841 



Oroonoko. He called this river Rio diilce ; a 

 name which, since Ribero, was long preserved 

 on our maps, and which has sometimes been 

 given erroneously to the Maroni, and to the 

 Essequebo*. 



The great lake Parima did not appear^ on 

 our maps till after the first voyage of Raleigh. 

 It was Jodocus Hondius, who, as early as the 

 year 1599, fixed the ideas of geographers, and 

 figured the interior of Spanish Guyana as a 

 country well known. He transformed the isth- 

 mus between the Rio Branco and the Rio Ru- 

 punuwini (one of the tributary streams of the 

 Essequebo) into the lake Rupunuwini, Parima, 

 or Dorado, two hundred leagues long, and forty 



the expedition of Lopez de Aguirre ; the denomination of the 

 river is therefore erroneously attributed to the nickname of ma- 

 ranos (hogs), which this adventurer gave his companions in 

 going down the river of the Amazons. Was not this vulgar 

 jest rather an allusion to the Indian name of the river? 



* See above, p. 478. The Oroonoko is also wanting on a 

 very fine map, which bears the title of Delineatio australis par- 

 tis America, authore Arnoldo Florentio a Langern. (D'Anville's 

 Collection ot Manuscripts, No. 9179.) 



+ I find no trace of it on a very rare map, dedicated to 

 Richard Hakluyt, and constructed on the meridian of Tole- 

 do. (Novus Orbis, Paris 1587.) In this map, published 

 before the voyage of Quiros, a group of islands is marked 

 (Infortunatoe Insula) where the Friendly Islands actually are. 

 Ortelius (1570) already knew them. Were they islands 

 seen by Magellan ? 



