EXHAUSTION OF ANCIENT MINES. 
383 
Ttrata, is manifestly borrowed from the Spanish.* The 
notions collected hy Acunha, Father Fritz, and La Conda- 
mine, on the gold-washings south and north of the river 
Uaupe, agree with what I learnt of the auriferous soil of 
those countries. However great we may suppose the com- 
munications that took place between the nations of the 
Orinoco before the arrival of Europeans, they certainly 
did not draw their gold from the eastern declivity of the 
Cordilleras. This declivity is poor in mines, particularly in 
mines anciently worked; it is almost entirely composed of 
volcanic rocks in the provinces of Popayan, Pasto, and 
Quito. The gold of Guiana probably came from the country 
east of the Andes. In our days a lump of gold has been 
found in a ravine near the mission of Encaramada, and 
we must not he surprised if, since Europeans settled 
in these wild spots, we hear less of the plates of gold, 
gold-dust, and amulets of jade-stone, which could heretofore 
he obtained from the Caribs and other wandering nations 
hy barter. The precious metals, never very abundant on 
the hanks of the Orinoco, the Bio Negro, and the Amazon, 
disappeared almost entirely when the system of the missions 
caused the distant communications between the natives to 
cease. 
The banks of the Upper Guainia in general abound much 
less in fishing-birds than those of Oassiquiare, the Meta, 
and the Auraca, where ornithologists would find suffi- 
cient to enrich immensely the collections of Europe. This 
scarcity of animals arises, no doubt, from the want of 
shoals and flat shores, as well as from the quality of the 
black waters, which (on account of their very purity) fur- 
nish less aliment to aquatic insects and fish. However, 
the Indians of these countries, during tw o periods of the 
year, feed on birds of passage, which repose in their long 
* The Parecas say, instead of prata, rata. It is the Castilian word 
Plata ill-pronounced. Near the Yurubesh there is another inconsiderable 
tributary stream of the Rio Negro, the Curicur-iari. It is easy to 
recognize in this name the Caribbee word carucur, gold. The Caribs 
extended their incursions from the mouth of the Orinoco south-west 
toward the Rio Negro ; and it was this restless people who carried the 
fable of El Dorado, by the same way, hut in an opposite direction (from 
south-west to north-east), from the Mesopotamia between the Rio Negre 
fid the Jupura to the sources of the Rio Branco. 
