796 



into lakes. In support of what I here advance 

 I shall appeal to very respectable testimony? 

 that of father Caulin. " When I inquired of the 

 Indians/' says this missionary, who sojourned 

 longer than I on the banks of the Lower Oroo- 

 noko, " what Parima was; they answered, that 

 it was nothing more than a river, that issued 

 from a chain of mountains, the opposite side of 

 which furnished waters to the Essequebo." Cau- 

 lin, knowing nothing of lake Amucu, attributes 

 the erroneous opinion of the existence of an 

 inland sea solely to the inundations of the plains, 

 a las inundaciones dilatadas por los bajos del 

 pays*. According to him, the mistakes of 

 geographers arise from the vexatious circum- 

 stance of all the rivers of Guyana having differ- 

 ent names at their mouths and near their sources. 

 "I have no doubt," he adds, " that one of the 

 upper branches of the Rio Branco is that very 

 Rio Parima, which the Spaniards have taken 

 for a lake ( a quien suponian laguna)? Such are 

 the opinions, which the historiographer of the 

 expedition of the boundaries had formed on the 

 spot-}-. He could not expect, that La Cruz and 



* This is also the opinion of Mr. Walkenaer (Cosmologie, 

 p. 599), and of Mr. Malte-Brun (Geogr., vol.[v, p. 523). 



+ The Rio Trumb'etas and the Saraca, two tributary 

 streams of the Amazon, which Caulin takes also for branches 

 of the Rio Branco, are entirely independant of this river. 

 (Hist, corogr,, p. 86.) If father Caulin, in one of the notes 



