EXHAUSTION OF ANCIENT MINES. 383 



, is manifestly borrowed from the Spanish.* The 

 notions collected by Acunha, Father Fritz, and La Conda- 

 mine, on the gold-washings south and north of the river 

 Uaupe, agree with what I learnt of the auriferous soil of 

 those countries. However great we may suppose the com- 

 munications that took place between the nations of the 

 Orinoco before the arrival of Europeans, they certainly 

 did not draw their gold from the eastern declivity of the 

 Cordilleras. This declivity is poor in mines, particularly in 

 mines anciently worked; it is almost entirely composed of 

 volcanic rocks in the provinces of Popayan, Pasto, and 

 Quito. The gold of Guiana probably came from the country 

 east of the Andes. In our days a lump of gold has been 

 found in a ravine near the mission of Encaramada, and 

 we must not be surprised if, since Europeans settled 

 in these wild spots, we hear less of the plates of gold, 

 gold-dust, and amulets of jade-stone, which could heretofore 

 be obtained from the Caribs and other wandering nations 

 by barter. The precious metals, never very abundant on 

 the banks of the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon, 

 disappeared almost entirely when the system of the missions 

 caused the distant communications between the natives to 

 cease. 



The banks of the Upper G-uainia in general abound much 

 less in fishing-birds than those of Oassiquiare, the Meta, 

 and the Auraca, where ornithologists would find suffi- 

 cient to enrich immensely the collections of Europe. This 

 scarcity of animals arises, no doubt, from the want of 

 shoals and flat shores, as well as from the quality of the 

 black waters, which (on account of their very purity) fur- 

 nish less aliment to aquatic insects and fish. However, 

 the Indians of these countries, during two periods of the 

 year, feed on birds of passage, which repose in their long 



* The Parecas say, instead of prata, rata. It is the Castilian word 

 jilnta ill-pronounced. Near the Yurubesh there is another inconsiderable 

 tributary stream of the Rio Negro, the Curicur-iari. It is easy to 

 recognize in this name the Caribbee word carucur, gold. The Caribs 

 extended their incursions from the mouth of the Orinoco south-west 

 toward the Rio Negro ; and it was this restless people who carried the 

 fable of El Dorado, by the same way, but in an opposite direction (from 

 south-west to north-east), from the Mesopotamia between the Rio Negro 

 wid the Jupura to the sources of the Rio Branco. 



