Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Are There Any Gold-Washings More To The South,
Toward The Uaupe, On The Iquiare (Iguiari, Iguari), And On The
Yurubesh (Yurubach, Urubaxi)?
It was there that Philip von Huten first
sought El Dorado, and with a handful of men fought the battle of
Omaguas, so celebrated in the sixteenth century.
In separating what is
fabulous from the narratives of the Conquistadores, we cannot fail to
recognize in the names preserved on the same spots a certain basis of
historic truth. We follow the expedition of Huten beyond the Guaviare
and the Caqeta; we find in the Guaypes, governed by the cacique of
Macatoa, the inhabitants of the river of Uaupe, which also bears the
name of Guape, or Guapue; we call to mind, that Father Acunha calls
the Iquiari (Quiquiare) a gold river; and that fifty years later
Father Fritz, a missionary of great veracity, received, in the mission
of Yurimaguas, the Manaos (Manoas), adorned with plates of beaten
gold, coming from the country between the Uaupe and the Caqueta, or
Jupura. The rivers that rise on the eastern declivity of the Andes
(for instance the Napo) carry along with them a great deal of gold,
even when their sources are found in trachytic soils. Why may there
not be an alluvial auriferous soil to the east of the Cordilleras, as
there is to the west, in the Sonoro, at Choco, and at Barbacoas? I am
far from wishing to exaggerate the riches of this soil; but I do not
think myself authorized to deny the existence of precious metals in
the primitive mountains of Guiana, merely because in our journey
through that country we saw no metallic veins.
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