CATARACTS., AND INUNDATIONS. 47 



curing a supply of food by a friendly intercourse with more gentle 

 tribes. After a long series of dangers, which he encountered with 

 amazing fortitude, and of distresses which he supported with no less 

 magnanimity, he reached the ocean, where new perils awaited him, 

 These he likewise surmounted, and got safe to the Spanish settlement 

 in the island of Cubagua ; thence he sailed to Spain, The vanity 

 natural to travellers who visit regions unknown to the rest of man* 

 kind, and the art of an adventurer, solicitous to magnify his own 

 merit, concured in prompting him to mingle an extraordinary pro- 

 portion of the marvellous in the narrative of his voyage. He pre- 

 tended to have discovered nations so rich, that the roofs of their 

 temples were covered with plates of gold ; and described a republic 

 of women, so warlike and powerful, as to have extended their domi- 

 nion over a considerable tract of the fertile plains which he bad vi- 

 sited. Extravagant as those tales were, they gave rise to an opinion 

 that a region abounding with gold, distinguished by the name of El 

 Dorado, and a community of Amazons, were to be found in this 

 part of the New World ; and such is the propensity of mankind to 

 believe what is wonderful, that it has been slowly and v. ith difficulty 

 that reason and observation have exploded those fables. The voyage, 

 however, even when stripped of every romantic embellishment, de- 

 serves to be recorded, not only as one of the most memorable occur- 

 rences in that adventurous age, but as the first event which led to> 

 any certain knowledge of the extensive countries that stretch eastward 

 from the Andes to the ocean.'* 



Herrera, in his History of America, gives a circumstantial account 

 of Orellana's voyage. It appears that he was very near seven months 

 from the time of his embarking to his reaching the mouth of 

 the river. 



M. de la Condamine, in the year 1743, for the purpose of mea- 

 suring a degree of the meridian, sailed from Cuenca to Para, a set- 

 tlement of the Portuguese at the mouth of the river, a navigation 

 much longer than that of Orellana, in less than four months. But 

 the two adventurers were very differently provided for the voyage. 

 This hazardous undertaking, to which ambition prompted Orellana, 

 and the love of science M. de la Condamine, was undertaken by 

 Madam Godin des Odonuis, in the \ear 176'9, from conjugal afiec- 

 tion. The narrative of the hardships which she suffered, of the 

 dangers to which she was exposed, and of the disasters which befel 

 her i* one of the most singular and affecting stories related in, any 



