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In fact, the two alpine lakes of Lauricocha and Chinchaycocha, where the river Amazon and the Rio de Jauja take their rise, are situated south and north of this rocky dyke, which is a prolongation of the knot of Huanuco and Pasco.
The mighty Maranon, as the natives call the Upper Amazon or the Solimoens, as it is named by the Portuguese was before us, having flowed down for many hundred miles from the mountain lake of Lauricocha, in Peru, 12,500 feet above the sea-level.
Down the centre flows a mighty stream, the tributaries of which alone contain a bulk of water greater than all the European rivers put together. Upwards of five hundred miles away to the south of the spot where the traveller stands, is the little lake of Lauricocha, near the silver-mines of Cerro de Pasco in Peru, just below the limit of perpetual snow 14,000 feet above the level of the sea.
To-day, however, there seems to be little doubt but that the Amazon rises in Peru, in the district of Huaraco, in the department of Tarma, and that it starts from the Lake of Lauricocha, which is situated between the eleventh and twelfth degree of south latitude.
At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts toward the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and does not strike to the west until it has received an important tributary the Panta.
From various indications, those who are most experienced in mining believe that Potosi will always continue productive and cannot be easily exhausted . The mines of Lauricocha, in a different part of Peru, are now in greater estimation. But those of Guanaxuato and Zacatecas in Mexico, notwithstanding the poverty of their ore, have been long the most productive of the American mines.
All the streams which rise from the Peruvian mountains in the situation indicated, and for seven or eight degrees farther south, and which run to the eastwards, contribute towards the mighty Maranon or River of the Amazons. The river Guanuco rises in the elevated plain of Bombon, and runs north to form the Gualagua, which joins the Lauricocha or Tanguragua.
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