the Orinoco; and during this long period of time, according to a
tradition which has been propagated from generation to generation, the
periodical oscillations of the river (the time of the beginning of the
rising, and that when it attains its maximum) have never been retarded
more than twelve or fifteen days.

When vessels that draw a good deal of water sail up toward Angostura
in the months of January and February, by favour of the sea-breeze and
the tide, they run the risk of taking the ground. The navigable
channel often changes its breadth and direction; no buoy, however, has
yet been laid down, to indicate any deposit of earth formed in the bed
of the river, where the waters have lost their original velocity.
There exists on the south of Cape Barima, as well by the river of this
name as by the Rio Moroca and several estuaries (esteres) a
communication with the English colony of Essequibo. Small vessels can
penetrate into the interior as far as the Rio Poumaron, on which are
the ancient settlements of Zealand and Middleburg. Heretofore this
communication interested the government of Caracas only on account of
the facility it furnished to an illicit trade; but since Berbice,
Demerara, and Essequibo have fallen into the hands of a more powerful
neighbour, it fixes the attention of the Spanish Americans as being
connected with the security of their frontiers. Rivers which have a
course parallel to the coast, and are nowhere farther distant from it
than five or six nautical miles, characterize the whole of the shore
between the Orinoco and the Amazon.

Ten leagues distant from Cape Barima, the great bed of the Orinoco is
divided for the first time into two branches of two thousand toises in
breadth. They are known by the Indian names of Zacupana and Imataca.
The first, which is the northernmost, communicates on the west of the