32 
TnE EXO PAEAGtTA. 
tHs vast extent of forests, savannahs, and mountains, the 
progress of those who sought the great lake with auriferous 
banks, and the town of ‘the gilded king,’ was directed 
towards two points only, on the north-east and south-west 
ot the Eio Negro; that is, to Parima (or the isthmus 
between the Carony, the Esseqiiibo, and the Eio Branco), 
and to the ancient abode of the Manaos, the inhabitants of 
the banks of the Timubesh. I have just mentioned the 
situation of the latter spot, which is celebrated in the 
history of tho conquest from 1535 to 1560 ; and it remains 
for me to speak of the configuration of the country between 
the Spanish missions of the Eio Carony, and the Portuguese 
missions of the Bio Branco or Parima. This is the country 
lying near the Lower Orinoco, the Esmeralda, and French 
and Dutch Guiana, on which, since the end of the six- 
teenth century, the enterprises and exaggerated narratives 
of Ealeigh have shed so bright a splendour. 
From the general disposition of the course of the Orinoco, 
directed successively towards the west, the north, and the 
east, its mouth lies almost in the same meridian as its 
sources: so that by proceeding from Vieja Guyana to the 
south the traveller passes through the whole of the couutiy 
in which geographers have successively placed an inland sea 
(Mar Blanco), and the different lakes which are connected 
with the Jil I)orado de la Parime. We find first the Bio 
Carony, which is formed by the union of two branches of 
almost eqind magnitude, the Carony properly so called, and 
the Bio Paragua. The missionaries of Piritu call the latter 
nver a lake (laguna): it is full of shoals, and little cascades; 
but, “ passing through a country entirely fiat, it is subject 
at the same time to great inundations, and its real bed'(su 
verdadera eaxa) can scarcely be discovered.” The natives 
have given it the name of Paragua or Parava, which means 
in tho Caribbee language ‘sea,’ or ‘great lake.’ These 
local circumstances and this denomination no doubt have 
given rise to the idea of transforming the Bio Paragua, a 
tributary stream of the Carony, into a lake called Cassipa, 
on account ol the Cassipagotos,* who lived in those coim- 
• Raleigh, p. 64, 69. I always quote, «hen the contrary is not ex« 
