479 



of these suppositions. We must distinguish, in 

 notions of this kind, what travellers have learn- 

 ed from Indians at the mouth of the Rio Negro, 

 and what they have themselves added from the 

 hypotheses furnished by the state of geography 

 in the age in which they lived. A branch that 

 issues from the Rio Negro is supposed to run 

 into a great river, which flows into the North 

 Sea, on a coast inhabited by red-haired men ; 

 for it is thus the natives, accustomed only to see 

 white men with black or brown hair (Portugueze 

 or Spanish), designate the Dutch. Now from 

 the confluence of the Rio Negro with the Ama- 

 zon, as far as Canno Pimichin, by which I en- 

 tered the former of these rivers, we are at pre- 

 sent acquainted with all the tributary streams 

 on the north and the east ; and there is but one, 

 the Cassiquiare, which communicates with ano- 

 ther river. The sources of the Rio Branco are 



communicate with the Amazon/' and by which the tyrant 

 Aguirre might have gone out. This river he calls Arcoa. 

 I find it to be the Aracow of Sanson, and the Aracawa of 

 d'Anville, between the Cassipour and the Oyapoc ( Wiapoco 

 of the ancient geographers) . It is probable, that the note of 

 De l'lsle was meant to refer to the Oyapoc, a considerable 

 river, to which extraordinary branchings were erroneously 

 attributed. Acunha (p. 21, §44) believes in several com- 

 munications between the mouth of the Amazon and the 

 rivers, that throw themselves into the sea west of North 

 Cape ; and he calls the Rio de Felipe " una boca transversal 

 del Rio de las Amazonas" 



