106 LECTURES. 



maker could 'scarcely have given us any other St. Lawrence than he 

 has done. 



All the geographers of the 17th, and of the beginning of the 18th 

 century, believed with an extraordinary tenacity in the existence of a 

 great lake in the interior of South America, between the Orinoco and 

 the Amazon rivers. You see this lake represented on the maps nearly 

 as large as the Caspian sea, of a quadrangular form, surrounded by 

 most picturesque mountain scenery, upon the neat drawing of which 

 much pains have been expended. On the shores of that lake, called 

 the great golden lake of Parime, was painted at its western corner the 

 large city of Manoa, with an abundance of palaces, towers, and cupolas; 

 and to this was sometimes added the portrait of the sovereign of this 

 city and region, the Emperor Eldorado, who was said to be a lineal 

 descendant of the Incas of Peru, and the possessor of their accumu- 

 lated treasures. 



This tradition of Eldorado, with his city and beautiful lake, was a 

 natural product of different circumstances. It partly grew out of the 

 golden dreams in which the European nations indulged after the dis- 

 covery of Mexico and Cusco. Partly it was founded on good historical 

 grounds, on certain events in Peru, where some cousins of the Incas 

 retired with treasures to the interior. And partly, it must be owned, 

 it was the result of pure deception. The question then naturally 

 arises: Are those maps worthy to be preserved, and to be noticed by 

 the historian of geography and discovery? Have they had any influ- 

 ence upon the present state of our knowledge? And can those old 

 delineations of the lake of Manoa help us to understand better our 

 modern geography of that region? I do not hesitate to answer all 

 those questions in the affirmative. 



Those very chartographical fictions were the cause of innumerable 

 useful exj)editions. The whole history of the settlement and explo- 

 ration of Dutch, English, and French Guiana is essentially connected 

 with the fiction of the city and lake of Manoa, without which prob- 

 ably those extensive American colonies would never have been called 

 into existence. The whole exploration of that region is a hunt after 

 the objects named ; and we could not understand a single expedition 

 made in this direction, without being fully informed respecting the 

 position properties, and sha])e attributed to that lake, which has 

 only of late been dissolved and drained into such narrow river courses 

 ^s now take its place. 



When at last the Jesuits, those excellent astronomers and mathe- 

 maticians, took out of tlie hands of the Pizarros and the De Sotos the 

 continuation of the work of Columbus ; when they brought the astro- 

 labe and compass from tlie shores into the interior ; when father Fritz, 

 and after him La Condamine, had worked their way down the whole 

 course of the river Amazon ; when the members of the same order 

 had explored all the branches of the great La Plata and Orinoco in 

 the southern, and had reached the westernmost end of the St. Law- 

 rence in the northern continent, the great secret of the New World 

 was at length wrested from the hand of Nature, and its main features 

 stood clearly revealed. As with the whole continent, and its great 

 lakes, rivers, and mountain chains, so also with every smaller part 



