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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He Passed These Two Rivers Near Their Sources,
Where They Have But Little Breadth.
The Indians told him that, farther
on, white men wandered about the plains.
Speier, who imagined that he
was not far from the banks of the Amazon, had no doubt that these
wandering Spaniards were men unfortunately shipwrecked in the
expedition of Ordaz. He crossed the savannahs of San Juan de los
Llanos, which were said to abound in gold; and made a long stay at an
Indian village called Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, and afterwards La
Fragua, south-east of the Paramo de la Suma Paz. I have been on the
western back of this group of mountains, at Fusagasuga, and there
heard that the plains by which they are skirted toward the east still
enjoy some celebrity for wealth among the natives. Speier found in the
populous village of La Fragua a Casa del Sol (temple of the sun), and
a convent of virgins similar to those of Peru and New Granada. Were
these the consequence of a migration of religious rites towards the
east? or must we admit that the plains of San Juan were their first
cradle? Tradition, indeed, records that Bochica, the legislator of New
Granada and high-priest of Iraca, had gone up from the plains of the
east to the table-land of Bogota. But Bochica being at once the
offspring and the symbol of the sun, his history may contain
allegories that are merely astrological. Speier, pursuing his way
toward the south, and crossing the two branches of the Guaviare, which
are the Ariare and the Guayavero (Guayare or Canicamare), arrived on
the banks of the great Rio Papamene or Caqueta.
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