779 



communications between rivers, and figure 

 chains of mountains more or less lofty. They 

 have made full use of this liberty ; and the situa- 

 tion of lakes, as well as the course and branch- 

 ings of rivers, has been varied in so many ways, 

 that it would not be surprising, if among the 

 great number of maps some were found, that 

 trace the real state of things. The field of hy- 

 potheses is now singularly narrowed. I have 

 determined the longitude of Esmeralda in the 

 Upper Oroonoko ; more to the east, amid the 

 plains of Parima (a land as unknown as Wangara 

 and Dar-Saley in Africa), a band of ^wenty 

 leagues broad has been travelled over from north 

 to south, along- the banks of the Rio Carony and 

 the Rio Bran co, in the longitude of sixty-three 

 degrees. This is the perilous road, which was 

 taken by don Antonio Santos in going from 

 Santo Thome del Angostura to Rio Negro and 

 the Amazon ; by this road also the colonists of 

 Surinam communicated very recently with the 

 inhabitants of Grand Para*. This road divides 

 the terra incognita of Parima into two unequal 

 portions ; and fixes limits at the same time to 

 the sources of the Oroonoko, which it is no 

 longer possible to carry back indefinitely toward 

 the east, without supposing that the bed of the 

 Rio Branco, which flows from north to south, is, 



** See above, p. 480. 



