573 



very useful in preventing the incursions of the 

 Caribbees, who, from time to time, carry oil 



meridian, have committed great errors in the respective 

 places they assign to these streams. According to astrono- 

 mical observations, (those especially, which I made on the 

 22d of May, and the 12th of June), the village of Esme- 

 ralda, on the Upper Oroonoko, is one degree eighteen mi- 

 nutes west of the town of Muitaco, or Real Corona, on the 

 Lower Oroonoko j according to the maps of La Cruz and 

 Surville, Esmeralda is 0° 25' east of Real Corona. The 

 confluence of the Rio Arui with the Lower Oroonoko is, 

 according to the Spanish maps, on the meridian that cuts the 

 Upper Oroonoko at the point of bifurcation : according to my 

 astronomical observations, and the maps published since my 

 voyage to the Oroonoko, the meridian of the bifurcation (that 

 of the origin of the Cassiquiare) crosses the Lower Oroonoko 

 thirty-four leagues west of the mouth of the Arui, between 

 the town of Alta Gracia and the confluence of the Cuchivero. 

 Now, on connecting the mouth of the Rio Caura with the 

 farm of Capuchino and Real Corona, two points, the situation 

 of which I determined directly, we find it to be in the longi- 

 tude of 67° 42', or at most 67° 45'. A road traced from 

 Padamo to the mouth of the Rio Caura would go to the 

 north-east, instead of going to the north-west, as the maps of 

 La Cruz and Surville indicate. This result is very import- 

 ant for ascertaining the situation of the sources of the Ven- 

 tuari and the Erevato. As the geographers who have pre- 

 ceded me place the mouth of the Padamo forty minutes 

 farther east of the bifurcation of the Oroonoko than it 

 really is, they find this mouth not 0° 26' to the west, as in my 

 Atlas of South America, but 2° 10' east of the confluence of 

 the Caura. We are indeed ignorant of the difference of longi- 

 tude between the mouth of the Rio Caura and that point of 

 the Erevato (a tributary stream of the Caura), at which the 

 ancient road from Esmeralda terminated ; but it is difficult 



