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 Progress Of Geography, As Manifested On Our
Maps, Is Much Slower Than Might Be Supposed From The Number Of
Useful
results which are found scattered in the works of different nations.
Astronomical observations and topographic information accumulate
during a
Long lapse of years, without being made use of; and from a
principle of stability and preservation, in other respects
praiseworthy, those who construct maps often choose rather to add
nothing, than to sacrifice a lake, a chain of mountains, or an
interbranching of rivers, which have figured there during ages.
The fabulous traditions of El Dorado and the lake Parima having been
diversely modified according to the aspect of the countries to which
they were to be adapted, we must distinguish what they contain that is
real from what is merely imaginary. To avoid entering here into minute
particulars, I shall begin first to call the attention of the reader
to those spots which have been, at various periods, the theatre of the
expeditions undertaken for the discovery of El Dorado. When we have
learnt to know the aspect of the country, and the local circumstances,
such as they can now be described, it will be easy to conceive how the
different hypotheses recorded on our maps have taken rise by degrees,
and have modified each other. To oppose an error, it is sufficient to
recall to mind the variable forms in which we have seen it appear at
different periods.
Till the middle of the eighteenth century, all that vast space of land
comprised between the mountains of French Guiana and the forests of
the Upper Orinoco, between the sources of the Carony and the River
Amazon (from 0 to 4 degrees of north latitude, and from 57 to 68
degrees of longitude), was so little known that geographers could
place in it lakes where they pleased, create communications between
rivers, and figure chains of mountains more or less lofty.
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