Robert Schomburgk, when visiting the small mountainous country of the Majonkongs, on his route to Esmeralda, was fortunate enough to determine the species of Arundinaria, which furnishes the material for these blowing-tubes. He says of this plant: “It grows in large tufts, like the bambusa; the first joint rises, in the old cane, without a knot, to a height of from 16 to 17 feet before it begins to bear leaves. The entire height of the Arundinaria, growing at the foot of the great mountain-cluster of Maravaca, is from 30 to 40 feet, with a thickness of scarcely half an inch in diameter. The top is always inclined; and this species of grass is peculiar to the sandstone mountains between the Ventuari, the Paramu (Padamo), and the Mavaca. The Indian name is Curata, and, therefore, from the excellence of these celebrated long blowing-tubes, the Majonkongs and Guinaus of these districts have acquired the name of the Curata nation.”[[II]]
[61]. p. 159—“Fabulous origin of the Orinoco from a lake.”
The lakes of these regions (some of which are wholly imaginary, while the real size of others has been much exaggerated by theoretical geographers) may be divided into two groups. The first of these groups comprise those situate between Esmeralda (the most easterly mission on the Upper Orinoco), and the Rio Branco; to the second, belong the lakes presumed to exist in the district between the Rio Branco and French, Dutch, and British Guiana. This general view, of which travellers should never lose sight, proves that the question of whether there is another Lake Parime eastward of the Rio Branco, besides the Lake Amucu, seen by Hortsmann, Santos, Colonel Barata, and Schomburgk, has nothing whatever to do with the problem of the sources of the Orinoco. As the name of my distinguished friend the former Director of the Hydrographic Office at Madrid, Don Felipe Bauza, is of great weight in questions of geography, the impartiality which ought to influence every scientific investigation makes it incumbent on me to mention that this learned man was inclined to the view that there must be lakes west of the Rio Branco, at no great distance from the sources of the Orinoco. He wrote to me from London shortly before his death, “I wish you were here that I might converse with you respecting the geography of the Upper Orinoco, which has occupied you so much. I have been fortunate enough to rescue from entire destruction the papers of the General of Marine, Don José Solano, father of the Solano who perished in so melancholy a manner at Cadiz. These documents relate to the settlement of the boundary line between the Spaniards and Portuguese, with which Solano had been charged since 1754, in conjunction with the Escadre Chef Yturriaga and Don Vicente Doz. In all these plans and sketches I find a Laguna Parime sometimes as a source of the Orinoco, and sometimes as wholly detached from it. Are we then to assume that there is another lake further eastward to the north-east of Esmeralda?”
Löffling, the celebrated pupil of Linnæus, accompanied the last-named expedition to Cumana in the capacity of botanist. He died on the 22nd of February, 1756, at the mission of Santa Eulalia de Murucuri (somewhat to the south of the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroni), after traversing the missions on the Piritu and Caroni. The documents of which Bauza speaks are the same as those on which the great map of De la Cruz Olmedilla is based. They have served as the foundation of all the maps of South America, which appeared in England, France, and Germany, before the end of the last century; and have also served for the two maps executed in 1756 by Father Caulin, the historiographer of Solano’s expedition, and by M. de Surville, Keeper of the Archives in the Secretary of State’s Office at Madrid, who was but an unskilful compiler. The contradictions abounding in these maps show the little reliance that can be placed on the results of this expedition. Nay more, Father Caulin, above referred to, acutely details the circumstances which gave rise to this fable of the lake of Parime; and the map of Surville, which accompanies his work, not only restores this lake, under the name of the White Lake, and the Mar Dorado, but indicates another smaller one, from which flow partly by means of collateral branches, the Orinoco, Siapa, and Ocamo. I was able to convince myself on the spot of the following facts well known in the missions; that Don José Solano did not do more than cross the cataracts of Atures and Maypures; that he did not reach the confluence of the Guaviare and the Orinoco in 4° 3′ north lat., and 68° 9′ west long.; and that the astronomical instruments of the boundary expedition were neither carried to the isthmus of the Pimichin and the Rio Negro, nor to the Cassiquiare; and even on the Upper Orinoco, not beyond the mouth of the Atabapo. This vast extent of territory was not made the scene of any accurate observations before my journey, and has subsequently to Solano’s expedition been traversed only by some few soldiers who had been sent on exploring expeditions; while Don Apolinario de Fuente, whose journal I obtained from the archives of the province of Quixos, has gathered without discrimination everything from the fallacious narratives of the Indians that could flatter the credulity of the Governor Centurion. No member of the expedition had seen a lake, and Don Apolinario was unable to advance beyond the Cerro Yumarique and Gehette.
Although a line of separation, formed by the basin of the Rio Branco, is now established throughout the whole extent of the country, to which we are desirous of directing the inquiring zeal of travellers, it must yet be admitted, that our geographical knowledge of the district west of this valley between 62° and 66° long., has made no advance whatever for at least a century. The repeated attempts made by the Government of Spanish Guiana since the expeditions of Iturria and Solano, to reach and to pass over the Pacaraima Mountains, have been attended by very unimportant results. When the Spaniards, in proceeding to the missions of the Catalonian capuchins of Barceloneta, at the confluence of the Caroni and the Rio Paragua, ascended the last-named river southward to its junction with the Paraguamusi, they founded at this point the mission of Guirion, which, at first, bore the pompous appellation of Ciudad de Guirion. I place it in about 4° 30′ north latitude. From thence the Governor Centurion, in consequence of the exaggerated accounts given by two Indian chiefs, Paranacare and Arimuicapi, respecting the powerful tribe of the Ipurucotos, was excited to search for ‘El Dorado,’ and in carrying what were then called spiritual conquests still further, founded, beyond the Pacaraima Mountains, the two villages of Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla. The former was situate on the upper eastern bank of the Uraricapara, a tributary of the Uraricuera, which I find in the journal of Rodriguez under the name of the Rio Curaricara; the latter, at from 24 to 28 miles further east-south-east. The astronomo-geographer of the Portuguese Boundary Commission, Captain Don Antonio Pires de Sylva Pontes Leme, and the Captain of Engineers, Don Ricardo Franco d’Almeida de Serra, who between 1787 and 1804, surveyed with the greatest care the whole course of the Rio Branco and its upper tributaries, call the most western part of the Uraricapara, “The Valley of Inundation.” They place the Spanish mission of Santa Rosa in 3° 46′ north lat., and mark the route that leads from thence northward across the mountain chain to the Caño Anocapra, a branch of the Paraguamusi, which forms a connecting passage between the basin of the Rio Branco and that of the Caroni. Two maps of these Portuguese officers, embracing all the details of the trigonometrical survey of the bends of the Rio Branco, the Uraricuera, the Tacutu, and the Mahu, were most kindly communicated to Colonel Lapie and myself by the Count of Linhares. These valuable unpublished documents, of which I have availed myself, are still in the hands of the learned geographer, who long since began to have them engraved at his own expense. The Portuguese sometimes call the whole of the Rio Branco by the name of Rio Parime, and sometimes limit this appellation to one branch only, the Uraricuera, somewhat below the Caño Mayari and above the old mission of San Antonio. As the words Paragua and Parime alike imply water, great water, lake, and sea, we cannot wonder at finding them so often repeated among tribes living at great distances from each other; as, for instance, by the Omaguas on the Upper Marañon, by the Western Guaranis, and by the Caribs. In all parts of the world, as I have already remarked, large rivers are called by those who live on their banks “the River,” without any specific denomination. Paragua, the name of a branch of the Caroni, is also the term applied by the natives to the Upper Orinoco. The name Orinucu is Tamanakish; and Diego de Ordaz first heard it used in the year 1531, when he ascended to the mouth of the Meta. Besides the Valley of Inundation above mentioned we find other large pieces of water between the Rio Xumuru and the Parime. One of these bays is a branch of the Tacutu, and the other of the Uraricuera. Even at the base of the Pacaraima Mountains the rivers are subject to great periodical overflowings; and the Lake Amucu, of which we shall subsequently speak more fully, exhibits exactly the same character at the commencement of the plains. The Spanish missions, Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla, or Cayacaya, founded in the years 1770 and 1773, by the Governor Don Manuel Centurion, were destroy ed before the close of the last century; and since that time, no new attempt has been made to advance from the basin of the Caroni to the southern declivity of the Pacaraima Mountains.
The territory east of the valley of the Rio Branco has of late years been made the subject of several successful explorations. Mr. Hillhouse navigated the Massaruni as far as the Bay of Caranang, whence, as he says, a path would lead the traveller, in two days, to the source of the Massaruni; and, in three days, to the tributaries of the Rio Branco. With respect to the windings of the great river Massaruni, described by Mr. Hillhouse, he himself observes, in a letter addressed to me from Demerara, 1st January, 1831, that “the Massaruni, reckoning from its sources, flows first to the west, then for one degree of latitude to the north; afterwards nearly 200 miles eastward; and, finally, to the north and north-north-east till it merges in the Essequibo.” As Mr. Hillhouse was unable to reach the southern declivity of the Pacaraima chain, he was not acquainted with the Amucu Lake; and he says himself, in his printed report, that “from the accounts given him by the Accaouais, who are continually traversing the country between the shore and the Amazon River, he is convinced there is no lake in this district.” This assertion occasioned me some surprise, as it was directly opposed to the views I had previously formed regarding the Lake Amucu, from which flows the Caño Pirara, according to the accounts given by the travellers Hortsmann, Santos, and Rodriguez (and which had inspired me with the more confidence, because they entirely coincide with the recent Portuguese manuscript charts). Finally, after five years of expectation, Schomburgk’s journey has removed all farther doubt.
“It is difficult to believe,” says Mr. Hillhouse, in his interesting memoir on the Massaruni, “that the tradition of a large inland sea is wholly unfounded. According to my views, the following circumstance may have given rise to the belief in the existence of the fabulous lake of the Parime. At some distance from the rocky fall of Teboco the waters of the Massaruni present to the eye as little motion as the calm surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote period the horizontal granitic strata of Teboco had been totally compact and without fissures, the waters must have been at least 50 feet above their present level, and there would have been formed an immense lake 10 or 12 miles in width, and 1500 or 2000 miles in length.”[[IJ]] The extent of this supposed inundation is not the only reason which prevents me from acceding to this explanation; for I have seen plains (Llanos), where, during the rainy season, the overflowing of the tributaries of the Orinoco annually covered a surface of 6400 square miles. The labyrinth of ramifications between the Apure, Arauca, Capanaparo, and Sinaruco (see maps 17 and 18 of my Physical Atlas), is then wholly lost sight of; the configuration of the river beds can no longer be traced, and the whole appears like one vast lake. But the locality of the fabulous Dorado, and of the Lake Parime, belongs historically to quite a different part of Guiana, namely, that lying south of the Pacaraima mountains. This myth of the White Sea and of the Dorado of the Parime, has arisen, as I endeavoured thirty years ago to show in another work, from the appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name Rio Parime (Rio Branco), the inundations of the tributaries; and especially from the existence of the lake Amucu, which is in the neighbourhood of the Rio Rupunuwini (Rupunuri), and is connected by means of the Pirara with the Rio Parime.
I have had much pleasure in finding that the travels of Sir Robert Schomburgk have fully corroborated these early views. The section of his map which gives the course of the Essequibo and of the Rupunuri is quite new, and of great importance in a geographical point of view. It places the Pacaraima chain between 3° 52′and 4° north lat., while I had given its mean direction from 4° to 4° 10′. The chain reaches the confluence of the Essequibo and Rupunuri in 3° 57′ north lat., and 58° 1′ west longitude; I had placed it half a degree too far to the north. Schomburgk calls the last-named river Rupununi, according to the pronunciation of the Macusis; and gives as the synonymes Rupunuri, Rupunuwini and Opununy, which have arisen from the difficulty the Carib tribes of these districts find in pronouncing the letter “r.” The position of the lake Amucu and its relations to the Mahu (Maou) and Tacutu (Tacoto) correspond perfectly with my map of Colombia drawn in 1825. We agree equally well regarding the latitude of the lake of Amucu, for while he places it in 3° 33′, I considered it to be in 3° 35′; the Caño Pirara (Pirarara) which connects the Amucu with the Rio Branco, flows from it towards the north, and not to the west as I had marked it. The Sibarana of my map, the sources of which Hortsmann placed to the north of the Cerro Ucucuamo near a fine mine of rock crystal, is the Siparuni of Schomburgk’s map. His Waa-Ekuru is the Tavaricaru of the Portuguese geographer Pontes Leme, and is the branch of the Rupunuri which lies the nearest to the lake of Amucu.
The following remarks from the report of Sir Robert Schomburgk throw some light on the subject in question. “The lake of Amucu,” says this traveller, “is without doubt the nucleus of the Lake of Parime and of the supposed White Sea. In December and January, when we visited it, it was scarcely a mile in length, and was half covered with reeds.” The same observation occurs on D’Anville’s map of 1748. “The Pirara flows from the lake to the W.N.W. of the Indian village of Pirara and falls into the Maou or Mahu. The last-named river rises, according to the information given me, north of the ridge of the Pacaraima mountains, which in their eastern portion do not attain a greater elevation than about 1600 feet. The sources of the river are on a plateau, from whence it is precipitated in a beautiful waterfall, known as the Corona. We were on the point of visiting this fall, when on the third day of our excursion to the mountains, the indisposition of one of my companions compelled me to return to the station at the lake Amucu. The Mahu has black coffee-coloured water, and its current is more impetuous than that of the Rupunuri. In the mountains through which it pursues its course it is about 60 yards in breadth. Its environs are here extremely picturesque. This valley as well as the bank of the Buroburo, which flows into the Siparuni, are inhabited by the Macusis. In April the whole Savannahs are overflowed, and then present the peculiar phenomenon of the waters belonging to two different river basins commingling together. It is probable that the vast extent of this temporary inundation may have given rise to the fable of the lake of Parime. During the rainy season a water communication is formed in the interior of the country between the Essequibo, the Rio Branco, and the Gran Para. Some groups of trees, rising like Oases on the sand-hills of the Savannahs, present, at the time of the inundation, the appearance of islands scattered over a lake; and these are without doubt the Ipomucena islands of Don Antonio Santos.”
In D’Anville’s manuscripts, which his heirs kindly allowed me to examine, I find that Hortsmann of Hildesheim, who described these districts with great care, saw a second Alpine lake, which he places two day’s journey above the confluence of the Mahu with the Rio Parime (Tacutu?). It is a black water lake, situated on the summit of a mountain. He explicitly distinguishes it from the lake of Amucu, which he describes as “covered with rushes.” The descriptions given by Hortsmann and Santos coincide with the Portuguese manuscript maps of the Marine Bureau at Rio Janeiro, in not indicating the existence of an uninterrupted connection between the Rupunuri and the lake of Amucu. In D’Anville’s maps of South America, the rivers are better drawn in the first edition published in 1748, than in the more extensively circulated one of 1760. Schomburgk’s travels fully confirm the independence of the basin of the Rupunuri and Essequibo; but he draws attention to the fact that, during the rainy season, the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caño Pirara. Such is the condition of these river-channels, which are still but little developed, and almost entirely without separating ridges.