CREDULITY OF EALEIGH. 



cataract of Athule (Atures), which prevents all further 

 navigation." Notwithstanding Ealeigh's exaggeration, so 

 little worthy of a statesman, his narrative contains important 

 materials for the history of geography. The Orinoco, above 

 the confluence of the Apure, was at that period as little 

 known to Europeans, as in our time the course of the Niger 

 below Sego. The names of several very remote tributary 

 streams were known, but not their situation ; and when the 

 same name, differently pronounced, or not properly appre- 

 hended by the ear, furnished different sounds, their number 

 was multiplied. Other errors had perhaps their source in 

 the little interest which Antonio de Berrio, the Spanish 

 governor, felt in communicating true and precise notions to 

 Ealeigh, who indeed complains of his prisoner, " as being 

 utterly unlearned, and not knowing the east from the west." 

 I shall not here discuss the point, how far the belief of 

 Ealeigh, in all he relates of inland seas, similar to the 

 Caspian sea ; on "the imperial and golden city of Manoa," 

 and on the magnificent palaces built by the emperor Inga of 

 Giiyana, in imitation of those of his ancestors at Peru, was 

 real or pretended. The learned historian of Brazil, Mr. 

 Southey, and the biographer of Ealeigh, Sir Gr. Oayley, have 

 recently thrown much light on this subject. It seems to 

 me difficult to doubt of the extreme credulity of the chief of 

 the expedition, and of his lieutenants. We see Ealeigh 

 adapted everything to the hypotheses he had previously 

 formed. He was certainly deceived himself; but when he 

 sought to influence the imagination of queen Elizabeth, and 

 execute the projects of his own ambitious policy, he neglected 

 none of the artifices of flattery. He described to the Queen 

 " the transports of those barbarous nations at the sight of 

 her picture ;" he would have " the name of the august 

 virgin, who knows how to conquer empires, reach as far as 

 the country of the warlike women of the Orinoco and the 

 Amazon;" he asserts, that, "at the period when the 



that of the nation of Betoyes, of the plains of the Casanare and the Meta ? 

 Hondius, and the geographers who have followed him, with the exception 

 of De L'Isle (1/00), and of Sanson (1656), place the province of Ama- 

 paja erroneously to the east of the Orinoco. We see clearly by the nar- 

 rative of Raleigh (p. 26 and 72), that Amapaja is the inundated country 

 between the Meta and the Guarico. Where are the rivers Dauney and 

 Ubarro ? The Guaviare appears to me to be the Goavar of Raleigh. 



