Till the middle of the eighteenth century, all that vast space of land comprised between the mountains of French Guiana and the forests of the Upper Orinoco, between the sources of the Carony and the River Amazon (from 0 to 4 degrees of north latitude, and from 57 to 68 degrees of longitude), was so little known that geographers could place in it lakes where they pleased, create communications between rivers, and figure chains of mountains more or less lofty. They have made full use of this liberty; and the situation of lakes, as well as the course and branches of rivers, has been varied in so many ways that it would not be surprising if among the great number of maps some were found that trace the real state of things. The field of hypotheses is now singularly narrowed. I have determined the longitude of Esmeralda in the Upper Orinoco; more to the east amid the plains of Parima (a land as unknown as Wangara and Dar-Saley, in Africa), a band of twenty leagues broad has been travelled over from north to south along the banks of the Rio Carony and the Rio Branco in the longitude of sixty-three degrees. This is the perilous road which was taken by Don Antonio Santos in going from Santo Thome del Angostura to Rio Negro and the Amazon; by this road also the colonists of Surinam communicated very recently with the inhabitants of Grand Para. This road divides the terra incognita of Parima into two unequal portions; and fixes limits at the same time to the sources of the Orinoco, which it is no longer possible to carry back indefinitely toward the east, without supposing that the bed of the Rio Branco, which flows from north to south, is crossed by the bed of the Upper Orinoco, which flows from east to west. If we follow the course of the Rio Branco, or that strip of cultivated land which is dependent on the Capitania General of Grand Para, we see lakes, partly imaginary and partly enlarged by geographers, forming two distinct groups. The first of these groups includes the lakes which they place between the Esmeralda and the Rio Branco; and to the second belong those that are supposed to lie between the Rio Branco and the mountains of Dutch and French Guiana. It results from this sketch that the question whether there exists a lake Parima on the east of the Rio Branco is altogether foreign to the problem of the sources of the Orinoco.
Beside the country which we have just noticed (the Dorado de la Parime, traversed by the Rio Branco), another part of America is found, two hundred and sixty leagues toward the west, near the eastern back of the Cordillera of the Andes, equally celebrated in the expeditions to El Dorado. This is the Mesopotamia between the Caqueta, the Rio Negro, the Uaupes, and the Yurubesh, of which I have already given a particular account; it is the Dorado of the Omaguas which contains Lake Manoa of Father Acunha, the Laguna de oro of the Guanes and the auriferous land whence Father Fritz received plates of beaten gold in his mission on the Amazon, toward the end of the seventeenth century.
The first and above all the most celebrated enterprises attempted in search of El Dorado were directed toward the eastern back of the Andes of New Grenada. Fired with the ideas which an Indian of Tacunga had given of the wealth of the king or zaque of Cundirumarca, Sebastian de Belalcazar, in 1535, sent his captains Anasco and Ampudia, to discover the valley of El Dorado,* twelve days' journey from Guallabamba, consequently in the mountains between Pasto and Popayan. (* El valle del Dorado. Pineda relates: que mas adelante de la provincia de la Canela se hallan tierras muy ricas, adonde andaban los hombres armados de piecas y joyas de oro, y que no havia sierra, ni montana. [Beyond the province of Canela there are found very rich countries (though without mountains) in which the natives are adorned with trinkets and plates of gold.] Herrera dec. 5 lib. 10 cap. 14 and dec. 6 lib. 8 cap. 6 Geogr. Blaviana volume 11 page 261. Southey tome 1 pages 78 and 373.) The information which Pedro de Anasco had obtained from the natives, joined to that which was received subsequently (1536) by Diaz de Pineda, who had discovered the provinces of Quixos and Canela, between the Rio Napo and the Rio Pastaca, gave birth to the idea that on the east of the Nevados of Tunguragua, Cayambe, and Popayan, were vast plains, abounding in precious metals, and where the inhabitants were covered with armour of massy gold. Gonzales Pizarro, in searching for these treasures, discovered accidentally, in 1539, the cinnamon-trees of America (Laurus cinnamomoides, Mut.); and Francisco de Orellana went down the Napo, to reach the river Amazon. Since that period expeditions were undertaken at the same time from Venezuela, New Grenada, Quito, Peru, and even from Brazil and the Rio de la Plata,* for the conquest of El Dorado. (* Nuno de Chaves went from the Ciudad de la Asumpcion, situate on Rio Paraguay, to discover, in the latitude of 24 degrees south, the vast empire of El Dorado, which was everywhere supposed to lie on the eastern back of the Andes.) Those of which the remembrance have been best preserved, and which have most contributed to spread the fable of the riches of the Manaos, the Omaguas, and the Guaypes, as well as the existence of the lagunas de oro, and the town of the gilded king (Grand Patiti, Grand Moxo, Grand Paru, or Enim), are the incursions made to the south of the Guaviare, the Rio Fragua, and the Caqueta. Orellana, having found idols of massy gold, had fixed men's ideas on an auriferous land between the Papamene and the Guaviare. His narrative, and those of the voyages of Jorge de Espira (George von Speier), Hernan Perez de Quesada, and Felipe de Urre (Philip von Huten), undertaken in 1536, 1542, and 1545, furnish, amid much exaggeration, proofs of very exact local knowledge.* (* We may be surprised to see, that the expedition of Huten is passed over in absolute silence by Herrera (dec. 7 lib. 10 cap. 7 volume 4 238). Fray Pedro Simon gives the whole particulars of it, true or fabulous; but he composed his work from materials that were unknown to Herrera.) When these are examined merely in a geographical point of view, we perceive the constant desire of the first conquistadores to reach the land comprised between the sources of the Rio Negro, of the Uaupes (Guape), and of the Jupura or Caqueta. This is the land which, in order to distinguish it from El Dorado de la Parime, we have called El Dorado des Omaguas.* (* In 1560 Pedro de Ursua even took the title of Governador del Dorado y de Omagua. Fray Pedro Simon volume 6 chapter 10 page 430.) No doubt the whole country between the Amazon and the Orinoco was vaguely known by the name of las Provincias del Dorado; but in this vast extent of forests, savannahs, and mountains, the progress of those who sought the great lake with auriferous banks, and the town of the gilded king, was directed towards two points only, on the north-east and south-west of the Rio Negro; that is, to Parima (or the isthmus between the Carony, the Essequibo, and the Rio Branco), and to the ancient abode of the Manaos, the inhabitants of the banks of the Yurubesh. I have just mentioned the situation of the latter spot, which is celebrated in the history of the conquest from 1535 to 1560; and it remains for me to speak of the configuration of the country between the Spanish missions of the Rio Carony, and the Portuguese missions of the Rio Branco or Parima. This is the country lying near the Lower Orinoco, the Esmeralda, and French and Dutch Guiana, on which, since the end of the sixteenth century, the enterprises and exaggerated narratives of Raleigh have shed so bright a splendour.
From the general disposition of the course of the Orinoco, directed successively towards the west, the north, and the east, its mouth lies almost in the same meridian as its sources: so that by proceeding from Vieja Guyana to the south the traveller passes through the whole of the country in which geographers have successively placed an inland sea (Mar Blanco), and the different lakes which are connected with the El Dorado de la Parime. We find first the Rio Carony, which is formed by the union of two branches of almost equal magnitude, the Carony properly so called, and the Rio Paragua. The missionaries of Piritu call the latter river a lake (laguna): it is full of shoals, and little cascades; but, passing through a country entirely flat, it is subject at the same time to great inundations, and its real bed (su verdadera caxa) can scarcely be discovered. The natives have given it the name of Paragua or Parava, which means in the Caribbee language sea, or great lake. These local circumstances and this denomination no doubt have given rise to the idea of transforming the Rio Paragua, a tributary stream of the Carony, into a lake called Cassipa, on account of the Cassipagotos,* who lived in those countries. (* Raleigh pages 64 and 69. I always quote, when the contrary is not expressly said, the original edition of 1596. Have these tribes of Cassipagtos, Epuremei, and Orinoqueponi, so often mentioned by Raleigh, disappeared? or did some misapprehension give rise to these denominations? I am surprised to find the Indian words [of one of the different Carib dialects?] Ezrabeta cassipuna aquerewana, translated by Raleigh, the great princes or greatest commander. Since acarwana certainly signifies a chief, or any person who commands (Raleigh pages 6 and 7), cassipuna perhaps means great, and lake Cassipa is synonymous with great lake. In the same manner Cass-iquiare may be a great river, for iquiare, like veni, is, an the north of the Amazon, a termination common to all rivers. Goto, however, in Cassipa-goto, is a Caribbee term denoting a tribe.) Raleigh gives this basin forty miles in breadth; and, as all the lakes of Parima must have auriferous sands, he does not fail to assert that in summer, when the waters retire, pieces of gold of considerable weight are found there.
The sources of the tributary streams of the Carony, the Arui, and the Caura (Caroli, Arvi, and Caora,* of the ancient geographers (* D'Anville names the Rio Caura, Coari; and the Rio Arui, Aroay. 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. La Cruz, who has been copied by all the modern geographers, has preserved the oblong form of the lake Cassipa for his lake Parima, although this form is entirely different from that of the ancient lake Parima, or Rupunuwini, of which the great axis was directed from east to west. The ancient lake (that of Hondius, Sanson, and Coronelli) was also surrounded by mountains, and gave birth to no river; while the lake Parima of La Cruz and the modern geographers communicates with the Upper Orinoco, as the Cassipa with the Lower Orinoco.
I have stated the origin of the fable of the lake Cassipa, and the influence it has had on the opinion that the lake Parima is the source of the Orinoco. Let us now examine what relates to this latter basin, this pretended interior sea, called Rupunuwini by the geographers of the sixteenth century. In the latitude of four degrees or four degrees and a half (in which direction unfortunately, south of Santo Thome del Angostura to the extent of eight degrees, no astronomical observation has been made) is a long and narrow Cordillera, that of Pacaraimo, Quimiropaca, and Ucucuamo; which, stretching from east to south-west, unites the group of mountains of Parima to the mountains of Dutch and French Guiana. It divides its waters between the Carony, the Rupunury or Rupunuwini, and the Rio Branco, and consequently between the valleys of the Lower Orinoco, the Essequibo, and the Rio Negro. On the north-west of the Cordillera de Pacaraimo, which has been traversed but by a small number of Europeans (by the German surgeon, Nicolas Hortsmann, in 1739; by a Spanish officer, Don Antonio Santos, in 1775; by the Portuguese colonel, Barata, in 1791; and by several English settlers, in 1811), descend the Noeapra, the Paraguamusi, and the Paragua, which fall into the Rio Carony; on the north-east, the Rupunuwini, a tributary stream of the Rio Essequibo. Toward the south, the Tacutu and the Urariquera form together the famous Rio Parima, or Rio Branco.
This isthmus, between the branches of the Rio Essequibo and the Rio Branco (that is, between the Rupunuwini on one side, and the Pirara, the Mahu, and the Uraricuera or Rio Parima on the other), may be considered as the classical soil of the Dorado of Parima. The rivers at the foot of the mountains of Pacaraimo are subject to frequent overflowings. Above Santa Rosa, the right bank of the Urariapara, a tributary stream of the Uraricuera, is called el Valle de la Inundacion. Great pools are also found between the Rio Parima and the Xurumu. These are marked on the maps recently constructed in Brazil, which furnish the most ample details of those countries. More to the west, the Cano Pirara, a tributary stream of the Mahu, issues from a lake covered with rushes. This is the lake Amucu described by Nicolas Hortsmann, and respecting which some Portuguese of Barcelos, who had visited the Rio Branco (Rio Parima or Rio Paravigiana), gave me precise notions during my stay at San Carlos del Rio Negro. The lake Amucu is several leagues broad, and contains two small islands, which Santos heard called Islas Ipomucena. The Rupunuwini (Rupunury), on the banks of which Hortsmann discovered rocks covered with hieroglyphical figures, approaches very near this lake, but does not communicate with it. The portage between the Rupunuwini and the Mahu is farther north, where the mountain of Ucucuamo* rises, the natives still call the mountain of gold. (* I follow the orthography of the manuscript journal of Rodriguez; it is the Cerro Acuquamo of Caulin, or rather of his commentator. Hist. corogr. page 176.) They advised Hortsmann to seek round the Rio Mahu for a mine of silver (no doubt mica with large plates), of diamonds, and emeralds. He found nothing but rocky crystals. His account seems to prove that the whole length of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco (Sierra Parima) toward the east, is composed of granitic rocks, full of druses and open veins, the Peak of Duida. Near these lands, which still enjoy a great celebrity for their riches, on the western limits of Dutch Guiana, live the Macusis, Aturajos, and Acuvajos. The traveller Santos found them stationed between the Rupunuwini, the Mahu, and the chain of Pacaraimo. It is the appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name of the Rio Parima, the inundations of the rivers Urariapara, Parima, and Xurumu, and more especially the existence of the lake Amucu (near the Rio Rupunuwini, and regarded as the principal source of the Rio Parima), which have given rise to the fable of the White Sea and the Dorado of Parima. All these circumstances (which have served on this very account to corroborate the general opinion) are found united on a space of ground which is eight or nine leagues broad from north to south, and forty long from east to west. This direction, too, was always assigned to the White Sea, by lengthening it in the direction of the latitude, till the beginning of the sixteenth century. 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. At the same period the Viapoco (Oyapoc) and the Rio Cayenne (Maroni?) were made to issue from this lake Parima. The same name being given by the Caribs to the western branch of the Rio Branco has perhaps contributed as much to the imaginary enlargement of the lake Amucu, as the inundations of the various tributary streams of the Uraricuera, from the confluence of the Tacutu to the Valle de la Inundacion.
We have shown above that the Spaniards took the Rio Paragua, or Parava, which falls into the Carony, for a lake, because the word parava signifies sea, lake, river. Parima seems also to denote vaguely great water; for the root par is found in the Carib words that designate rivers, pools, lakes, and the ocean.* (* In Persian the root water (ab) is found also in lake (abdan). For other etymologies of the words Parima and Manoa see Gili volume 1 pages 81 and 141; and Gumilla volume 1 page 403.) In Arabic and in Persian, bahr and deria are also applied at the same time to the sea, to lakes, and to rivers; and this practice, common to many nations in both worlds, has, on our ancient maps, converted lakes into rivers and rivers into lakes. In support of what I here advance, I shall appeal to very respectable testimony, that of Father Caulin. "When I inquired of the Indians," says this missionary, who sojourned longer than I on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, "what Parima was, they answered that it was nothing more than a river that issued from a chain of mountains, the opposite side of which furnished waters to the Essequibo." Caulin, knowing nothing of lake Amucu, attributes the erroneous opinion of the existence of an inland sea solely to the inundations of the plains (a las inundaciones dilatadas por los bajos del pais). According to him, the mistakes of geographers arise from the vexatious circumstance of all the rivers of Guiana having different names at their mouths and near their sources. "I have no doubt," he adds, "that one of the upper branches of the Rio Branco is that very Rio Parima which the Spaniards have taken for a lake (a quien suponian laguna)." Such are the opinions which the historiographer of the Expedition of the Boundaries had formed on the spot. He could not expect that La Cruz and Surville, mingling old hypotheses with accurate ideas, would reproduce on their maps the Mar Dorado or Mar Blanco. Thus, notwithstanding the numerous proofs which I have furnished since my return from America, of the non-existence of an inland sea the origin of the Orinoco, a map has been published in my name,* on which the Laguna Parima figures anew. (* Carte de l'Amerique, dressee sur les Observations de M. de Humboldt, par Fried. Vienna 1818.)
From the whole of these statements it follows, first, that the Laguna Rupunuwini, or Parima of the voyage of Raleigh and of the maps of Hondius, is an imaginary lake, formed by the lake Amucu* (* This is the lake Amaca of Surville and La Cruz. By a singular mistake, the name of this lake is transformed to a village on Arrowsmith's map.) and the tributary streams of the Uraricuera, which often overflow their banks; secondly, that the Laguna Parime of Surville's map is the lake Amucu, which gives rise to the Rio Pirara and (conjointly with the Mahu, the Tacutu, the Uraricuera, or Rio Parima, properly so called) to the Rio Branco; thirdly, that the Laguna Parime of La Cruz is an imaginary swelling of the Rio Parime (confounded with the Orinoco) below the junction of the Mahu with the Xurumu. The distance from the mouth of the Mahu to that of the Tacutu is scarcely 0 degrees 40 minutes; La Cruz enlarges it to 7 degrees of latitude. He calls the upper part of the Rio Branco (that which receives the Mahu) Orinoco or Purumu. There can be no doubt of its being the Xurumu, one of the tributary streams of the Tacutu, which is well known to the inhabitants of the neighbouring fort of San Joaquim. All the names that figure in the fable of El Dorado are found in the tributary streams of the Rio Branco. Slight local circumstances, joined to the remembrances of the salt lake of Mexico, more especially of the celebrated lake Manoa in the Dorado des Omaguas, have served to complete a picture created by the imagination of Raleigh and his two lieutenants, Keymis and Masham. The inundations of the Rio Branco, I conceive, may be compared at the utmost to those of the Red River of Louisiana, between Nachitoches and Cados, but not to the Laguna de los Xarayes, which is a temporary swelling of the Rio Paraguay.* (* Southey volume 1 page 130. These periodical overflowings of the Rio Paraguay have long acted the same part in the southern hemisphere, as lake Parima has been made to perform in the northern. Hondius and Sanson have made the Rio de la Plata, the Rio Topajos (a tributary stream of the Amazon), the Rio Tocantines, and the Rio de San Francisco, issue from the Laguna de los Xarayes.)
We have now examined a White Sea,* (* That of D'Anville and La Cruz, and of the greater part of the modern maps.) which the principal of the Rio Branco is made to traverse; and another,* (* The lake of Surville, which takes the place of lake Amucu.) which is placed on the east of this river, and communicates with it by the Cano Pirara. A third lake* (* The lake which Surville calls Laguna tenida hasta ahora or La una Parime.) is figured on the west of the Rio Branco, respecting which I found recently some curious details in the manuscript journal of the surgeon Hortsmann. "At the distance of two days' journey below the confluence of the Mahu (Tacutu) with the Rio Parima (Uraricuera) a lake is found on top of a mountain. This lake is stocked with the same fish as the Rio Parima; but the waters of the former are black, and those of the latter white." May not Surville, from a vague notion of this basin, have imagined, in his map prefixed to Father Caulin's work, an Alpine lake of ten leagues in length, near which, towards the east, rise at the same time the Orinoco, and the Rio Idapa, a tributary stream of the Rio Negro? However vague may be the account of the surgeon of Hildesheim, it is impossible to admit that the mountain, which has a lake at its summit, is to the north of the parallel of 2 degrees 30 minutes: and this latitude coincides nearly with that of the Cerro Unturan. Hence it follows that the Alpine lake of Hortsmann, which has escaped the attention of D'Anville, and which is perhaps situate amid a group of mountains, lies north-east of the portage from the Idapa to the Mavaca, and south-east of the Orinoco, where it goes up above Esmeralda.