487 



twenty leagues distant from the Randal of 

 Tabaje. This missionary, who resided on the 

 banks of the Oroonoko three years (not thirty, 

 as his translators pretend), should have con- 

 fined himself to the relation of what he had seen 

 with his own eyes in navigating on the Apure, 

 the Meta, and the Oroonoko, from Guayana 

 Vieja as far as the neighbourhood of the first 

 great cataract. The admiration his work at first 

 excited, the only one which had appeared on 

 those countries before the works of father Cau- 

 lin and Gili, was succeeded by too marked a 

 disdain in the Spanish colonies. The Orinoco 

 illustrado does not indeed display that intimate 

 knowledge of localities, or that candid simpli- 

 city, which gives a certain charm to the narra- 

 tives of the missionaries ; there is some affecta- 

 tion in the style, and a constant tendency to 

 exaggeration ; but, notwithstanding these de- 

 fects, father Gumilla's book contains many just 

 observations on the manners and natural dispo- 

 sitions of the different tribes of the Lower Oroo- 

 noko and the Llanos of Casanare. 



M. de la Condamine % during his memorable 

 navigation on the river of Amazons in 1743, 

 carefully collected a great number of proofs of 

 this communication of the rivers, denied by the 

 Spanish Jesuit. The most decisive proof then 



* Voyage to the Amazon, p. 119. 



