SOURCES OF THE EIO HEGBO. 
379 
the 1 quiare, was the first scene of El Dorado. But where 
shall we find the names of Turuhesh and Iquiare, given 
by the Fathers Acunha and Fritz ? I think 1 recognise 
them in the rivers Urubaxi and Iguari,* on some manu- 
script Portuguese maps which I possess. I have long and 
assiduously studied the geography of South America, north 
of the Amazon, from ancient maps and unpublished mate- 
rials. Desirous that my work should preserve the character 
of a scientific performance, I ought not to hesitate about 
treating of subjects on which I flatter myself that I can 
throw some light ; namely, on the questions respecting the 
sources of the liio Negro and the Orinoco, the commu- 
nication between these rivers and the Amazon, and the 
problem of the auriferous soil, which has cost the inhabi- 
tants of the New World so much suffering and so much 
blood. 
In the distribution of the waters circulating on the sur- 
face of the globe, as well as in the structure of organic 
bodies, nature has pursued a much less complicated plan 
than has been believed by those who have suffered them- 
selves to be guided by vague conceptions and a taste 
for the marvellous. We find, too, that all anomalies, 
all the exceptions to the laws of hydrography, which the 
interior of America displays, are merely apparent ; that the 
course of running waters furnishes phenomena equally ex- 
traordinary in the old world, but that these phenomena, 
from their littleness, have less struck the imagination of 
travellers. When immense rivers may be considered as com- 
posed of several parallel furrows of unequal depth; when 
these rivers are not enclosed hi valleys ; and when the inte- 
rior of the great continent is as flat as the shores of the sea 
with us ; the ramifications, the bifurcations, aud the inter- 
lacings in the form of net-work, must be infinitely mnltipied. 
From what wc know of the equilibrium of the seas, I cannot 
think that the New World issued from the waters later 
than the Old, and that organic life is there younger, or 
more recent ; but without admitting oppositions between the 
* It may be written Urubaji. They and the x were the same as the 
German ch to Father Fritz. The Urubaxi, or Hyurubaxi (Yurubesh), 
fails into the Rio Negro near Santa Isabella ; the Iguari (Iquiare ?) runa 
toto the Issana, which is also a tributary of the Rio Negro. 
