EARLY HYT1I8. 27 



maps published in our days of those great laKea, and that 

 strange labyrinth of rivers, placed as if by chance between 

 sixty and sixty-six degrees of longitude. Xo man in Europe 

 believes any longer in the wealth of Guiana and the empire 

 of the Grand Patiti. The town of Manoa, and its palaces 

 covered with plates of massy gold, have long since disap- 

 peared ; but the geographical apparatus serving to adorn the 

 fable of El Dorado, the lake Parima, which, similar to the 

 lake of Mexico, reflected the image of so many sumptuous 

 edifices, has been religiously preserved by geographers. In 

 the space ol three centuries, the same traditions have been 

 differently modified ; from ignorance of the American lan- 

 guages, rivers have been taken for lakes, and portages for 

 branches of rivers ; one lake, the Cassipa, has been made to 

 advance five degrees of latitude toward the south, while 

 another, the Parima or Dorado, has been transported the 

 distance of a hundred leagues from the western to the eastern 

 bank of the Rio Branco. From these various changes, the 

 problem we are going to solve has become much more com- 

 plicated than is generally supposed. The number of geogra- 

 phers who discuss the basis of a map, with regard to the 

 three points ot measures, of the comparison of descriptive 

 works, and of the etymological study* of names, is extremely 



* I use this expression, perhaps an improper one, to mark a species of 

 philological examination, to which the names of rivers, lakes, mountains, 

 and tribes, must be subjected, in order to discover their identity in a 

 great number of maps. The apparent diversity of names arises partly 

 from the difference of the dialects spoken by one and the same family of 

 people, partly from the imperfection of our European orthography, and 

 from the extreme negligence with which geographers copy one another. We 

 recognize with difficulty the Rio Uaupe in the Guaupe or Guape ; the Xie, in 

 the Guaicia ; the Raudal de Atures, in Atjiule ; the Caribbees, in the Call- 

 nas and Galibis ; the Guaraunos or Uarau, in the Oaraw-its; &c. It is, 

 however, by similar mutations of letters, that the Spaniards have made hijo 

 of filing: hambre, of fames; and Felipo de Urre, and even Utre, of the 

 Conquistador Philip von Huten g that the Tamanars in America have 

 substituted choraro for so I dado ; and the Jews in China, lalemeiohang 

 for Jeremiah. Analogy and a certain etymological tact must guide geo- 

 graphers in researches of this kind, in which the.v would be exposed to 

 serious errors, if they were not to study at the same time the respective 

 situations of the upper and lower tributary streams of the same river. 

 Our maps of America are overloaded with names, for which rivers have 

 been created. This desire of compiling, of filling up vacancies, and of 

 employing, without investigation, heterogeneous materials, has given 



