840 



no doubt, the inhabitants of Paria, a name which 

 Christopher Columbus had already heard* in 

 1498, and which was long- applied to a great 

 part of America. Bishop Geraldini says clearly, 

 in a letter addresssd to pope Leo X in 1516, 

 insula ilia, quae Europa et Asia est major, quam 

 indocti Continentem A sloe appellant, et alii Ame- 

 ricam velPariam nuncupant\. I find in the Map 

 of the World of 1508 no trace whatever of the 

 Oroonoko. This river appears for the first time, 

 by the name of Rio dulce, on the celebrated map 

 constructed in 1529 by Diego Ribero, cosmo- 

 grapher of the emperor Charles V, which was 

 published, with a learned commentary by Mr. 

 Sprengel in 1795. Neither Columbus (1498), 

 nor Alonzo de Ojeda, accompanied by Amerigo 

 Vespucci (1499), had seen the real mouth of the 

 Oroonoko ; they confounded it with the north- 

 ern opening of the gulf of Paria, to which they 

 attributed, by an exaggeration so common to 

 the navigators of that time, an immense volume 

 of fresh water. It was Vicente Yanez Pincon, 

 who, after having discovered the mouth of the 

 Rio Maragnon*, first saw (1500) that of the 



* Indigenae sine ullo metu ad nostros festinant, a quibus 

 Pariam vocari terram illam colleger unt. Petr. Mart. Ocean. 

 1533, p.. 16. 



+ Alexandra Geraldini Itinerarium, p. 250. 



| The name of Mararion was known fifty-nine years before 



