50 
LEGEJfDS OE GOLD COTJJTTRIES. 
immense extent, which he saw from afor ; or of the battle 
of the Omaguas, where thirty-nine Spaniards (the names ot 
fourteen are recorded in the annals of the time) fouoht 
against fifteen thousand Indians. These false reports con- 
tributed greatly to embcdlish the fable of El Dorado. The 
name ot the town of the Omaguas is not found in the narra- 
tive ot Iluten ; but the Manoas, from whom Eather Eritz 
received, in the seventeenth century, plates of beaten gold, 
in his mission of Yurim-Aguas, are neighbours of the Om- 
aguas. T he name of AXanoa subsecjucnllv passed from the 
country of the Aniazons to an imaginary town, placed in El 
Dorado de la Parima. The celebrity attached to those coun- 
tries between the Caqueta (Papamene) and the Guaiipo 
(one ot the tributary streams of the Eio Kegro) excited 
Pedro de Ursua, in 1500, to that fatal expedition, which 
ended by the revolt of the tyrant Aguirre. TJrsua, in goin<' 
down the Caqueta to enter the river of the Amazons, heard 
of the province of Oaricuri. This denomination clearly 
indicates ‘the country of gold;’ for I find that this metal 
IS called carieuri in the Tamanac, and carucuru in the 
Caribbee. Is it a foreign word, that denotes gold among 
the nations of the Orinoco, as the words sugar’and cotton 
are in our European languages? This would prove that 
these nations learned to know the precious metals among 
the foreign products which came to them from the Cor- 
dilleras,* or from the plains at the eastern back of the 
Andes. 
AYe arrive now at the period when the fable of El Dorado 
was fixed in the eastern part of Guiana, first at the pre- 
tended lake Cassijia (on the banks of the Paragua, a tribu- 
tary stream of the Carony), and afterwards between the 
sources of the llio Essequibo and the Eio Branco. This 
cu-cumstance has had the greatest influence on the state of 
geography in those countries. Antonio de Berrio, son-in- 
iiw t and sole heir of the great Adclantado Gonzalo Ximenez 
* or Quichua (lengua del Inca) gold is called cori, whence 
are derived chidncori, gold in powder, and corikoya, gold-ore 
TcaTP®’'.'/ **"“ (Fr»y Pedro Simon, p. 597 
and 608. Harrm, ColU vol. li, p. 212. W, p. 652. Caulin, p. 175.) 
Kaleigh calls Quesada Cemenes de Casada. He also confounds the ne- 
nods ot the voyages of Ordaz i^Ordace), Orellana {Oreltano), and Ursua. 
See Empire oj Guiana, p. 13—20. 
