ILLUSTRATIONS (9). LAKE PAEIME. 185 



resting memoir on the Massaruni, " that the tradition of a 

 large inland sea is wholly unfounded. According to my 

 views, the following circumstance may have given rise to the 

 belief in the existence of the fabulous lake of the Parime. At 

 some distance from the rocky fall of Tebooo the waters of the 

 Massaruni present to the eye as little motion as the calm 

 surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote period the hori- 

 zontal granitic strata of Teboco had been totally compact and 

 without fissures, the waters must have been at least 50 feet 

 above their present level, and there would have been formed 

 an immense lake 10 or 12 miles in width, and 1500 or 2000 

 miles in length."* The extent of this supposed inundation 

 is not the only reason which prevents me from acceding to this 

 explanation; for I have seen plains (Llanos), where, during the 

 rainy season, the overflowing of the tributaries of the Orinoco 

 annually covered a surface of 6400 square miles. The laby- 

 rinth of ramifications between the Apure, Arauca, Capanaparo, 

 and Sinaruco (see maps 17 and 18 of my Physical Atlas), is 

 then wholly lost sight of; the configuration of the river beds 

 can no longer be traced, and the whole appears like one vast 

 lake. But the locality of the fabulous Dorado, and of the 

 Lake Parime, belongs historically to quite a different part of 

 Guiana, namely, that lying south of the Pacaraima mountains. 

 This myth of the White Sea and of the Dorado of the Parime, 

 has arisen, as I endeavoured thirty years ago to show in 

 another work, from the appearance of the micaceous rocks of 

 the Ucucuamo, the name Rio Parime (Rio Branco), the inun- 

 dations of the tributaries; and especially from the existence of 

 the lake Amucu, which is in the neighbourhood of the Rio 

 Rupunuwini (Rupunuri), and is connected by means of the 

 Pirara with the Rio Parime. 



I have had much pleasure in finding that the travels of 

 Sir Robert Schomburgk have fully corroborated these early 

 \ r iews. The section of his map which gives the course of the 

 Essequibo and of the Rupunuri is quite new, and of great 

 importance in a geographical point of view. It places the Paca- 

 raima chain between 3 52' and 4 north lat., while I had given 

 its mean direction from 4 to 4 10*. The chain reaches the 

 confluence of the Essequibo and Rupunuri in 3 57' north lat., 

 and 58 1' west longitude; I had placed it half a degree too 

 * Nouvelles Annale* des Voyages, 1836, Sept. p. 316. 



