“I heard him say something about a gold mine once,” said Sam. “Perhaps he thought to try his luck in that direction—after he found he had to settle down.”
“His gold mine is out of somebody else’s pocket,” grumbled Hockley, and walked away, amid a laugh which could not be repressed.
CHAPTER XXIV
UP THE RIVER TO BOLIVAR
There are several ways of entering the Orinoco proper, but the main stream is the Boca de Navios, flowing eastward into the Atlantic. This great body of water is cut into two channels, each about two miles wide, by a series of islands, some little more than marshlands and others hilly and covered with heavy tropical growths.
“The exact length of the Orinoco is not known,” said the professor, in reply to a question from Mark. “It would be a difficult matter to reach its source, which is located somewhere in the Sierra Parime Mountains, thousands of feet up among the clouds. Roughly speaking the stream proper is almost two thousand miles long.”
“But we can’t sail that far, can we?” asked Hockley.
“By no means. Bolivar, for which we are now bound, marks the head of tide water, and there we will have to take a smaller vessel, even though the river at that point is several miles wide and over three hundred feet deep. Bolivar is about two hundred and fifty miles from the ocean, and about half way to where the Orinoco is joined by the Apure River, in the west. From this point the Orinoco branches southward, through a country of llanos and immense forests, until it approaches the Sierra Parime Mountains, where it is much broken by cascades and rocky canyons. At this point there is a small stream, the Casiquiare, which connects with the Rio Negro, a large river flowing into the Amazon of Brazil.”
“Are there many towns on the river?” questioned Frank.
“Towns, yes, but no cities worth mentioning. Along the upper Orinoco the inhabitants are mostly natives who raise stock and gather cocoa beans, tonqua beans—used for soaps and perfumes—and fruits. To the southward, are immense forests where rubber is found, and in the mountains are the valuable mines which we have already mentioned. Some of these mines are held to be worth ten to twenty millions of dollars each.”
“Gracious! I wouldn’t mind owning one of those myself,” said Darry, in a low voice.