Some six hours’ ride south of El Callao is the town of Tumeremo, which is rapidly coming to the fore as the centre of the balatá industry. At present it is near the forests, which are of enormous extent; but the system of wholesale destruction of the trees still prevails, and it is to be feared that the history of Guasipati will be repeated here, and that the industry will perish by a suicide’s death at no very distant date.
CARRYING THE TILES ON OX-BACK; NEAR TOVAR.
Famous as are the falls of the Caroni, the upper course and tributaries of this great river are practically unknown. For some fifty miles from its mouth, until the savannahs finally give place to forest, villages may be found on the sites of the old Capuchin Missions. The chief tributary is the Paragua, but this and the minor affluents are alike known chiefly from the casual information of the Indians who inhabit the forests along the banks. Yet there may be extensive savannahs in the uplands, and the geology of Guayana would lead one to expect to find gold, while the forests undoubtedly contain great wealth of timber and vegetable products, all waiting to reward the industry of the pioneer bold enough to take his lot in these remote regions.
Above Bolivar the Orinoco has a tranquil course for some distance between llanos on the north and granite hills and savannahs on the south. Above Moitaco, however, there is a sharp S bend, with many islands, where the current gradually increases in strength as one approaches the Puerto or Boca del Infierno (Gates of Hell), where the whole stream rushes through a narrow gorge with such force as to occasionally drive back the river steamers. Beyond this to the mouth of the Caura the main river, though full of rocks, is wide and the current less rapid.
Like most of the Guayana tributaries of the Lower Orinoco, for the last forty or fifty miles before it joins the main river the Caura flows through wide savannahs, broken here and there by wooded hills, and by the belts of trees along the river banks. In these more fertile belts clearings have been made at a few spots, with one or two miserable huts, whose occupants cultivate the sugar, rice, bananas, manioc, sweet potatoes, and yams of these tiny plantations.
Higher up the forests begin, and, as far as is known, the upper valley of the Caura is all forest, with very few savannahs. In these forests the tonka-bean (sarrapia) grows to perfection, and the collecting of these, and of a certain amount of copaiba-balsam and cedar-wood, constitutes the chief industry of the Caura settlements. Of late years the tonka-bean has gone down in value, and the inhabitants have turned their attention more to rice-farming, for which the Caura lowlands are well fitted. Most of the produce is used locally, but a small surplus is shipped to Ciudad Bolivar.
The dense forests are not absolutely unbroken, however, for here and there are bare open spaces of flat granite rock, known as lajas; it is to these that the foresters come often to crush and dry the tonka-beans. Up the Nichare, a western tributary of the Caura above the Raudales of Mura, there is said to be much rubber of good quality, but it remains practically untouched for want of population in the region.
Some 130 miles up the Caura from its mouth are the falls or rapids of Pará, with a total descent of apparently about 200 feet, according to André, the author of the only reliable account of the Upper Caura. Some day, as he suggests, the falls may provide power for saw-mills and a town whose prosperity is founded upon the natural wealth of the surrounding forest; at present all is wild, and almost unknown. There is a portage over the falls, by way of an island in the middle, and then begins the Merevari, as the Caura above Pará is called.
The two chief tributaries on the west bank are the Nichare, already mentioned, and the Erewato, above Pará, once colonised by the early missionaries and afterwards the line of a short cut to the Upper Orinoco; now the valley is unknown to Europeans.