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Updated: June 21, 2025
Among the tributary streams which the Rio Negro receives from the north, three are particularly deserving of attention, because on account of their branchings, their portages, and the situation of their sources, they are connected with the often-discussed problem of the origin of the Orinoco. Rio Parime is a Caribbean name, signifying Great Water.
This is the scene of the expeditions which were undertaken in search of El Dorado, and the great city of Manoa, the Timbuctoo of the New Continent. The Cordillera of Parime does not join the Andes of New Grenada, but is separated from them by a space eighty leagues broad.
The soil on which the mountains of Parime rise, is slightly convex. By barometric measures I found that, between 3 and 4 degrees north latitude, the plains are elevated from 160 to 180 toises above sea-level.
Raleigh page 109. The basin of the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the Amazon is bounded by the mountains of Parime on the north, and by those of Minas Geraes, and Matogrosso on the south. The opposite slopes of the same valley often display an analogy in their geological relations. I have described in this and the preceding volume the vast provinces of Venezuela and Spanish Guiana.
We distinguish in the mountainous part of South America a chain and three groups of mountains, namely, the Cordillera of the Andes, which the geologist may trace without interruption from Cape Pilares, in the western part of the Straits of Magellan, to the promontory of Paria opposite the island of Trinidad; the insulated group of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; the group of the mountains of the Orinoco, or of La Parime; and that of the mountains of Brazil.
In the basin comprehended between the eastern declivity of the Andes of New Grenada and the western part of the Sierra Parime, the savannahs, as we have observed above, stretch far beyond the equator; but their extent does not determine the southern limits of the basin here under consideration.
Mountaineers designate every group by a special denomination; and a chain is generally considered as forming a whole only when it is seen from afar bounding the horizon of the plains. The greater part of the Sierra Parime is, as it were, edged round by the Orinoco.
That such extensive areas do exist cannot be doubted: the granitic region of Parime is described by Humboldt as being at least nineteen times as large as Switzerland. South of the Amazon, Boue colours an area composed of rocks of this nature as equal to that of Spain, France, Italy, part of Germany, and the British Islands, all conjoined.
The Cassiquiare alone has cut its way across the ridge just described. In that part of the basin of the Orinoco which runs in the direction of from south to north, as well as in that running from west to east, the maxima of depression are found at the foot of the Sierra Parime, we may even say, on its outline. This is the central and largest basin of South America.
Such is the geological distribution of strata in the mountainous part of Venezuela, in the group of the Parime and in the littoral Cordillera. These three formations appeared to me to succeed each other in the order I have just described, the sandstone inclining in a concave position, northward, on the transition-slates of Malpasso, and southward, on the gneiss-granite of Parime.
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