428 
BIFtritCATION OF THE OHIltOCO. 
superior of the Spanish missions was forced to remain near 
the flying camp of the troop of ransomers till the arrival of 
the Portuguese Jesuit Avogadri, who had gone upon busi- 
ness to Grand Para. Father Manuel Roman returned with 
his Salive Indians by the same way, that of the Cassiquiare 
and the Upper Orinoco, to Pararuma, # a little to the north 
of Cariehana, after an absence of seven months. He was 
the first white man who went from the Rio Negro, conse- 
quently from the basin of the Amazon, without passing his 
boats over any portage, to the basin of the Lower Orinoco. 
The tidings of this extraordinary passage spread with 
such rapidity that La Condatnine was able to announce 
it t at a public sitting of the Academy, seven months 
after the return of Rather Roman to Pararuma. “The 
communication between the Orinoco and the Amazon,” said 
he, “recently averred, may pass so much the more for a 
discovery in geography, as,' although the junction of these 
two rivers is marked on the old maps (according to the 
information given by Acunha), it had been suppressed by 
all the modern geographers in tlicir new maps, as if in 
concert. This is not the first time that what is positive fact 
has been thought fabulous, that the spirit of criticism has 
been pushed too far, and that this communication has been 
treated as chimerical by those who ought to have been 
better informed.” Since the voyage of Rather Roman in 
1774, no person in Spanish Guiana, or on the coasts 
of Curnana and Caracas, has admitted a doubt of the 
existence of the Cassiquiare and the bifurcation of the 
* On the 15th of October, 1774. La Condamine quitted the town of 
Grand Para December the 2yth, 1743 ; it follows, from a comparison of 
the dates, that the Indian woman of Pararuma, carried off by the 
Portuguese, and to whom the French traveller had spoken, had not come 
with Father Roman, as was erroneously affirmed. The appearance of this 
woman on the banks of the Amazon is interesting with respect to the 
researches lately made on the mixture of races and languages : it proves 
the enormous distances through which the individuals of one tribe are 
compelled to carry on intercourse with those of another. 
+ The intelligence was communicated to him by Father John Ferreyro, 
rector of the college of Jesuits at Para. (Voy. a FAmazone, p. 120- 
Mem. de l’Acad. 1745, p. 450. Caulin, p. 79.) Sec also, in the work ol 
Gili, the fifth chapter of the first book, published in 1780, with the title! 
" Della scoperta delle communicazione dell’ Orinoco col Maragnore.’ 
