GEOGRArilY. 355 



SOUTH AMERICA. 



After a residence of seven years in Bolivia as engineer to the Govern- 

 ment, Mr. J. B. Minchin has published, through the medium of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, a great deal of information regarding this produc- 

 tive and fertile but little known country. In fact there is' hardly any 

 country of the world so little known as Eastern Bolivia. With an area 

 of 500,000 square miles its productions are so numerous and valuable 

 that, settled by a working population, it would become one of the most 

 prosperous in South America. Its great need is a route for conveying 

 its exports by way of the Madeira and Amazon Rivers to the sea. In 

 addition to determining the latitude, longitude, and height of numerous 

 points, Mr. Minchin has published an excellent map of Bolivia, showing 

 the river systems as far as they have been explored. He has devoted 

 much attention to the depth and rapidity of the various rivers which 

 may be used for navigation, and a great deal of information regarding 

 them has now for the first time been published. Mr. Minchin has also 

 surveyed and described a part of the vast Andean table-land and salt 

 desert not hitherto visited or described. He finds from an ancient 

 water-mark, 200 feet above the present level of Lake Poopo, unmis- 

 takable evidence that a vast sheet of water, some 20,000 square miles 

 in extent, once covered a great part of this table-land, and considers 

 that the gradual subsidence and escape of the waters of this lake to the 

 Pacific may have contributed to the formation of the great nitrate de- 

 posits of the coast. 



In continuation of the work of the late Professor Orton, Mr. Edwin 

 R. Heath has been engaged in exploring the Beni and other rivers of 

 Bolivia. Starting in September, 18S0, from Gabinos, a rubber camp on 

 the Madidi, a small affluent of the Beni, he discovered a new river enter- 

 ing the Beni from the south, a short distance above its junction with the 

 Madre de Dios, which he reached on October 8, and determined care- 

 fully the latitude and longitude of the confluence. Continuing to de- 

 scend the Beni he discovered a new branch coming in from the north 

 which he called the Orton. Between this point and the junction of the 

 Beni and Mamor6 he found navigation interrupted by falls and rapids, 

 but making a short portage he reached the river below the falls and as- 

 cended the Mamord for 300 miles to Santa Ana, thence across the pam- 

 pas to Reyes. Dr. Heath's claim to have been the first white man to 

 see the mouth of the Madre de Dios is probably erroneous, as there seems 

 to be no doubt that the Madre de Dios was descended in 18G1, by Don 

 Eaustino Maldonado, who was afterward drowned in the rapids of the 

 Madeira. 



Dr. Jules Crevaux, whose explorations in Guiana and on the Amazon 

 have added so much to the knowledge of those regions, in 1880 was 

 engaged in exploring the Upper Guyabero in Colombia. Accompanied 

 by M. Lejanne, after crossing the Cordillera from the Upper Magdalena, 



