He Could Not Expect That La Cruz And Surville, Mingling Old Hypotheses With Accurate Ideas, Would Reproduce On Their Maps The Mar Dorado Or Mar Blanco.

Thus, notwithstanding the numerous proofs which I have furnished since my return from America, of the non-existence of an inland sea the origin of the Orinoco, a map has been published in my name,* on which the Laguna Parima figures anew.

(* Carte de l'Amerique, dressee sur les Observations de M. de Humboldt, par Fried. Vienna 1818.)

From the whole of these statements it follows, first, that the Laguna Rupunuwini, or Parima of the voyage of Raleigh and of the maps of Hondius, is an imaginary lake, formed by the lake Amucu* (* This is the lake Amaca of Surville and La Cruz. By a singular mistake, the name of this lake is transformed to a village on Arrowsmith's map.) and the tributary streams of the Uraricuera, which often overflow their banks; secondly, that the Laguna Parime of Surville's map is the lake Amucu, which gives rise to the Rio Pirara and (conjointly with the Mahu, the Tacutu, the Uraricuera, or Rio Parima, properly so called) to the Rio Branco; thirdly, that the Laguna Parime of La Cruz is an imaginary swelling of the Rio Parime (confounded with the Orinoco) below the junction of the Mahu with the Xurumu. The distance from the mouth of the Mahu to that of the Tacutu is scarcely 0 degrees 40 minutes; La Cruz enlarges it to 7 degrees of latitude. He calls the upper part of the Rio Branco (that which receives the Mahu) Orinoco or Purumu. There can be no doubt of its being the Xurumu, one of the tributary streams of the Tacutu, which is well known to the inhabitants of the neighbouring fort of San Joaquim. All the names that figure in the fable of El Dorado are found in the tributary streams of the Rio Branco. Slight local circumstances, joined to the remembrances of the salt lake of Mexico, more especially of the celebrated lake Manoa in the Dorado des Omaguas, have served to complete a picture created by the imagination of Raleigh and his two lieutenants, Keymis and Masham. The inundations of the Rio Branco, I conceive, may be compared at the utmost to those of the Red River of Louisiana, between Nachitoches and Cados, but not to the Laguna de los Xarayes, which is a temporary swelling of the Rio Paraguay.* (* Southey volume 1 page 130. These periodical overflowings of the Rio Paraguay have long acted the same part in the southern hemisphere, as lake Parima has been made to perform in the northern. Hondius and Sanson have made the Rio de la Plata, the Rio Topajos (a tributary stream of the Amazon), the Rio Tocantines, and the Rio de San Francisco, issue from the Laguna de los Xarayes.)

We have now examined a White Sea,* (* That of D'Anville and La Cruz, and of the greater part of the modern maps.) which the principal of the Rio Branco is made to traverse; and another,* (* The lake of Surville, which takes the place of lake Amucu.) which is placed on the east of this river, and communicates with it by the Cano Pirara. A third lake* (* The lake which Surville calls Laguna tenida hasta ahora or La una Parime.) is figured on the west of the Rio Branco, respecting which I found recently some curious details in the manuscript journal of the surgeon Hortsmann. "At the distance of two days' journey below the confluence of the Mahu (Tacutu) with the Rio Parima (Uraricuera) a lake is found on top of a mountain. This lake is stocked with the same fish as the Rio Parima; but the waters of the former are black, and those of the latter white." May not Surville, from a vague notion of this basin, have imagined, in his map prefixed to Father Caulin's work, an Alpine lake of ten leagues in length, near which, towards the east, rise at the same time the Orinoco, and the Rio Idapa, a tributary stream of the Rio Negro? However vague may be the account of the surgeon of Hildesheim, it is impossible to admit that the mountain, which has a lake at its summit, is to the north of the parallel of 2 degrees 30 minutes: and this latitude coincides nearly with that of the Cerro Unturan. Hence it follows that the Alpine lake of Hortsmann, which has escaped the attention of D'Anville, and which is perhaps situate amid a group of mountains, lies north-east of the portage from the Idapa to the Mavaca, and south-east of the Orinoco, where it goes up above Esmeralda.

Most of the historians who have treated of the first ages of the conquest seem persuaded that the name provincias or pais del Dorado denoted originally every region abounding in gold. Forgetting the precise etymology of the word El Dorado (the gilded), they have not perceived that this tradition is a local fable, as were almost all the ancient fables of the Greeks, the Hindoos, and the Persians. The history of the gilded man belongs originally to the Andes of New Grenada, and particularly to the plains in the vicinity of their eastern side: we see it progressively advance, as I observed above, three hundred leagues toward the east-north-east, from the sources of the Caqueta to those of the Rio Branco and the Essequibo. Gold was sought in different parts of South America before 1536, without the word El Dorado having been ever pronounced, and without the belief of the existence of any other centre of civilization and wealth, than the empire of the Inca of Cuzco. Countries which now do not furnish commerce with the smallest quantities of the precious metals, the coast of Paria, Terra Firma (Castillo del Oro), the mountains of Santa Marta, and the isthmus of Darien, then enjoyed the same celebrity which has been more recently acquired by the auriferous lands of Sonora, Choco, and Brazil.

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