EEEOES Ijr XUE BEST MAPS. 
29 
ftEd tlie local circumstances, such as they can now be des* 
cribed, it will be easy to conceive how the difterent hypo- 
theses recorded on our maps have taken rise by degrees, and 
We modified each other. To oppose an error, it is suffi- 
cient to recall to mind the variable forms in which we have 
seen it appear at different periods. 
Till the middle of the eighteenth century, all that vast space 
•f land comprised between the mountains of Trench Guiana 
and the forests of the Upper Orinoco, between the sources of 
the Carony and the Iliver Amazon (from 0 ° to 4 ° of north lati- 
tude, and from 57° to 68° of longitude), was so little known, 
that geographers could place in it lakes where they pleased, 
create commimications between rivers, and figure chains of 
inountains more or less lofty. They have made fuU use of this 
liberty ; and the situation of lakes, as well as the course and 
^ branches of rivers, has been varied in so many ways, that it 
Would not be surprising, if among the great number ol maps^ 
some were found that trace the rc3 state ol things. The field of 
hypotheses is now singularly narrowed. I have determined th e 
longitude of Esmeralda in the Upper Orinoco; more to the east, 
amid the plains of Parima (a land as unknown as "Wangara 
and Dar-Saley, in Africa), a band of twenty leagues broad has 
been travelled over from north to south along the banks of 
the Eio Carony and the Kio Branco, in the longitude of 
sixty-three degrees. This is the perilous road which was 
taken by Don Antonio Santos in going from Santo Thome 
del Angostura to Bio Negro and the Amazon; by this road 
also the colonists of Surinam communicated very recently 
with the inhabitants of Grand Para. This road divides tho 
terra incognita of Parima into two unequal portions ; and 
fixes limits at the same time to the sources of the Orinoco, 
which it is no longer possible to cany back indefinitely 
toward the east, without supposing that the bed of the Eio 
Branco, which flows from north to south, is crossed by the 
^®d of the Upper Orinoco, which flows from east to west. 
■11 wc follow the course of the Bio Branco, or that strip of 
®“ll''ated land which is dependent on the Capitauia General 
cl Grand Para, we see lakes, partly imaginary, and partly 
enlarged by geographers, forming two distinct groups. The 
first of these groups includes the lakes which they place 
oetfl een the Esmeralda and the Eio Branco ; and to the 
