4G8 OEOOiiApiiicAL EH nous. 





mcrable swarms of ants during the navigation of the Cassi- 

 quiare ; and the toldo, or roof of palm-leaves, beneath which 

 we were again doomed to remain stretched out during 

 twenty-two days, was with difficulty cleared of these insects. 

 We employed part of the morning in repeating to the 

 inhabitants of Esmeralda the questions we had already put 

 to them, respecting the existence of a lake towards the 

 east. We showed copies of the maps of Surville and La 

 Cruz to old soldiers, who had been posted in the mission 

 ever since its first establishment. They laughed at the 

 supposed communication of the Orinoco with the Rio 

 Idapa, and at the ' White Sea,' which the former river waa 

 represented to cross. What we politely call geographical 

 fictions they termed "lies of the old world" (mentiras de 

 por alia). These good people could not comprehend how 

 men, in making the map of a country which they had never 

 visited, could pretend to know things in minute detail, of 

 which persons who lived on the spot were ignorant. The 

 lake Parima, the Sierra Mey, and the springs which separate 

 at the point where they issue from the earth, were entirely 

 unknown at Esmeralda. We were repeatedly assured that 

 no one had ever been to the east of the Baudal of the 

 Guaharibos; and that beyond that point, according to the 

 opinion of some of the natives, the Orinoco descends like a 

 small torrent from a group of mountains, inhabited by the 

 Coroto Indians. Father Grili, who was living on the banks 

 of the Orinoco when the expedition of the boundaries 

 arrived, says expressly, " that Don Apollinario Diez was 

 sent in 1765 to attempt the discovery of the source of the 

 Orinoco ; that he found the river, east of Esmeralda, full of 

 shoals ; that he returned for want of provision ; and that he 

 learned nothing, absolutely nothing, of the existence of a 

 lake." This statement perfectly accords with what I heard 

 myself thirty-five years later at Esmeralda. The probability 

 of a fact is powerfully shaken when it can be proved to be 

 totally unknown on the very spot where it ought to be 

 known best ; and when those by whom the existence of the 

 lake is affirmed contradict each other, not in the least 

 essential circumstances, but in all that are the most im- 

 portant. 



