491 



Amazon, without passing his boats over any 

 portage, to the basin of the Lower Oroonoko. 



The tidings of this extraordinary voyage were 

 spread with such rapidity, that ,M. de la Conda- 

 mine was able to proclaim them*, at a public 

 sitting of the Academy, seven months after the 

 return of father Roman to Pararuma. "The 

 communication between the Oroonoko and the 

 Amazon," said he, " recently averred, may pass 

 so much the more for a discovery in geography, 

 as, although the junction of these two rivers 

 is marked on the ancient maps (according to 

 the information given by Acunha), it had been 

 suppressed by all the modern geographers, in 

 their new maps, as if in concert. It is not the 

 first time, that what is positive fact has been 

 thought fabulous, that the spirit of criticism has 

 been pushed too far, and that this communication 

 has been treated as chimerical by those, who 

 ought to have been better informed." Since the 

 voyage of father Roman in 1 774, no person in 

 Spanish Guyana, or on the coasts of Cumana and 

 Caraccas, has longer admitted a doubt of the 

 existence of the Cassiquiare and the bifurcation 



* They had been communicated to him by father John Fer- 

 reyro, rector of the college of Jesuits at Para. Voy. a V A ma- 

 zone, p. 120. Mem. de VAcademie, 1745, p. 450. Caulin, p. 

 79. See also, in the work of Gili,the fifth chapter of the first 

 book, published in 1780, with the title ; Delta scoperta delle 

 communicazione dell' Orinoco col Maragnone, vol, i, p. 31 

 to 34. 



