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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Several Of The Spanish Historians Believed That This
Lake, The Source Of The Carony, Was The Grand Manoa Of Berrio;
But the
notions he communicated to Raleigh show that the Laguna de Manoa (del
Dorado, or de Parime) was supposed
To be to the south of the Rio
Paragua, transformed into Laguna Cassipa. "Both these basins had
auriferous sands; but on the banks of the Cassipa was situate
Macureguarai (Margureguaira), the capital of the cacique of Aromaja,
and the first city of the imaginary empire of Guyana."
As these often-inundated lands have been at all times inhabited by
nations of Carib race, who carried on a very active inland trade with
the most distant regions, we must not be surprised that more gold was
found here in the hands of the Indians than elsewhere. The natives of
the coast did not employ this metal in the form of ornaments or
amulets only; but also as a medium of exchange. It is not
extraordinary, therefore, that gold has disappeared on the coast of
Paria, and among the nations of the Orinoco, their inland
communications have been impeded by the Europeans. The natives who
have remained independent are in our days, no doubt, more wretched,
more indolent, and in a ruder state, than they were before the
conquest. The king of Morequito, whose son Raleigh took to England,
had visited Cumana in 1594, to exchange a great quantity of images of
massy gold for iron tools, and European merchandise. The unexpected
appearance of an Indian chief augmented the celebrity of the riches of
the Orinoco. It was supposed that El Dorado must be near the country
from which the king of Morequito came; and as this country was often
inundated, and rivers vaguely called great seas, or great basins of
water, El Dorado must be on the banks of a lake. It was forgotten that
the gold brought by the Caribs and other trading people was as little
the produce of the soil as the diamonds of Brazil and India are the
produce of the regions of Europe, where they are most abundant. The
expedition of Berrio which had increased in number during the stay of
the vessels at Cumana, La Margareta, and the island of Trinidad,
proceeded by Morequito (near Vieja Guayana) towards the Rio Paragua, a
tributary stream of the Carony; but sickness, the ferocity of the
natives, and the want of subsistence, opposed invincible obstacles to
the progress of the Spaniards. They all perished; except about thirty,
who returned in a deplorable state to the post of Santo Thome.
These disasters did not calm the ardour displayed during the first
half of the 17th century in the search of El Dorado. The Governor of
the island of Trinidad, Antonio de Berrio, became the prisoner of Sir
Walter Raleigh in the celebrated incursion of that navigator, in 1595,
on the coast of Venezuela and at the mouths of the Orinoco. Raleigh
collected from Berrio, and from other prisoners made by Captain
Preston* at the taking of Caracas, all the information which had been
obtained at that period on the countries situate to the south of Vieya
Guayana.
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