Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 103 of 635 - First - Home
There Acunha And Father Fritz Placed Their Laguna Del Oro;
And Various Accounts Which I Obtained At San Carlos From Portuguese
Americans Explain Perfectly What La Condamine Has Related Of The
Plates Of Beaten Gold Found In The Hands Of The Natives.
If we pass
from the Iquiare to the left bank of the Rio Negro, we enter a country
entirely unknown, between the Rio Branco, the sources of the
Essequibo, and the mountains of Portuguese Guiana.
Acunha speaks of
the gold washed down by the northern tributary streams of the Lower
Maranon, such as the Rio Trombetas (Oriximina), the Curupatuba, and
the Ginipape (Rio de Paru). It appears to me a circumstance worthy of
attention that all these rivers descend from the same table-land, the
northern slope of which contains the lake Amucu, the Dorado of Raleigh
and the Dutch, and the isthmus between the Rupunuri (Rupunuwini) and
the Rio Mahu. There is no reason for denying the existence of
auriferous alluvial lands far from the Cordilleras of the Andes on the
north of the Amazon; as there are on the south in the mountains of
Brazil. The Caribs of the Carony, the Cuyuni and the Essequibo, have
practised on a small scale the washing of alluvial earth from the
remotest times.* (* "On the north of the confluence of the Curupatuba
and the Amazon," says Acunha, "is the mountain of Paraguaxo, which,
when illumined by the sun, glows with the most beautiful colours; and
thence from time to time issues a horrible noise (revienta con grandes
struenos)." Is there a volcanic phenomenon in this eastern part of the
New Continent?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 103 of 635
Words from 28283 to 28554
of 174507
