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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Now This
White Sea Is Nothing But The Rio Parima, Which Is Called The White
River (Rio Branco, Or Rio Del Aguas Blancas), And Runs Through And
Inundates The Whole Of This Land.
The name of Rupunuwini is given to
the White Sea on the most ancient maps, which identifies the place of
the fable, since of all the tributary streams of the Rio Essequibo the
Rupunuwini is the nearest to the lake Amucu.
Raleigh, in his first
voyage (1595), had formed no precise idea of the situation of El
Dorado and the lake Parima, which he believed to be salt, and which he
calls another Caspian Sea. It was not till the second voyage (1596),
performed equally at the expense of Raleigh, that Laurence Keymis
fixed so well the localities of El Dorado, that he appears to me to
have no doubt of the identity of the Parima de Manao with the lake
Amucu, and with the isthmus between the Rupunuwini (a tributary stream
of the Essequibo) and the Rio Parima or Rio Branco. "The Indians,"
says Keymis, "go up the Dessekebe [Essequibo] in twenty days, towards
the south. To mark the greatness of this river, they call it the
brother of the Orinoco. After twenty days' navigating they convey
their canoes by a portage of one day, from the river Dessekebe to a
lake, which the Jaos call Roponowini, and the Caribbees Parime. This
lake is as large as a sea; it is covered with an infinite number of
canoes; and I suppose" [the Indians then had told him nothing of this]
"that this lake is no other than that which contains the town of
Manoa."* (* Cayley's Life of Raleigh volume 1 pages 159, 236 and 283.
Masham in the third voyage of Raleigh (1596) repeats these accounts of
the Lake Rupunuwini.) Hondius has given a curious plate of this
portage; and, as the mouth of the Carony was then supposed to be in
latitude 4 degrees (instead of 8 degrees 8 minutes), the portage of
Parima was placed close to the equator.
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