ENTRANCE OR DESCENT BY THE MARANON, FROM TOMEPENDA, IN THE PROVINCE OF JAEN, TO THE TOWN OF THE LAKE OF GRAN COCAMA.
From the port of Tomependa, situated on the bank of the river Chinchipe, the descent to the town of the lake is made in nine days, in the manner following: from the above-mentioned port, the thirty leagues by computation to the mouth of the Imasa,[1] are navigated by balsas in one day. It will cease to excite surprize, that these balsas should run over such a distance in ten or twelve hours, when attention is paid to the extraordinary rapidity of the united currents of the rivers Chinchipe, Chachapoyas, and Maranon. In the Intermediate distance, the following pongos occur: Rentema, Cunugiacu, Ujure, Zinquipongo, Puyaya (a little below the town of that name), Yullpa, Tariquisa, Cacangarisa (this is the narrowest of all the pongos), Yamburana, Moape, Huanguana, and sixteen others, the names of which I omit. These pongos are straits formed by high and pendant cliffs, over which the descending torrents force a passage with such a degree of violence, as to occasion terrible billows, eddies, and whirlpools, by which the balsas are submerged. The latter are composed of fifteen logs or beams of wood,[2] twelve yards in length, and somewhat less in their united breadth, the narrowness of the pongos not admitting a greater extension. They are furnished with a lofty and solid tilt, formed of canes, beneath which the cargoes are made secure with strong cords.[3] At the extremities, as well as at the parts where the beams are united, other beams, half a yard in height, are firmly attached in the manner of small pillars; and by these the navigators secure themselves, at the time when the balsa, which, however, speedily returns to float on the water, is submerged in the pongos. The navigation from the mouth of the Imasa to the town of la Barranca, requires five days, during which the traveller has to pass the pongos of Cumbinama,[4] Escurri-
- ↑ But a few years have elapsed since this navigation was first practised. The Indians of Tomependa are, notwithstanding, extremely dexterous in performing it; and by this route several days are saved.
- ↑ This wood is pale, of a soft texture, and extremely light. It is named by the Indians, balsa; by the Spaniards, canna veja; and is conjectured to be the ferula of the Romans.—Ulloa.
- ↑ These cords, and those which are employed to lash the beams, &c. are made of the interwoven fibrous stems of the bejuco, a plant of the kind denominated creepers.
- ↑ Instead of pongo, this may with more propriety be named salto, by which a craggy inlet is implied; since, the river being here pent up, the water forsakes its course, and rushes into a hollow rock, the one half of the cavity of which it occupies. In its sudden fall, it occasions such furious and lofty billows,
