CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO. 171 



known in the interior of the country. Nations in a rude state 

 designate by proper geographical names only such objects as can be 

 confounded with each other. The Orinoco, the Amazons, and the 

 Magdalena rivers, are called simply "The River," or "The Great 

 Kiver," or "The Great Water;" whilst those who dwell on their 

 banks distinguish even the smallest streams by particular names. 



The current produced by the Orinoco, between the mainland and 

 the Island of Trinidad, with its asphaltic lake, is so strong, that 

 ships with all sail set, and with a favorable breeze, can with difficulty 

 make way against it. This deserted and dreaded part of the sea is 

 called the Bay of Sadness (Golfo Triste) ; the entrance forms the 

 Dragon's Mouth (Boca del Drago). Here detached cliffs rise like 

 towers above the foaming floods, and seem still to indicate the an- 

 cient site of a rocky bulwark, ( 3 ) which, before it was broken by 

 the force of the current, united the Island of Trinidad with the 

 coast of Paria. 



The aspect of this region first convinced the great discoverer of 

 the New World of the existence of an American continent. Fami- 

 liar with nature, he inferred that so immense a body of fresh water 

 could only be collected in a long course, and " that the land winch 

 supplied it must be a continent, not an island." As, according to 

 Arrian, the companions of Alexander, after crossing the snow-covered 

 Paropanisus, ( 4 ) on reaching the Indus, imagined, from the presence 

 of crocodiles, that they recognized in that river a branch of the 

 Nile; so Colunrbus, unaware of the similarity of physiognomy 

 which characterizes the various productions of the climate of Palms, 

 readily supposed this new continent to be the eastern coast of the 

 far-projecting Continent of Asia. The mild coolness of the evening 

 air, the ethereal purity of the starry firmament, the balsamic fra- 

 grance of the flowers wafted to him by the land breeze all led him 

 (as Herrara tells us in the Decades), (*) to deem that he had ap- 

 proached the Garden of Eden, the sacred dwelling-place of the first 

 parents of the human race. The Orinoco appeared to him to be 

 one of the four rivers descending from Paradise, to divide and water 

 the earth newly decked with vegetation. This poetic passage, from 

 the journal of Columbus' s voyage, or rather from a letter written 

 from Hayti, in October, 1498, to Ferdinand and Isabella, has a 



