GEOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. 37 



in latitude 4 (instead of 8 8), the portage of Parima was 

 placed close to the equator. At the same period the Via- 

 poco (Oyapoc) and the Rio Cayenne (Maroni ?) were made 

 to issue from this lake Parima. The same name being given 

 by the Caribs to the western branch of the Rio Branco has 

 perhaps contributed as much to the imaginary enlargement 

 (if the lake Amucu, as the inundations of the various tribu- 

 tary streams of the Uraricuera, from the confluence of the 

 Tacutu to the Voile de la Inundacion. 



\\Y have shown above that the Spaniards took the Rio 

 Paragua, or Parava, which falls into the Carony, for a lake, 

 because the word parava signifies sea, lake, river. Parima 

 seems also to denote vaguely " great water;" for the root 

 par is tound in the Carib words that designate rivers, pools, 

 lakes, and the ocean* In Arabic and in Persian, bahr and 

 deria are also applied at the same time to the sea, to lakes, 

 and to rivers ; and this practice, common to many nations 

 in both worlds, has, on our ancient maps, converted lakes 

 into rivers and rivers into lakes. In support of what I here 

 advance, I shall appeal to very respectable testimony, that of 

 Father Caulin. " When I inquired of the Indians," says 

 this missionary, who sojourned longer than I on the banks 

 of the Lower Orinoco, " what Parima was, they answered, 

 that it was nothing more than a river that issued from a 

 chain of mountains, the opposite side of which furnished 

 waters to the Essequibo." Caulin, knowing nothing of lake 

 Amucu, attributes the erroneous opinion of the existence of 

 an inland sea solely to the inundations of the plains (a las 

 inundaciones dilatadas por los bajos del pais). According 

 to him, the mistakes of geographers arise from the vexatious 

 circumstance of all the rivers of Guiana having different 

 names at their mouths and near their sources. " I have no 

 doubt," he adds, " that one of the upper branches of the Rio 

 Branco is that very Rio Parima which the Spaniards have 

 taken for a lake (a quien suponian laguna)." Such are the 

 opinions which the historiographer of the Expedition of the 

 Boundaries had formed on the spot. He could not expect 

 that La Cruz and Surville, mingling old hypotheses with 



* In Persian, the root water (ab) is found also in lake (abdan). Fo? 

 other etymologies of the words Parima and Manoa. see Gili, voJ v, p. 81, 

 and 141 ; and Gumilla, vol. i, p. 403. 



