The Late Political Events Of Spain Have Liberated From Prison The Remains Of The Family Of Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, An

Artful and intrepid man, who, under the name of the Inca Tupac-Amaru, attempted in 1781 that restoration of the

Ancient dynasty which Raleigh had projected in the time of Queen Elizabeth.) The geographer Hondius supposed that the Andes of Loxa, celebrated for their forests of cinchona, were only twenty leagues distant from the lake Parima, or the banks of the Rio Branco. This proximity procured credit to the tidings of the flight of the Inca into the forests of Guiana, and the removal of the treasures of Cuzco to the easternmost parts of that country. No doubt in going up towards the east, either by the Meta or by the Amazon, the civilization of the natives, between the Puruz, the Jupura, and the Iquiari, was observed to increase. They possessed amulets, little idols of molten gold, and chairs, elegantly carved; but these traces of dawning civilization are far distant from those cities and houses of stone described by Raleigh and those who followed him. We have made drawings of some ruins of great edifices east of the Cordilleras, when going down from Loxa towards the Amazon, in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros; and thus far the Incas had carried their arms, their religion, and their arts. The inhabitants of the Orinoco were also, before the conquest, when abandoned to themselves, somewhat more civilized than the independent hordes of our days. They had populous villages along the river, and a regular trade with more southern nations; but nothing indicates that they ever constructed an edifice of stone. We saw no vestige of any during the course of our journey.

Though the celebrity of the riches of Spanish Guiana is chiefly assignable to the geographical situation of the country and the errors of the old maps, we are not justified in denying the existence of any auriferous land in the tract of country of eighty-two thousand square leagues, which stretches between the Orinoco and the Amazon, on the east of the Andes of Quito and New Granada. What I saw of this country between the second and eighth degrees of latitude, and the sixty-sixth and seventy-first degrees of longitude, is entirely composed of granite, and of a gneiss passing into micaceous and talcous slate. These rocks appear naked in the lofty mountains of Parima, as well as in the plains of the Atabapo and the Cassiquiare. Granite predominates there over the other rocks; and though, in both continents, the granite of ancient formation is pretty generally destitute of gold-ore, we cannot thence conclude that the granite of Parima contains no vein, no stratum of auriferous quartz. On the east of the Cassiquiare towards the sources of the Orinoco, we observed that the number of these strata and these veins increased. The granite of these countries, by its structure, its mixture of hornblende, and other geological features alike important, appears to me to belong to a more recent formation, perhaps posterior to the gneiss, and analogous to the stanniferous granites, the hyalomictes, and the pegmatites. Now the least ancient granites are also the least destitute of metals; and several auriferous rivers and torrents in the Andes, in the Salzburg, Fichtelgebirge, and the table-land of the two Castiles, lead us to believe that these granites sometimes contain native gold, and portions of auriferous pyrites and galena disseminated throughout the whole rock, as is the case with tin and magnetic and micaceous iron. The group of the mountains of Parima, several summits of which attain the height of one thousand three hundred toises, was almost entirely unknown before our visit to the Orinoco. This group, however, is a hundred leagues long and eighty broad; and though wherever M. Bonpland and I traversed this vast group of mountains, its structure seemed to us extremely uniform, it would be wrong to affirm that it may not contain very metalliferous transition rocks and mica-slates superimposed on the granite.

I have already observed that the silvery lustre and frequency of mica have contributed to give Guiana great celebrity for metallic wealth. The peak of Calitamini, glowing every evening at sunset with a reddish fire, still attracts the attention of the inhabitants of Maypures. According to the fabulous stories of the natives, the islets of mica-slate, situate in lake Amucu, augment by their reflection the lustre of the nebulae of the southern sky. "Every mountain," says Raleigh, "every stone in the forests of the Orinoco, shines like the precious metals; if it be not gold, it is madre del oro (mother of gold)." Raleigh asserts that he brought back gangues of auriferous white quartz ("harde white sparr"); and to prove the richness of this ore he gives an account of the assays that were made by the officers of the mint at London.* (* Messrs. Westewood, Dimocke, and Bulmar.) I have no reason to believe that the chemists of that time sought to lead Queen Elizabeth into error, and I will not insult the memory of Raleigh by supposing, like his contemporaries,* that the auriferous quartz which he brought home had not been collected in America. (* See the defence of Raleigh in the preface to the Discovery of Guiana, 1596 pages 2 to 4.) We cannot judge of things from which we are separated by so long an interval of time. The gneiss of the littoral chain* contains traces of the precious metals (* In the southern branch of this chain which passes by Yusma, Villa de Cura and Ocumare, particularly near Buria, Los Teques and Los Marietas.); and some grains of gold have been found in the mountains of Parima, near the mission of Encaramada. How can we infer the absolute sterility of the primitive rocks of Guiana from testimony merely negative, from the circumstance that during a journey of three months we saw no auriferous vein appearing above the soil?

In order to bring together whatever may enlighten the government of this country on a subject so long disputed, I will enter upon a few more geological considerations.

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