494 



ther German jesuit, traced a map* of the Ama- 

 zon in 1690> the best that had been made before 

 the voyage of M. de la Condamine. This map 

 guided the French academician in his naviga- 

 tion, as the ancient maps of La Cruz and Cau- 

 lin guided me on the Oroonoko. It seems sur- 

 prising, that father Fritz, notwithstanding his 

 long residence on the banks of the Amazon^ 

 (having been detained a prisoner two years by 

 the commander of a Portugueze fort), had not 

 acquired any notion of the Cassiquiare. The 

 historical illustrations, which he has inserted in 

 the margin of his manuscript map, and which 

 I have recently examined with care, are imper- 

 fect, and but few. He makes a chain of moun- 

 tains-^ pass between two systems of rivers, and 

 contents himself with bringing one of the 

 branches, which give birth to the Rio Negro, near 



* It was not sent to Europe till 1707 \ and was published 

 only in 1717, in the fine collection of the Lettres Edifiantes. 



t That chain of mountains, of which there is no trace in 

 nature (I speak as an eye witness), south of the Oroonoko, 

 between San Fernando de Atabapo and the Cassiquiare, 

 appeared again in the thirteenth article of the preliminary 

 treaty of peace and boundaries, October the 1st, 1777. We 

 have had occasion to observe above, that the diplomatic 

 body do not always consult geographers, and that errors of 

 situation, which we are willing to believe involuntary, have 

 become, since the eighth article of the peace of Utretcht, a 

 source of disputes incessantly reviving with respect to the 

 limits of French and Portugueze Guyana. 



