Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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This Is The Country
Lying Near The Lower Orinoco, The Esmeralda, And French And Dutch
Guiana, On Which, Since The End Of The Sixteenth Century, The
Enterprises And Exaggerated Narratives Of Raleigh Have Shed So Bright
A Splendour.
From the general disposition of the course of the Orinoco, directed
successively towards the west, the north, and the east, its mouth lies
almost in the same meridian as its sources:
So that by proceeding from
Vieja Guyana to the south the traveller passes through the whole of
the country in which geographers have successively placed an inland
sea (Mar Blanco), and the different lakes which are connected with the
El Dorado de la Parime. We find first the Rio Carony, which is formed
by the union of two branches of almost equal magnitude, the Carony
properly so called, and the Rio Paragua. The missionaries of Piritu
call the latter river a lake (laguna): it is full of shoals, and
little cascades; but, passing through a country entirely flat, it is
subject at the same time to great inundations, and its real bed (su
verdadera caxa) can scarcely be discovered. The natives have given it
the name of Paragua or Parava, which means in the Caribbee language
sea, or great lake. These local circumstances and this denomination no
doubt have given rise to the idea of transforming the Rio Paragua, a
tributary stream of the Carony, into a lake called Cassipa, on account
of the Cassipagotos,* who lived in those countries. (* Raleigh pages
64 and 69. I always quote, when the contrary is not expressly said,
the original edition of 1596. Have these tribes of Cassipagtos,
Epuremei, and Orinoqueponi, so often mentioned by Raleigh,
disappeared? or did some misapprehension give rise to these
denominations? I am surprised to find the Indian words [of one of the
different Carib dialects?] Ezrabeta cassipuna aquerewana, translated
by Raleigh, the great princes or greatest commander. Since acarwana
certainly signifies a chief, or any person who commands (Raleigh pages
6 and 7), cassipuna perhaps means great, and lake Cassipa is
synonymous with great lake. In the same manner Cass-iquiare may be a
great river, for iquiare, like veni, is, an the north of the Amazon, a
termination common to all rivers. Goto, however, in Cassipa-goto, is a
Caribbee term denoting a tribe.) Raleigh gives this basin forty miles
in breadth; and, as all the lakes of Parima must have auriferous
sands, he does not fail to assert that in summer, when the waters
retire, pieces of gold of considerable weight are found there.
The sources of the tributary streams of the Carony, the Arui, and the
Caura (Caroli, Arvi, and Caora,* of the ancient geographers (*
D'Anville names the Rio Caura, Coari; and the Rio Arui, Aroay. I have
not been able hitherto to guess what is meant by the Aloica (Atoca,
Atoica of Raleigh), which issues from the lake Cassipa, between the
Caura and the Arui.)) being very near each other, this suggested the
idea of making all these rivers take their rise from the pretended
lake Cassipa.* (* Raleigh makes only the Carony and the Arui issue
from it (Hondius, Nieuwe Caerte van het wonderbare landt Guiana,
besocht door Sir Walter Raleigh, 1594 to 1596): but in later maps, for
instance that of Sanson, the Rio Caura issues also from Lake Cassipa.)
Sanson has so much enlarged this lake, that he gives it forty-two
leagues in length, and fifteen in breadth.
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