GEOGTIAPHICAI, EEEORS. 
8? 
•n latitude 4° (instead of 8° 8), the portage of Parin^a was 
placed close to the equator. At the same period the Via^ 
poeo (Oyapoe) and the llio Cayenne (hlaroni ?) ■were made 
to issue from this lake Pariina. ” The same name being given 
the Carihs to the western hranch of the Rio Branco has 
perhaps contrihuted as much to the imaginary enlargement 
01 the lake Amnen, as the inundations of -the various tribu- 
wy streams of the TJraricuera, from the confluence of the 
-tamitu to the Talle de la Immdacion. 
We have .shown above that the Spaniards took the Eio 
^aragua, or Parava, which tails into the Carony, for a kke, 
because the ■word parava signifies sea, lake, river. Parima 
seems also to denote vaguely “ great ivater;” for the root 
P"'r is lound in the Carib words that designate rivers, pools, 
lakes, and the ocean.* In Arabic and in Persian, hahr and 
(leria are also applied at the same time to the sea, to lakes, 
3nd to rivers ; and this practice, common to many nations 
both worlds, has, on our ancient maps, converted lakes 
into rivers and rivers into lakes. In support of ■what I here 
S, ance, I shall appeal to very respectable testimony, that of 
t ather Caulin. “ When I inquired of the Indians,” says 
P® ’iiissionary, who sopurned longer than I on the banks 
+1 +. • ^'O'^OT'Orinoco,’" what Parima v^as, they answered, 
lat it -yjjg nothing more than a river that issued from a 
«nain of mountains, the opposite side of which furnished 
Raters to the Essequiho.” Canlin, knowing nothing of lake 
inueu, attributes the erroneous opinion of the existence of 
inland sea solely to the inundations of the iilaiiis (a las 
Hiundacionos chlatadas por los hajos del pais). According 
9 inn, the mistakes of geographers arise Irom the vexatious 
^ircumstance of all the rivers of Guiana having difterent 
lames at their mouths and near their sources. “ I have no 
1 oubt, ho adds, “ that one of the upper branches of the Eio 
. , that very Eio Parima which the Spaniards have 
iiKen tor a lake (a quien suponian laguna).” Such are the 
, pinions which the historiographer of the Expedition of the 
tvT formed on the spot. He could not exppt 
n Ta Cruz and Surville, mingling old hjqpotheses with 
01 ^^^ root water (ah) is found also in lake (abdan). For 
Anri 1 ^ J^oiogies of the words Parima and Manoa. sec Gilif vfd k, p. 81, 
111 ; and Gvmilla, vol. i, p. 403. 
