68 
GOLD IIT TUE lUVElt-DED3. 
contestably auriferous. There Acunha and Father Fritz 
placed their Laguna del Oro ; and rarious accounts, which I 
obtained at San Carlos from Portuguese Americans, explain 
perfectly what La Condamine has related of the plates ot 
beaten gold found in the hands of the natives. If we pass 
from the Iquiare to the left bank of the Rio Negro, we 
enter a countrj' entirely unknown, between the Rio Branco, 
the sources of the Essequibo, and the mountains of Portu- 
guese Guiana. Acunha speaks of the gold washed down by 
the northern tributary streams of the Lower Maranon, 
such as the Rio Trombetas fOriximina), the Curupatuba, 
and the Ginipape (Rio de Parii). It appears to me a cir- 
cumstance worthy of attention, that all these rivers descend 
from the same table-land, the northern slope of which con- 
tains the lake Amucu, the Dorado of Raleigh and th® Dutch, 
and the isthmus between the Rupimuri (Riipunuwinp and r!;3 
Rio Mahu. There is no reason for denying the existence c. 
auriferous alluvial lands far from the Cordilleras of the 
Andes, on the north of the Amazon ; as there are on the 
south, in the mountains of Brazil. The Caribs of the 
Carony, the Cuyuni, and the Essequibo, have practised on 
a small scale the washing of alluvial earth from the re 
motest times.* When we examine the structure of moun- 
tains, and embrace in one point of view an extensive surface 
* “ Oa the north of the confluence of the Curupatuba and the Ama- 
zon,” says Acunha, ” is the mountain of Paraguaxo, which, when illu- 
mined by the sun, glows with the most beautiful colours; and thence 
from time to time issues a horrible noise (reyieiita con grandes 
estruenos).” Is there a volcanic phenomenon in this eastern part of the 
New Continent ? or is it the love of the marvellous, which has given rise 
to the tradition of the bellowings (bramidos) of Paraguaxo ? The lustre 
emitted from the sides of the mountain recalls to mind what we have 
mentioned above of the miraculous rocks of Calitamini, and the island 
Ipomucena, in the imaginary Lake Dorado. In one of the Spanish letters 
intercepted at sea by Captain George Popham, in 1594, it is said, “ Having 
inquired of the natives whence they obtained the spangles and powder of 
gold, which we found in their huts, and which they stick on their skin 
by means of some greasy substances, they told us, that in a certain plain, 
they tore up the grass, and gathered the earth in baskets, to subject it to 
the process of washing.” (Raleigh, p. 109.) Can this passage be ex- 
plained by supposing that the Indians sought thus laboriously, not for 
gold, but for spangles of mica, which the natives of Rio Caura still em- 
ploy as ornaments, when they paint their bodies ? 
