SUPPOSED ArRIFEBOUS SOILS. 63 



Rio Branco and the Essequibo, an identical direction with 

 that in which the Caribs for ages conducted their warlike 

 and mercantile expeditions. It may be conceived that the 

 gold of the Cordilleras might be conveyed from hand to 

 hand, through an infinite number of tribes, as far as the 

 shore of Guiana; since, long before the fur-trade had at- 

 tracted English, Russian, and American vessels to the north- 

 west coast of America, iron tools had been carried from 

 New Mexico and Canada beyond the Rocky Mountains. 

 From an error in longitude, the traces of which we find in 

 all the maps of the 16th century, the auriferous mountains 

 of Peru and New Granada were supposed to be much 

 nearer the mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon than 

 they are in fact. Geographers have the habit of augment- 

 ing and extending beyond measure countries that are re- 

 cently discovered. In the map of Peru, published at Verona 

 by Paulo di Forlani, the town of Quito is placed at the 

 distance of 400 leagues from the coast of the South Sea, on 

 the meridian of Cumana ; and the Cordillera of the Andes 

 there fills almost the whole surface of Spanish, French, and 

 Dutch Guiana. This erroneous opinion of the breadth oi 

 the Andes has no doubt contributed to give so much im- 

 portance to the granitic plains that extend on their eastern 

 side. Unceasingly confounding the tributary streams of 

 the Amazon with those of the Orinoco, or (as the lieute- 

 nants of Raleigh called it, to flatter their chief) the Rio 

 Raleana, to the latter were attributed all the traditions 

 which had been collected respecting the Dorado of Quixos, 

 the Omaguas, and the Manoas.* The geographer Hondius 



* The flight of Manco-Inca, brother of Atahualpa, to the east of the 

 Cordilleras, no doubt gave rise to the tradition of the new empire of 

 the Incas in Dorado. It was forgotten, that Caxamarca and Cuzco, two 

 towns where the princes of that unfortunate family were at the time of 

 their emigration, are situate to the south of the Amazon, in the latitudes 

 of seven degrees eight minutes, and thirteen degrees twenty-one minutes 

 south, and consequently four hundred leagues south-west of the pre- 

 tended town of Manoa on the lake Parima, (three degrees and a half 

 north lat.) It is probable that, from the extreme difficulty of penetrat- 

 ing into the plains east of the Andes, covered with forests, the fugitive 

 princes never went beyond the banks of the Beni. The following is what 

 T learnt with certainty respecting the emigration of the family of the Inca, 

 some sad vestiges of which I saw on passing by Caxamarca. Manco-lnco, 

 Acknowledged as the legitimate successor of Atahualpa, made war without 



