The Future Prosperity of the Colony. 363 



" More to the east between the sources of the Guainia 

 " (Rio Negro) the Uaupes, the Iquiare, and the Yuru- 

 " besi, we find a soil incontestably auriferous. There, 

 " ACUNHA and Father Fritz placed their Laguna del 

 " Oro ; and various accounts which I obtained at San 

 " Carlos from Portuguese Americans, explain perfe6lly 

 *■ what La Condamine has related of the plates of 

 " beaten gold found in the hands of the natives. If we 

 " pass from the Iquiare to the left bank of the Rio 

 " Negro, we enter a country entirely unknown, be- 

 " tween the Rio Branco, the sources of the Essequibo 

 " and the mountains of Portuguese Guiana. AcuNHA 

 " speaks of the gold washed down by the northern tribu- 

 ** tary streams of the lower Maranon such as the Rio 

 " Trombetas (Orixinoinaj, the Curupatuba and the Gini- 

 " pape (Rio de Paru). It appears to me a circum- 

 " stance worthy of attention that all these rivers descend 

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

 " contains the lake Amucuy the Dorado of Raleigh and 

 " the Dutch, and the isthmus between the Rupununi 

 " (Rupunuwini) and the Rio Mahu fireng)., There is 

 " no reason for denying the existence of auriferous allu- 

 " vial 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 Caroney, the 

 " Cuyuni and the Essequibo, have pra6tised on a small 

 " scale the washing of alluvial earth from the remotest 

 •' times. When we examine the stru6lure of mountains 

 " and embrace in our point of view an extensive surface 

 " of the globe, distances disappear ; and places the most 

 '* remote insensibly draw near each other. The basin of 

 " the upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro and the Amazon is 



