536 



great rivers, the Topayos, the Madeira, and the 

 Paraguay, take their rise. The learned author 

 of the statistical description of the Capitania 

 of Mato Grosso, M. Almeida Serra, calls * 

 Atlas Serranias (high mountains), those of the 

 banks of the Aguapehy ; but we must not for- 

 get, that in a flat country, mountains of 500 feet 

 high appear lofty ; above all, if (like the rocks of 

 Baraguan and the Morros of San J uan -f*) the 

 mass is inconsiderable. The most recent ma- 

 nuscript maps of Brazil place, 1st. the Serra da 



of the Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata), approaches so near 

 the Rio Alegre, (a tributary of the Guapore and the Amazon), 

 that the portage is only 5322 bracas long. A canal was there 

 attempted to be traced during the ministry of Count de Bar- 

 ca (Eschwege, Gemdlde, p. 7) ; a circumstance that would not 

 prove alone, the absence of chains of mountains, for openings 

 and transversal valleys are found in the greatest Cordilleras. 

 A degree below the confluence of the Paraguay and the Jauru, 

 which receives the Aguapehy, a marshy soil begins. It 

 extends as far as Albuquerque, and its inundations (lat. 17° — 

 19°) have given rise to the fable of the Laguna de Xarayes, 

 as the inundations of the Rio Parime (Rio Branco),gave birth 

 to the fable of the LagunaParime (Mar del Doradoor Rupunu- 

 wini). See Patrioia, 1813, No. 5, p. 33, and manuscript Map 

 of Brazil, taken from 76 particular maps, at the depdt of 

 Maps of Rio Janeiro, by Silvan Pontes heme, 1804. 



* Geographical and political view of the Capitania of 

 Mato Grosso (1791), by the serjeant-major of engineers, 

 Ricardo Francisco de Almeida Serra. 



f In the Lower Oroonoko and in the Llanos of Venezuela . 

 See above, Vol. iv, p. 279, 503. 



