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 Greater Part Of The Sierra Parime
Is, As It Were, Edged Round By The Orinoco.
I have, however, avoided a
denomination having reference to this circumstance, because the group
of mountains to which I am about to direct attention extends far
beyond the banks of the Orinoco.
It stretches south-east, towards the
banks of the Rio Negro and the Rio Branco, to the parallel of 1 1/2
degrees north latitude. The geographical name of Parime has the
advantage of reviving recollections of the fable of El Dorado, and the
lofty mountains which, in the sixteenth century, were supposed to
surround the lake Rupunuwini, or the Laguna de Parime. The
missionaries of the Orinoco still give the name of Parime to the whole
of the vast mountainous country comprehended between the sources of
the Erevato, the Orinoco, the Caroni, the Rio Parime* (a tributary of
the Rio Branco) and the Rupunuri or Rupunuwini, a tributary of the Rio
Essequibo. (* The Rio Parime, after receiving the waters of the
Uraricuera, joins the Tacutu, and forms, near the fort of San
Joacquim, the Rio Branco, one of the tributary streams of the Rio
Negro.) This country is one of the least known parts of South America
and is covered with thick forests and savannahs; it is inhabited by
independent Indians and is intersected by rivers of dangerous
navigation, owing to the frequency of shoals and cataracts.
The system of the mountains of Parime separates the plains of the
Lower Orinoco from those of the Rio Negro and the Amazon; it occupies
a territory of trapezoidal form, comprehended between the parallels of
3 and 8 degrees, and the meridians of 61 and 70 1/2 degrees.
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