ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 189 



( 5 ) p. 171. " Herrara in the Decades." 



Historia general de las Indias occidentals, dec. i. lib. iii. cap. 12 

 [ed. 1601, p. 106]; Juan Bautista Munoz, Historia del Nuevo 

 Mundo, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301 ; Humboldt, Examen Crit. t. iii. 

 p. 111. 



( 6 ) p. 173. " The sources of the Orinoco have never been visited 



ty any European" 



Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in the 

 first edition of the " Ansichten der Natur," and I have to repeat the 

 same statement after an interval of 41 years'. The travels of the 

 brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important for all de- 

 partments of natural knowledge and geography, have afforded us 

 thorough investigations of other and more interesting facts ; but the 

 problem of the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only 

 approximately solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. It was from the 

 West that M. Bonpland and myself advanced as far as Esmeralda, 

 or the confluence of the Orinoco and the G-uapo; and I was able to 

 describe with certainty, by the aid of well-assured information, the 

 upper course of the Orinoco to above the mouth of the Gehette, and 

 to the small Waterfall (Raudal) de los G-uaharibos. It was from 

 the East that Robert Schomburgk, advancing from the mountains 

 of the Majonkong Indians (the altitude of the inhabited portions of 

 which he estimated by the boiling point of water at 3300 F., or 

 3517 E. feet), came to the Orinoco by the Padamo River, which 

 the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu (Reisen in 

 Guiana, 1841, s. 448). In my Atlas, I had estimated the position 

 of the confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco at N. lat. 3 12', 

 and W. long. 65 46' : Robert Schomburgk found it by direct obser- 

 vation, lat. 2 53', long. 65 48'. The leading object of this travel- 

 ler's arduous journey was not the pursuit of natural history, but the 

 solution of the prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical 

 Society of London in November 1834, viz. the connection of the 

 coast of British Guiana with the easternmost point which I had 

 reached on the Upper Orinoco. After many difficulties and much 

 suffering, the desired object was completely attained. Robert 



