822 



of Quito, appear to me very remarkable. It has 

 already been said above, that Orellana saw la- 

 mas at the dwelling of an Indian Chief on the 

 banks of the Amazon, and that Ordaz had heard 

 mention made of them in the plains of Meta. 



I pause where ends the domain of geography? 

 and shall not follow Huten in the description 

 either of that town of immense extent, which he 

 saw from afar ; or of the battle of the Oma- 

 guas, where thirty-nine Spaniards (the names 

 of fourteen are recorded in the annals of the 

 time) fought against fifteen thousand Indians. 

 These false reports contributed greatly to em- 

 bellish the fable of Dorado. The name of the 

 town of the Omaguas is not found in the narra- 

 tive of Huten ; but the Manoas, from whom fa- 

 ther Fritz received in the 17th century plates of 

 beaten gold, in his mission of Yurim-Aguas, are 

 neighbours of the Om-aguas. The name of 

 Manoa subsequently passed from the country of 

 the Amazons to an imaginary town, placed in the 

 Dorado de la Parima. The celebrity attached 

 to those countries between the Caqueta (Papa- 

 mene) and the Guaupe (one of the tributary 

 streams of the Rio Negro) excited Pedro de 

 Ursua in 15G0 to that fatal expedition, which 

 ended by the revolt of the tyrant Aguirre*. 



* See aboye, vol. iv, p. 257, where we have given the 

 translation of a letter addressed to Philip II by Aguirre. 



