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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They Have
Made Full Use Of This Liberty; And The Situation Of Lakes, As Well As
The Course And Branches
Of rivers, has been varied in so many ways
that it would not be surprising if among the great number
Of maps some
were found that trace the real state of things. The field of
hypotheses is now singularly narrowed. I have determined the longitude
of Esmeralda in the Upper Orinoco; more to the east amid the plains of
Parima (a land as unknown as Wangara and Dar-Saley, in Africa), a band
of twenty leagues broad has been travelled over from north to south
along the banks of the Rio Carony and the Rio Branco in the longitude
of sixty-three degrees. This is the perilous road which was taken by
Don Antonio Santos in going from Santo Thome del Angostura to Rio
Negro and the Amazon; by this road also the colonists of Surinam
communicated very recently with the inhabitants of Grand Para. This
road divides the terra incognita of Parima into two unequal portions;
and fixes limits at the same time to the sources of the Orinoco, which
it is no longer possible to carry back indefinitely toward the east,
without supposing that the bed of the Rio Branco, which flows from
north to south, is crossed by the bed of the Upper Orinoco, which
flows from east to west. If we follow the course of the Rio Branco, or
that strip of cultivated land which is dependent on the Capitania
General of Grand Para, we see lakes, partly imaginary and partly
enlarged by geographers, forming two distinct groups.
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