428 BirUBCATION OF TliE ORINOCO. 





tmperior of the Spanish missions was forced to remain near 

 the flying camp of the troop of ransomers till the arrival of 

 the Portuguese Jesuit Avogadri, who had gone upon busi- 

 ness to Grand Para. Father Manuel Boman returned with 

 his Salive Indians by the same way, that of the Cassiquiare 

 and the Upper Orinoco, to Pararuma,* a little to the north 

 of Carichana, after an absence of seven months. He was 

 the first white man who went from the Bio Negro, conse- 

 quently from the basin of the Amazon, without passing his 

 boats over any portage, to the basin of the Lower Orinoco. 



The tidings of this extraordinary passage spread with 

 such rapidity that La Condamine was able to announce 

 itf at a public sitting of the Academy, seven months 

 after the return of Father Boman to Pararuma. "The 

 communication between the Orinoco and the Amazon," said 

 he, "recently averred, may pass so much the more for a 

 discovery in geography, as, although the junction of these 

 two rivers is marked on the old maps (according to the 

 information given by Acunha), it had been suppressed by 

 all the modern geographers in their new maps, as if in 

 concert. This is not the first time that what is positive fact 

 has been thought fabulous, that the spirit of criticism has 

 been pushed too far, and that this communication has been 

 treated as chimerical by those who ought to have been 

 better informed." Since the voyage of Father Boman in 

 1774, no person in Spanish G-uiana, or on the coasts 

 of Cumana and Caracas, has admitted a doubt of the 

 existence of the Cassiquiare and the bifurcation of the 



* On the 15th of October, 1774. La Condamine quitted the town of 

 Grand Para December the 29th, 1743 ; it follows, from a comparison of 

 the dates, that the Indian woman of Pararuma, carried off by the 

 Portuguese, and to whom the French traveller had spoken, had not come 

 with Father Roman, as was erroneously affirmed. The appearance of this 

 woman on the banks of the Amazon is interesting with respect to the 

 researches lately made on the mixture of races and languages : it proves 

 the enormous distances through which the individuals of one tribe are 

 compelled to carry on intercourse with those of another. 



f 1 The intelligence was communicated to him by Father John Ferreyro, 

 rector of the college of Jesuits at Para. (Voy. a 1'Amazone, p. 120. 

 Mem. de 1'Acad. 1745, p. 450. Caulin, p. 79.) See also, in the work ol 

 Gili, the fifth chapter of the first book, published in 1780, with the title: 

 "Delia scoperta delle communicazione dell' Orinoco col Maragnore." 



