SOUBCES OF THE RIO NEGRO. 379 



the 1 }uiare, was the first scene of El Dorado. But where 

 shall we find the names of Yurubesh and Iquiare, given 

 by the Fathers Acunha and Fritz ? I think I recognise 

 them in the rivers Urubaxi and Iguari,* on some manu- 

 script Portuguese maps which I possess. I have long and 

 assiduously studied the geography of South America, north 

 of the Amazon, from ancient maps and unpublished mate- 

 rials. Desirous that my work should preserve the character 

 of a scientific performance, I ought not to hesitate about 

 treating of subjects on which I flatter myself that I can 

 throw some light ; namely, on the questions respecting the 

 sources of the Rio Negro and the Orinoco, the commu- 

 nication between these rivers and the Amazon, and the 

 problem of the auriferous soil, which has cost the inhabi- 

 tants of the New World so much suffering and so much 

 blood. 



In the distribution of the waters circulating on the sur- 

 face of the globe, as well as in the structure of organic 

 bodies, nature lias pursued a much less complicated plan 

 than has been believed by those who have suffered them- 

 selves to be guided by vague conceptions and a taste 

 for the marvellous. VVe find, too, that all anomalies, 

 all the exceptions to the laws of hydrography, which the 

 interior of America displays, are merely apparent ; that the 

 course of running waters furnishes phenomena equally ex- 

 traordinary in the old world, but that these phenomena, 

 from their littleness, have less struck the imagination of 

 travellers. "When immense rivers may be considered as com- 

 posed of several parallel furrows of unequal depth; when 

 these rivers are not enclosed in valleys ; and when the inte- 

 rior of the great continent is as flat as the shores of the sea 

 with us ; the ramifications, the bifurcations, and the inter- 

 lacings in the form of net-work, must be infinitely multipied. 

 From what we know of the equilibrium of the seas, I cannot 

 think that the New World issued from the waters later 

 than the Old, and that organic life is there younger, or 

 more recent ; but without admitting oppositions between the 



* It may be written Urubaji. The.; and the x were the same as the 

 German ch to Father Fritz. The Urubaxi, or Hyurubaxi (Yurubesh), 

 falls into the Rio Negro near Santa Isabella ; the Iguari (Iquiare ?) runt 

 into the Issana, which is also a tributary oC the Rio Negro. 



