G8 GOLD IN TEE HIVEK-BEDS. 



contestably auriferous. There Acnnha and Father Fritz 

 placed their Laguna del Oro ; and various accounts, which I 

 obtained at San Carlos from Portuguese Americans, explain 

 perfectly what La Condamine has related of the plates of 

 beaten gold ^ound in the hands of the natives. If we pass 

 from the Iquiare to the left bank of the Bio Negro, we 

 enter a country entirely unknown, between the Rio Branco, 

 the sources of the Essequibo, and the mountains of Portu- 

 guese Guiana. Acunha speaks of the gold washed down by 

 the northern tributary streams of the Lower Maranon, 

 such as the Bio Trombetas (Oriximina), the Curupatuba, 

 and the Grinipape (Bio de Paru). It appears to me a cir- 

 cumstance worthy of attention, that all these rivers descend 

 from the same table-land, the northern slope of which con- 

 tains the lake Amucu, the Dorado of Raleigh and the Dutch, 

 and the isthmus between the Bupunuri (Bupunuwini) and t* 

 Bio Mahu. There is no reason for denying the existence cf 

 auriferous alluvial lands far from the Cordilleras of the 

 Andes, on the north of the Amazon ; as there are on the 

 south, in the mountains of Brazil. The Caribs of the 

 Carony, the Cuyuni, and the Essequibo, have practised on 

 a small scale the washing of alluvial earth from the re 

 motest times.* "When we examine the structure of moun- 

 tains, and embrace in one point of view an extensive surface 



* " On the north of the confluence of the Curupatuba and the Ama- 

 5on," says Acunha, " is the mountain of Paraguaxo, which, when illu- 

 nined by the sun, glows with the most beautiful colours ; and thence 

 rom time to time issues a horrible noise (revienta con grahdes 

 struenos)." Is there a volcanic phenomenon in this eastern part of the 

 New Continent ? or is it the love of the marvellous, which has given rise 

 to the tradition of the bellowings (bramidos) of Paraguaxo ? The lustre 

 emitted from the sides of the mountain recalls to mind what we have 

 mentioned above of the miraculous rocks of Calitamini, and the island 

 Ipomucena, in the imaginary Lake Dorado. In one of the Spanish letters 

 intercepted at sea by Captain George Popham, in 1594, it is said, " Having 

 inquired of the natives whence they obtained the spangles and powder of 

 gold, which we found in their huts, and which they stick on their skin 

 by means of some greasy substances, they told us, that in a certain plain, 

 they tore up the grass, and gathered the earth in baskets, to subject it to 

 the process of washing." (Raleigh, p. 109.) Can this passage be ex- 

 plained by supposing that the Indians sought thus laboriously, not for 

 'pld, but for spangles of mica, which the natives of Rio Caura still em- 

 ploy as ornaments, when they paint their bodies ? 



