774 



throws light on the events of the conquest, and 

 that long series of disastrous expeditions made 

 in search of Dorado, the last of which (I am 

 ashamed to say) was in the year 1775 ; it also 

 furnishes, in addition to this simply historical 

 interest, another more substantial, and more 

 generally felt, that of rectifying the geography 

 of South America, and of disembarrassing the 

 maps published in our days of those great lakes, 

 and that strange labyrinth of rivers, placed as 

 if by chance between sixty and sixty-six degrees 

 of longitude. No man in Europe believes any 

 longer in the wealth of Guyana, and the empire 

 of the grand PatitL The town of Manoa, and 

 it's palaces covered with plates of massy gold, 

 have long since disappeared ; but the geogra- 

 phical apparatus serving to adorn the fable of 

 Dorado, the lake Parima, which, similar to the 

 lake of Mexico, reflected the image of so many 

 sumptuous edifices, has been religiously pre- 

 served by geographers. In the space of three 

 centuries the same traditions have been differ- 

 ently modified; from ignorance of the American 

 languages, rivers have been taken for lakes, 

 and portages for branches of rivers ; one lake, 

 the Cassipa, has been made to advance five de- 

 grees of latitude toward the south, while ano- 

 ther, the Parima or Dorado, has been trans- 

 ported the distance of a hundred leagues, from 

 the western to the eastern bank of the Rio 



