ILLUSTRATIONS (3 6). ANCIENT ROCKY BARRIER. 175 



rected on every side, proposes in his letters to the Spanish 

 monarchs, a geognostic hypothesis regarding the configura- 

 tion of the larger Antilles. Being fully impressed with the 

 idea of the strength of the Equinoctial current, which has often 

 a westerly direction, he ascribes to it the disintegration of the 

 group of the smaller Antilles, and the singularly lengthened 

 configuration of the southern coasts of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, 

 and Jamaica, all of which follow almost exactly the direction of 

 parallels of latitude. On his third voyage (from the end of 

 May, 1498, to the end of November, 1500), when, from the 

 Boca del Drago to the Island of Margarita, and afterwards 

 from that island to Haiti, he felt the whole force of the equi- 

 noctial current, " that movement of the waters which accords 

 with the movement of the heavens movimiento de los cielos" 

 he says expressly that the violence of the current has torn the 

 Island of Trinidad from the mainland. He refers the sove- 

 reigns to a chart which he sends them a " pintura de la 

 tierra" drawn by himself, to which frequent reference is made 

 in the celebrated lawsuit against Don Diego Colon respecting 

 the rights of the first Admiral. " Es la carta de marear y 

 figura que hizo el Almirante sefialando los rumbos y vientos 

 por los quales vino a Paria, que dicen parte del Asia."* 



(4) p. 156 ''Across ike snow-crowned Paropanisus" 



In Diodorus' description of the Paropanisus,f we seem to 

 recognise a delineation of the Peruvian chain of the Andes. 

 The army passed through inhabited districts in which snow 

 daily fell! 



(5) p. 156 "Herrera in his Decades." 



Historia general de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. i. Kb. iii. 

 cap. 12 (ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Batista Munoz, Historia del 

 Nuevo Mundo, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, Examen 

 Crit., t. iii. p. 111. 



(6) p. 158 " The Sources of the Orinoco have never been 

 visited by any European" 



Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in 



* Xavarrete, Viages y Descubrimientos que hicieron por mar lot 

 Espanoles, t. i. pp. 253, 260 ; t. iii. pp. 539, 587. 

 t Diodor. Sicul., lib. xvii. p. 553 (Rhodom.) 



