year sometimes yields six hundred pounds weight of sago, or meal (for
the word sago signifies meal in the dialect of Amboyna). Mr. Crawfurd,
who resided a long time in the Indian Archipelago, calculates that an
English acre could contain four hundred and thirty-five sago-trees,
which would yield one hundred and twenty thousand five hundred pounds
avoirdupois of fecula, or more than eight thousand pounds yearly.
History of the Indian Archipelago volume 1 pages 387 and 393. This
produce is triple that of corn, and double that of potatoes in France.
But the plantain produces, on the same surface of land, still more