794 



(1595), had formed no precise idea of the situa- 

 tion of el Dorado and the lake Parima, which 

 he believed to be salt, and which he calls 

 "another Caspian Sea." It was not till the 

 second voyage (1596), performed equally at the 

 expense of Raleigh, that Laurence Keymis fixed 

 so well the localities of Dorado, that he appears 

 to me to have no doubt of the identity of the 

 Parima de Manoa with the lake Amucu, and 

 with the isthmus between the Rupunuwini (a 

 tributary stream of the Essequebo) and the Rio 

 Parima or Rio Branco. "The Indians," says 

 Keymis, " go up the Dessekebe (Essequebo) in 

 twenty days, towards the south. To mark the 

 greatness of this river, they call it the brother 

 of the Oroonoko. After twenty days navigating 

 they convey their canoes by a portage, a single 

 day, from the river Dessekebe to a lake, which 

 the Jaos call Roponowini, and the Caribbees 

 Parime. This lake is as large as a sea ; it is 

 covered with an infinite number of canoes ; and 

 I suppose" (the Indians then had told him no- 

 thing of this), " that this lake is no other than 

 that which contains the town of Manoa 

 Hondius has given a curious plate of this port- 

 age ; and, as the mouth of the Carony was then 



* Cat/leys Life of Raleigh, vol. i, p. 159, 236, and 283. 

 Masham, in the third voyage of Raleigh (1596), repeats these 

 accounts of the lake Rupunuwini. 



