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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The Description Of The Treasures Of
Cathay And Cipango, Of The Celestial Town Of Quinsay And The Province
Of Mango, Which Had Fired The Admiral's Ambition In Early Life,
Pursued Him Like Phantoms In His Declining Days.
In his fourth and
last voyage, on approaching the coast of Cariay (Poyais or Mosquito
Coast), Veragua and the Isthmus, he believed himself to be near the
mouth of the Ganges.* (* Tambien dicen que la mar baxa a Ciguare, y de
alli a diez jornadas es el Rio de Guangues:
Para que estas tierras
estan con Veragua como Tortosa con Fuenterabia o Pisa con Venecia."
[Also it is said that the sea lowers at Ciguara, and from thence it is
a ten days' journey to the river Ganges; for these lands are, with
reference to Veragua, like Tortosa with respect to Fuenterabia, or
Pisa, with respect to Venice.] These words are taken from the Lettera
Rarissima of Columbus, of which the original Spanish was lately found,
and published by the learned M. Navarrete, in his Coleccion de Viages
volume 1 page 299.) These geographical illusions, this mysterious
veil, which enveloped the first discoveries, contributed to magnify
every object, and to fix the attention of Europe on regions, the very
names of which are, to us, scarcely known. New Cadiz, the principal
seat of the pearl-fishery, was on an island which has again become
uninhabited. The extremity of the rocky coast of Paria is also a
desert. Several towns were founded at the mouth of the Rio Atrato, by
the names of Antigua del Darien, Uraba or San Sebastian de Buenavista.
In these spots, so celebrated at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, the historians of the conquest tell us that the flower of the
Castilian heroes were found assembled:
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