62 
EXPEDITION or DERRIO. 
(Juan Martin de Albiijar?), who said he had been aban« 
doned in the expedition of Diego de Ordaz, and led from 
town to town till he reached the capital of El Dorado, had 
inflamed the imagination of Berrio. It is difiicult to dis- 
tinguish what this conquistador had himself observed in 
going down the Orinoco from what lie said he had collected 
in a pretended journal of Martinez, deposited at Porto Eico. 
It appears, that in general at that period the same ideas 
prevailed respecting America as those wdiich we have long 
entertained in regard to Africa ; it was imagined that more ' 
civilization would be found towards the centre of the con- 
tinent than on the coasts. Already Juan Gonzalez, whom 1 
Diego de Orda* had sent in 1531 to explore the banks of / 
the Orinoco, announced that “ the farther you went up this t 
river the more you saw' the population increase.” Berrio i 
mentions the often-inundated province of Amapaja, between ■ 
the confluence of tlie Meta and the Ciichivero, where he 
found many little idols of molten gold, similar to those 
which were fobricated at Cauchieto, east of Coro. lie 
believed this gold to be a product of the granitic soil that 
covers the mountainous countiy between the Carichaiia, J 
Uruana, aud Cuchivero. In fact, the natives have recently b 
found a mass of native gold in the Quebrada del Tigre, near 
the mission of Eiicaramada. Bei-rio mentions on the east of 
the province of Amapaja the Eio Carony (Caroly), which 
was said to issue from a great lake, because one of the 
tributary streams of the Carony, the Eio Paragna (river of 
the great water), had been taken for an inland sea, from 
ignorance of the Indian languages. Several of the Spanish 
historians believed that this' lake, the source of the Carony, 
was the Grand Manoa of Berrio ; but the notions he com- t 
municated to Ealeigh show that the Laguna de Manoa (del ' 
Dorado, or de Parime,) W'as supposed to be to the south of <’ 
the Eio Paragua, transformed into Laguna Cassipa. “Both 
these basins had auriferous sands ; but on the banks of the ( 
Cassipa w'as situate Macureguarai (Margureguaira), the 
perhaps at Porto Rico, must have combined what he had lieard from the | 
Caribs with what he had learned from the Spaniards resiiiecting the town 
of the Omasuas seen by Huten ; of ‘the gUded man’ who sacrificed in a 
lake, and of the flight of the family of Alahualpa into the forests of Vilca- 
bamba, and the eastern Cordillera of the Andes. {Garcilasso, voL U, 
