EARLY MAPS OF AMERICA. 59 



There is no isthmus of Panama, but a passage, which per- 

 mits of a direct navigation from Europe to India. The 

 great southern island (South America) bears the name of 

 Terra de P areas, bounded by two rivers, the Kio Lareno 

 and the Kio Formoso. These Pareas are, no doubt, the in- 

 habitants of Paria, a name which Christopher Columbus 

 had already heard in 1498, and which was long applied to a 

 great part of America. Bishop Geraldini says clearly, in a 

 letter addressed to Pope Leo X, in 1516 : " Insula ilia, qua 

 Europa et Asia est major, qitam indocti Continentem Asia 

 appellant, et alii American vel Pariam nuncupant [that 

 island, larger than Europe and Asia joined together, which 

 the unlearned call the continent of Asia, and others America 

 or Paria].*" I find in the map of the world of 1508 no trace 

 whatever of the Orinoco. This river appears, for the first 

 time, by the name of Kio Dolce, on the celebrated map con- 

 structed in 1529 by Diego Kibeyro, cosmographer of the 

 emperor Charles V, which was published, with a learned 

 commentary, by M. Sprengel, in 1795. Neither Columbus 

 (1498) nor Alonzo de Ojeda, accompanied by Amerigo Ves- 

 pucci (1499), bad seen the real, mouth of the Orinoco ; they 

 confounded it with the northern opening of the Gulf of 

 Paria, to which they attributed (by an exaggeration so com- 

 mon to the navigators of that time, an immense volume of 

 fresh water. It was Vicente Yanez Pii^on, who, after 

 having discovered the mouth of the Kio Maranon,t first 

 saw, in 1500, that of the Orinoco. He called this river Kio 

 Dolce a name which, since Kibeyro, was long preserved on 

 our maps, and which has sometimes been given erroneously 

 to the Maroni and to the Essequibo. 

 The great Lake Parima did not appear on our mapsj till 



* Alexandri Geraldini Itinerarium, p. 250. 



t The name of Mafaiion was known fifty-nine years before the expe- 

 dition of Lopez de Aguirre ; the denomination of the river is therefore 

 erroneously aitributed to the nickname of maratios (hogs), which this 

 adventurer gave his companions in going down the river Amazon. Was 

 not this vulgar jest rather an allusion to the Indian name of the river ? 



* 1 find no trace of it on very rare map, dedicated to Richard Hak- 

 luyt, and constructed on the meridian of Toledo. (Novus Orbit, Paris, 

 1587.) In this map, published before the voyage of Quiros, a group of 

 islands is marked (Infortrnaiee Insula) where the Friendly Islands ac- 

 tually are. Ortelius (1570) already knew them. Were they islands seen 

 by Magellan ? 



