(* I Find No Trace Of It On A Very Rare Map, Dedicated To Richard Hakluyt, And Constructed On The Meridian Of Toledo.

Novus Orbis, Paris 1587.

In this map, published before the voyage of Quiros, a group of Islands is marked (Infortunatae Insulae) where the Friendly Islands actually are. Ortelius (1570) already knew them. Were they islands seen by Magellan?) It was Jodocus Hondius who, as early as the year 1599, fixed the ideas of geographers and figured the interior of Spanish Guiana as a country well known. He transformed the isthmus between the Rio Branco and the Rio Rupunuwini (one of the tributary streams of the Essequibo) into the lake Rupunuwini, Parima, or Dorado, two hundred leagues long, and forty broad, and bounded by the latitudes of 1 degree 45 minutes south, and 2 degrees north. This inland sea, larger than the Caspian, is sometimes traced in the midst of a mountainous country, without communication with any river;* (* See, for instance, Hondius, Nieuwe Caerte van het goudrycke landt Guiana, 1599; and Sanson's Map of America, in 1656 and 1669.) and sometimes the Rio Oyapok (Waiapago, Japoc, Viapoco) and the Rio de Cayana are made to issue from it.* (* Brasilia et Caribaua, auct. Hondio et Huelsen 1599.) The first of these rivers, confounded in the eighth article of the treaty of Utrecht with the Rio de Vicente Pincon (Rio Calsoene of D'Anville), has been, even down to the late congress of Vienna, the subject of interminable discussions between the French and Portuguese diplomatists.* (* I have treated this question in a Memoire sur la fixation des limites de La Guyane Francaise, written at the desire of the Portuguese government during the negotiations of Paris in 1817. (See Schoell, Archives polit. or Pieces inedites volume 1 pages 48 to 58.) Ribeyro, in his celebrated map of the world of 1529, places the Rio de Vicente Pincon south of the Amazon, near the Gulf of Maranhao. This navigator landed at this spot, after having been at Cape Saint Augustin, and before he reached the mouth of the Amazon. Herrera dec. I page 107. The narrative of Gomara, Hist. Nat. 1553 page 48, is very confused in a geographical point of view.) The second is an imaginary prolongation either of the Tonnegrande or of the Oyac (Wia?). The inland sea (Laguna Parime) was at first placed in such a manner that its western extremity coincided with the meridian of the confluence of the Apure and the Orinoco. By degrees it was advanced toward the east,* the western extremity being found to the south of the mouth of the Orinoco. (* Compare the maps of 1599 with those of Sanson (1656) and of Blaeuw (1633).) This change produced others in the respective situations of the lakes Parima and Cassipa, as well as in the direction of the course of the Orinoco. This great river is represented as running from its delta as far as beyond the Meta, from south to north, like the river Magdalena. The tributary streams, therefore, which were made to issue from the lake Cassipa, the Carony, the Arui, and the Caura, then took the direction of the latitude, while in nature they follow that of a meridian. Beside the lakes Parima and Cassipa, a third was traced upon the maps, from which the Aprouague (Apurwaca) was made to issue. It was then a general practice among geographers to attach all rivers to great lakes. By this means Ortelius joined the Nile to the Zaire or Rio Congo, and the Vistula to the Wolga and the Dnieper. North of Mexico, in the pretended kingdoms of Quivira and Cibola, rendered celebrated by the falsehoods of the monk Marcos de Niza, a great inland sea was imagined, from which the Rio Colorado of California was made to issue.* (* This is the Mexican Dorado, where it was pretended that vessels had been found on the coasts [of New Albion?] loaded with the merchandise of Catayo and China (Gomara, Hist. Gen. page 117), and where Fray Marcos (like Huten in the country of the Omaguas) had seen from afar the gilded roofs of a great town, one of the Siete Ciudades. The inhabitants have great dogs, en los quales quando se mudan cargan su menage. (Herrera dec. 6 pages 157 and 206.) Later discoveries, however, leave no doubt that there existed a centre of civilization in those countries.) A branch of the Rio Magdalena flowed to the Laguna de Maracaybo; and the lake of Xarayes, near which a southern Dorado was placed, communicated with the Amazon, the Miari* (Meary) (* As this river flows into the gulf of Maranhao (so named because some French colonists, Rifault, De Vaux, and Ravadiere, believed they were opposite the mouth of the Maranon or Amazon), the ancient maps call the Meary Maranon, or Maranham. See the maps of Hondius, and Paulo de Forlani. Perhaps the idea that Pincon, to whom the discovery of the real Maranon is due, had landed in these parts, since become celebrated by the shipwreck of Ayres da Cunha, has also contributed to this confusion. The Meary appears to me identical with the Rio de Vicente Pincon of Diego Ribeyro, which is more than one hundred and forty leagues from that of the modern geographers. At present the name of Maranon has remained at the same time to the river of the Amazons, and to a province much farther eastward, the capital of which is Maranhao, or St. Louis de Maranon.) and the Rio de San Francisco. These hydrographic reveries have for the most part disappeared; but the lakes Cassipa and Dorado have been long simultaneously preserved on our maps.

In following the history of geography we see the Cassipa, figured as a rectangular parallelogram, enlarge by degrees at the expense of El Dorado. While the latter is sometimes suppressed, no one ventures to touch the former,* which is the Rio Paragua (a tributary stream of the Caroni) enlarged by temporary inundations. (* Sanson, Course of the Amazon, 1680; De L'Isle, Amerique Merid.

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