We Learn By The Journal Of Hortsmann, Which I Have Often Quoted, That It Was Supposed, In 1740, El Dorado Might Be Reached From Dutch Guiana By Going Up The Rio Essequibo.

Don Manuel Centurion, the governor of Santo Thome del Angostura, displayed an extreme ardour for reaching the imaginary lake of Manoa.

Arimuicaipi, an Indian of the nation of the Ipurucotos, went down the Rio Carony, and by his false narrations inflamed the imagination of the Spanish colonists. He showed them in the southern sky the Clouds of Magellan, the whitish light of which he said was the reflection of the argentiferous rocks situate in the middle of the Laguna Parima. This was describing in a very poetical manner the splendour of the micaceous and talcy slates of his country! Another Indian chief, known among the Caribs of Essequibo by the name El Capitan Jurado, vainly attempted to undeceive the governor Centurion. Fruitless attempts were made by the Caura and the Rio Paragua; and several hundred persons perished miserably in these rash enterprises, from which, however, geography has derived some advantages. Nicolas Rodriguez and Antonio Santos (1775 to 1780) were employed by the Spanish governor. Santos, proceeding by the Carony, the Paragua, the Paraguamusi, the Anocapra, and the mountains of Pacaraymo and Quimiropaca, reached the Uraricuera and the Rio Branco. I found some valuable information in the journals of these perilous expeditions.

The maritime charts which the Florentine traveller, Amerigo Vespucci,* constructed in the early years of the sixteenth century, as Piloto mayor de la Casa de Contratacion of Seville, and in which he placed, perhaps artfully, the words Tierra de Amerigo, have not reached our times.

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