Diego De Ordaz (1531) And Alonzo De Herrera (1535) Directed Their Journeys Of Discovery Along The Banks Of The Lower Orinoco.

The former is the famous Conquistador of Mexico, who boasted that he had taken sulphur out of the crater of the Peak of Popocatepetl, and whom the emperor Charles V permitted to wear a burning volcano on his armorial bearings.

Ordaz, named Adelantado of all the country which he could conquer between Brazil and the coast of Venezuela, which was then called the country of the German Company of Welsers (Belzares) of Augsburg, began his expedition by the mouth of the Maranon. He there saw, in the hands of the natives, "emeralds as big as a man's fist." They were, no doubt, pieces of that saussurite jade, or compact feldspar, which we brought home from the Orinoco, and which La Condamine found in abundance at the mouth of the Rio Topayos. The Indians related to Diego de Ordaz that on going up during a certain number of suns toward the west, he would find a large rock (pena) of green stone; but before they reached this pretended mountain of emerald (rocks of euphotide?) a shipwreck put an end to all farther discovery. The Spaniards saved themselves with difficulty in two small vessels. They hastened to get out of the mouth of the Amazon; and the currents, which in those parts run with violence to the north-west, led Ordaz to the coast of Paria where, in the territory of the cacique Yuripari (Uriapari, Viapari), Sedeno had constructed the Casa fuerte de Paria. This post being very near the mouth of the Orinoco, the Mexican Conquistador resolved to attempt an expedition on this great river. He sojourned first at Carao (Caroa, Carora), a large Indian village, which appears to me to have been a little to the east of the confluence of the Carony; he then went up the Cabruta (Cabuta, Cabritu), and to the mouth of the Meta (Metacuyu), where he found great difficulty in passing his boats through the Raudal of Cariven. The Aruacas, whom Ordaz employed as guides, advised him to go up the Meta; where, on advancing towards the west, they asserted he would find men clothed, and gold in abundance. Ordaz pursued in preference the navigation of the Orinoco, but the cataracts of Tabaje (perhaps even those of the Atures) compelled him to terminate his discoveries.

It is worthy of remark that in this voyage, far anterior to that of Orellana, and consequently the greatest which the Spaniards had then performed on a river of the New World, the name of the Orinoco was for the first time heard. Ordaz, the leader of the expedition, affirms that the river, from its mouth as far as the confluence of the Meta, is called Uriaparia, but that above this confluence it bears the name of Orinucu. This word (formed analogously with the words Tamanacu, Otomacu, Sinarucu) is, in fact, of the Tamanac tongue; and, as the Tamanacs dwell south-east of Encaramada, it is natural that the conquistadores heard the actual name of the river only on drawing near the Rio Meta.* (* Gili volume 3 page 381. The following are the most ancient names of the Orinoco, known to the natives near its mouth, and which historians give us altered by the double fault of pronunciation and orthography; Yuyapari, Yjupari, Huriaparia, Urapari, Viapari, Rio de Paria. The Tamanac word Orinucu was disfigured by the Dutch pilots into Worinoque. The Otomacs say Joga-apurura (great river); the Cabres and Guaypunabis, Paragua, Bazagua Parava, three words signifying great water, river, sea. That part of the Orinoco between the Apure and the Guaviare is often denoted by the name of Baraguan. A famous strait, which we have described above, bears also this name, which is no doubt a corruption of the word Paragua. Great rivers in every zone are called by the dwellers on their banks the river, without any particular denominations. If other names be added, they change in every province. Thus the Rio Turiva, near the Encaramada, has five names in the different parts of its course. The Upper Orinoco, or Paragua, is called by the Maquiritares (near Esmeralda) Maraguaca, on account of the lofty mountains of this name near Duida. Gili volume 1 pages 22 and 364. Caulin page 75. In most of the names of the rivers of America we recognize the root water. Thus yacu in the Peruvian, and veni in the Maypure tongues, signify water and river. In the Lule dialect I find fo, water; foyavolto, a river; foysi, a lake; as in Persian, ab is water; abi frat, the river Euphrates; abdan, a lake. The root water is preserved in the derivatives.) On this last tributary stream Diego de Ordaz received from the natives the first idea of civilized nations who inhabited the table-lands of the Andes of New Granada; of a very powerful prince with one eye (Indio tuerto), and of animals less than stags, but fit for riding like Spanish horses. Ordaz had no idea that these animals were llamas (ovejas del Peru). Must we admit that llamas, which were used in the Andes to draw the plough and as beasts of burden, but not for riding, were already common on the north and east of Quito? I find that Orellana saw these animals at the river Amazon, above the confluence of the Rio Negro, consequently in a climate very different from that of the table-land of the Andes. The table of an army of Omaguas mounted on llamas served to embellish the account given by the fellow-travellers of Felipe de Urre of their adventurous expedition to the Upper Caqueta. We cannot be sufficiently attentive to these traditions, which seem to prove that the domestic animals of Quito and Peru had already begun to descend the Cordilleras, and spread themselves by degrees in the eastern regions of South America.

Herrera, the treasurer of the expedition of Ordaz, was sent in 1553, by the governor Geronimo de Ortal, to pursue the discovery of the Orinoco and the Meta.

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