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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I Have
Not Been Able Hitherto To Guess What Is Meant By The Aloica (Atoca,
Atoica Of Raleigh), Which Issues
From the lake Cassipa, between the
Caura and the Arui.)) being very near each other, this suggested the
idea of
Making all these rivers take their rise from the pretended
lake Cassipa.* (* Raleigh makes only the Carony and the Arui issue
from it (Hondius, Nieuwe Caerte van het wonderbare landt Guiana,
besocht door Sir Walter Raleigh, 1594 to 1596): but in later maps, for
instance that of Sanson, the Rio Caura issues also from Lake Cassipa.)
Sanson has so much enlarged this lake, that he gives it forty-two
leagues in length, and fifteen in breadth. The ancient geographers
placed opposite to each other, with very little hesitation, the
tributary streams of the two banks of a river; and they place the
mouth of the Carony, and lake Cassipa, which communicates by the
Carony with the Orinoco, sometimes* ABOVE the confluence of the Meta.
(* Sanson, Map for the Voyage of Acunha, 1680. Id. South America,
1659. Coronelli, Indes occidentales, 1689.) Thus it is carried back by
Hondius as far as the latitudes of 2 and 3 degrees, giving it the form
of a rectangle, the longest sides of which run from north to south.
This circumstance is worthy of remark, because, in assigning gradually
a more southern latitude to lake Cassipa, it has been detached from
the Carony and the Arui, and has taken the name of Parima. To follow
this metamorphosis in its progressive development, we must compare the
maps which have appeared since the voyage of Raleigh till now.
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