298 GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1868. 



The gold-fields of Venezuela have attracted 

 much attention during the past year. The 

 first considerable discoveries of gold in that 

 republic were made in 1854 by Dr. Plassard, 

 a physician of Ciudad Bolivar, the capital of 

 Guiana, one of the States of the republic, but 

 the extent of the gold-fields has not been 

 known till within two or three years, and, 

 indeed, many discoveries were made in 1868. 

 The gold-fields, so far as is yet known, are 

 situated in the vicinity of the hydrographic 

 basin of the Essequibo, the river forming the 

 boundary line between British and Venezuelan 

 Guiana. They are from 100 to 160 miles south 

 of the Orinoco River, and about 200 miles west 

 of the Atlantic Ocean, between the Caroni and 

 the Yuruari Rivers, and east of the latter. There 

 is also very good evidence that they extend 

 east of the Essequibo River in British Guiana. 

 There is as yet excellent placer-mining at 

 many points in this field, and experienced and 

 skilful American mining engineers, who have 

 carefully explored the mountains of that region, 

 find extensive quartz gold-veins running in all 

 directions through the slate and blue-stone of 

 the Marcupio Valley, and the watershed, be- 

 tween the Caroni and the Yuruari. The veins 

 differ greatly in product, though the poorest 

 give a fair yield, even with the rude and waste- 

 ful processes employed. They are generally 

 very regular and sound, and offer little diffi- 

 culty in the extraction of the ore. The only 

 difficulty of magnitude is the unsettled state 

 of the country, and the jealousy and ferocity 

 of the Indian tribes. 



We find the following statistics of the em- 

 pire of Brazil in the Berlin ZeitscJirift far 

 Erdlcunde for February, 1868 : The entire pop- 

 ulation of the empire, in 1867, excepting the 

 wild Indians of the interior, was 11,280,000, 

 of whom 1,400,000 were slaves. The wild In- 

 dians were estimated at 500,000, but little is 

 known of their real numbers. In the public 

 schools, there were 107,483 children in regular 

 attendance. The population of the several 

 provinces was, in round numbers, as follows : 

 Para, 350,000; Maranham, 500,000; Ceara, 

 650,000 ; Prauby, 250,000 ; Rio Grande de 

 Norte, 240,000 ; Parahyba, 300,000 ; Pernam- 

 buco, 1,220,000; Alagoas, 300,000; Sergippe, 

 320,000; Bahia, 1,450,000; Espirito Santo, 

 100,000 ; Rio de Janeiro (province and city), 



1,850,000 ; San Paulo, 900,000 ; Parana, 120,- 

 000; Santa Catharina, 200,000; Rio Grande 

 de Sul, 580,000 ; Minas Geraes, 1,600,000; Go- 

 yaz, 250,000 ; Amazonas, 100,000 ; Matto 

 Grosso, 100,000. 



Mr. Chandless, whose zeal in the exploration 

 of the tributaries of the Amazonas we have 

 heretofore recorded, still continues his labors 

 in that field. In 1868 he undertook to ascend 

 the Jurua, one of the largest of the affluents 

 of the Upper Amazonas, and spent three 

 months on that river. The Jurua is not far 

 from 1,500 miles in length, and enters the 

 Amazonas on the south shore, about S. lat. 4 

 and TV. Ion. from Greenwich 66. Mr. Chand- 

 less ascended the main river (Jurua) between 

 1,000 and 1,200 miles to lat. 7 12' S., and Ion. 

 72 10' W. from Greenwich, but was com- 

 pelled to turn back while the river was yet 

 navigable for many miles farther, by an at- 

 tack of Nauas Indians, by which his boat's 

 crew were terrified. On his return he ex- 

 plored the Mane's River and one of its afflu- 

 ents, and, when last heard from, was hoping 

 to start soon to explore the Beni, one of the 

 largest of the southern tributaries of the Ama- 

 zonas. 



Professor P. Strobel, an Italian naturalist, 

 has just published in the ZeitscJirift fur Erd- 

 Tcunde, an account of a scientific excursion 

 made by him in 1866, from Curico in Chili, 

 through the Planch on Pass to San Rafael, a con- 

 siderable town in the Pampas of the Argentine 

 Republic. The journey was not without its 

 adventures, and the naturalist, fully alive to 

 whatever concerned his profession, gleaned a 

 large amount of valuable information relative 

 to the geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoolo- 

 gy of the Cordilleras as well as the Pampas. 

 His narrative settles several important ques- 

 tions in the botany and zoology of that par- 

 tially-known region. 



The proposed construction of a railway from 

 Cordova to Jujuy, in the Argentine Republic 

 (we believe it is now completed as far as Tucu- 

 man), furnished an opportunity to Dr. Her- 

 mann Burmeister, the director of the State Mu- 

 seum of Physical Science at Buenos Ayres, to 

 make a thorough exploration of the physical 

 geography of that portion (the northwestern) 

 of the republic, and he has reported the work 

 accomplished with great ability and thorough- 

 ness, in Petermann's MittJieilungen for Feb- 

 ruary, 1868. A part of this route was explored 

 on foot about eleven years since, by a young 

 naturalist of Massachusetts, Mr. Nathaniel S t 

 Bishop, then but seventeen or eighteen years 

 of age. His narrative, entitled "A Thousand 

 Miles Walk in South America," was published 

 last year by Lee & Shepard, of Boston, and con- 

 tains a large number of valuable observations 

 on the soil, productions, and people of this part 

 of South America. 



William Bollaert, Esq., a Peruvian geogra- 

 pher, communicated, in the spring of 1868, to 

 the Royal Geographical Society of London, the 



