EXPEDITION OP BEBBIO. Gl 



de Quesada, passed the Cordilleras to the east of Tunja,* 

 embarked on the Rio Casanare, and went down by this 

 river, the Meta, and the Orinoco, to the island of Trinidad. 

 We scarcely know this voyage except by the narrative ot 

 Kuk'i^h ; it appears to have preceded a few years the first 

 foundation of Vieja Guayana, which was in the year 1591. 

 A fr\v years later (1595) Berrio caused his maese de campo, 

 Domingo de Vera, to prepare in Europe an expedition oi 

 two thousand men to go up the Orinoco, and conqnrr El 

 Dorado, which then began to be called ' the country of the 

 Manoa,' and even the Laguna de la gran Manoa. Rich 

 landholders sold their farms, to take part in a crusade, to 

 which twelve Observantin monks, and ten secular eccle- 

 siastics were annexed. The tales related by one Martinez f 



* No doubt between the Paramos of Chita and of Zoraca, taking the 

 road of Chire and Pore. Berrio told Raleigh, that he came from the 

 Rio Casanare to the Pato, from the Pato to the Meta, and from the 

 Meta to the Baraguan (Orinoco). We must not confound this Rio Pato 

 (a name connected no doubt with that of the ancient mission of Patuto) 

 with the Rio Paute. 



t I believe I can demonstrate, that the fable of Juan Martinez, spread 

 abroad by the narrative of Raleigh, was founded on the adventuies of 

 Juan Martin de Albujar, well known to the Spanish historians of the Con- 

 quest ; and who, in the expedition of Pedro de Silva (1570), fell into the 

 hands of the Caribs of the Lower Orinoco. This Albujar married an In- 

 dian woman, and became a savage himself, as happens sometimes in our 

 own days on the western limits of Canada and of the United States. 

 After having long wandered with the Caribs, the desire of rejoining the 

 Whites led him by the Rio Essequibo to the island of Trinidad. He 

 made several excursions to Santa Fe de Bogot&, and at length settled at 

 Carora. (Simon, p. 591). I know not whether he died at Porto Rico ; 

 but it cannot be doubted, that it was he who learned from the Carib 

 traders the name of the Manoas [of Jurubesh]. As he lived on the 

 banks of the Upper Carony, and reappeared by the Rio Essequibo, he 

 may have contributed also, to place the lake Manoa at the isthmus of Ru- 

 punuwini. Raleigh makes his Juan Martinez embark below Morequito, a 

 village at the east of that confluence of the Carony with the Orinoco. 

 Thence he makes him dragged by the Caribs from town to town, till he 

 finds at Manoa a relation of the inca Atabalipa (Atahualpa), whom he 

 had known before at Caxamarca, and who had fled before the Spaniards. 

 It appears that Raleigh had forgotten that the voyage of Ordaz (1531) 

 was two years anterior to the death of Atahualpa, and the entire destruc- 

 tion of the empire of Peru ! He must have confounded the expedition of 

 Ordaz with that of Silva (1570), in which Juan Martin de Albuzar par- 

 %x>k. The latter, who related his tales at Santa Fe, at Venezuela, and 



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