474 



long before the Upper Oroonoko was known to 

 these rival nations, the first vague ideas of the 

 communications between these two rivers came 

 to Europe from the mouth of the Rio Negro. 

 The Conquistadores, and several historians, as 

 Herera, Fray Pedro Simon, and Father Garcia*, 

 confound the Oroonoko and the Maragnon 

 under the names of the Rio Grande and Mar 

 Dulce (Great River, Sea of fresh- water). The 

 name of the former river is not even found on 

 the famous map of America by Diego Ribero, 

 constructed in 1529. The expeditions of Orellana 

 (1540), and of Lopez de Aguirre (1560), furnish 

 no information with regard to the bifurcation of 

 the Oroonoko ; but the rapidity with which 

 Aguirre arrived at the island of la Margaretta 

 had long led to the belief, that, instead of going- 

 out by one of the great mouths of the Amazon, 

 he had reached the sea by some interior com- 

 munication between the rivers *f~. This hypo- 



* Fray Gregorio Garcia (Origen de Los Indios, Valencia, 

 1607, p. 165) relates, that he learned from a monk, who had 

 the misfortune of being obliged to follow Pedro de Ursua and 

 the tyrant Lopez de Aguirre, that the Maragnon, after having 

 crossed the great plains (Llanos) of Dorado and the Amazons, 

 flows into the sea opposite the islands of Margaretta and 

 Trinidad. (See also Herera, vol. i, c. viii, p. 14 j and Fr. 

 Pedro Simon, vol. 2, ch. vii.) 



+ See vol. ii, p. 220 j vol. iv. p. 192, 257 ; and p. 323, of 

 the present volume. 



