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 Rio Ansupi Brings Down The Largest Grains Of Gold:
It
flows into the Napo, south of the Archidona, above the mouth of the
Misagualli.
Between the Misagualli and the Rio Coca, in the province
of Avila, five other northern tributary streams of the Napo (the
Siguna, Munino, Suno, Guataracu, and Pucono) are known as being
singularly auriferous. These local details are taken from several
manuscript reports of the Governor of Quixos, from which I traced the
map of the countries east of the Antisana.)), the Caqueta de Mocoa as
far as the mouth of the Fragua, in fine, all the country comprised
between Jaen de Bracamoros and the Guaviare,* (* From Rio Santiago, a
tributary stream of the Upper Maranon, to the Llanos of Caguan and of
San Juan.) preserve their ancient celebrity for metallic wealth. More
to the east, between the sources of the Guainia (Rio Negro), the
Uaupes, the Iquiare, and the Yurubesh, we find a soil incontestably
auriferous. There Acunha and Father Fritz placed their Laguna del Oro;
and various accounts which I obtained at San Carlos from Portuguese
Americans explain perfectly what La Condamine has related of the
plates of beaten gold found in the hands of the natives. If we pass
from the Iquiare to the left bank of the Rio Negro, we enter a country
entirely unknown, between the Rio Branco, the sources of the
Essequibo, and the mountains of Portuguese Guiana. Acunha speaks of
the gold washed down by the northern tributary streams of the Lower
Maranon, such as the Rio Trombetas (Oriximina), the Curupatuba, and
the Ginipape (Rio de Paru). It appears to me a circumstance worthy of
attention that all these rivers descend from the same table-land, the
northern slope of which contains the lake Amucu, the Dorado of Raleigh
and the Dutch, and the isthmus between the Rupunuri (Rupunuwini) and
the Rio Mahu. There is no reason for denying the existence of
auriferous alluvial lands far from the Cordilleras of the Andes on the
north of the Amazon; as there are on the south in the mountains of
Brazil. The Caribs of the Carony, the Cuyuni and the Essequibo, have
practised on a small scale the washing of alluvial earth from the
remotest times.* (* "On the north of the confluence of the Curupatuba
and the Amazon," says Acunha, "is the mountain of Paraguaxo, which,
when illumined by the sun, glows with the most beautiful colours; and
thence from time to time issues a horrible noise (revienta con grandes
struenos)." Is there a volcanic phenomenon in this eastern part of the
New Continent? or is it the love of the marvellous, which has given
rise to the tradition of the bellowings (bramidos) of Paraguaxo? The
lustre emitted from the sides of the mountain recalls to mind what we
have mentioned above of the miraculous rocks of Calitamini, and the
island Ipomucena, in the imaginary Lake Dorado. In one of the Spanish
letters intercepted at sea by Captain George Popham, in 1594, it is
said, "Having inquired of the natives whence they obtained the
spangles and powder of gold, which we found in their huts, and which
they stick on their skin by means of some greasy substances, they told
us that in a certain plain they tore up the grass, and gathered the
earth in baskets, to subject it to the process of washing." Raleigh
page 109.
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