799 



figure in the fable of Dorado are found in the 

 tributary streams of the Rio Bianco. Slight 

 local circumstances, joined to the remembrances 

 of the salt lake of Mexico, more especially of 

 the celebrated lake Manoa in the Dorado des 

 Omaguas, have served to complete a picture 

 created by the imagination of Raleigh, and his 

 two lieutenants Keymis and Masham. The 

 inundations of the Rio Branco, I conceive, may 

 be compared at the utmost to those of the Red 

 river of Louisiana, between Natchitotches and Ca- 

 dos, but not to the Laguna de los Xarayes, which 

 is a temporary swelling of the Rio Paraguay*. 



Indians who now wander on the south-east ot the lake Ama- 

 cu, have been confounded, as Mr. Buache has well observed^ 

 with the Manaos (Manoas) of Jurubesh, celebrated in the 

 history of the Dorado of the Omaguas and of the lake Manao, 

 on the south of the Rio Negro. (Carte genirale de la Guyane, 

 1797.) La Cruz calls the White Sea (which is an imagi- 

 nary dilatation of the White River, or Rio Branco) Parana- 

 Pitinga ; but, among the Omaguas of the Upper Maragnori, 

 the Brazilians or northern Guaranies, and the Caribbees, 

 consequently among nations more than 360 leagues distant 

 from each other, parana signifies both a river and a lake. 

 The Europeans give the name of Rio Parana to the eastern 

 branch of the Rio de la Plata ; which is as if they said, Rio 

 Flumen. The river, that separates the provinces of Alma- 

 guer and Pasto, is called in the same manner Rio Mayo, 

 though mayu, in the fine language of the Incas, signifies 

 river in general. 



* Southey, vol. i, p. 130. These periodical overflowings 

 of the Rio Paraguay have long acted the same part in the 



