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Updated: June 4, 2025
He reported that the Rio Plata was navigable for a great way, and that it rises from a lake named Bombo in the kingdom of Peru, whence, flowing through the valleys of Xauxa, it receives the rivers Parso, Bulcasban, Cay, Parima, Hiacax, and several others, by which its waters are greatly increased.
"I have been above forty years," added he, "in Portuguese Guiana, but have never yet met with anybody who has seen the lake." So much for Lake Parima, or El Dorado, or the White Sea. Its existence at best seems doubtful: some affirm that there is such a place and others deny it. Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est.
Humboldt discloses what had given them birth when he describes to us the nature of the soil and the rocks which surround Lake Parima, between the Essequibo and the Branco. "They are," says this great traveller, "rocks of micaceous slate, and of sparkling talc, which are resplendent in the midst of a sheet of water, which acts as a reflector beneath the burning tropical sun."
Still it is by no means probable that the Caribs of the islands and of Parima took to themselves the name of the region which they had originally inhabited. We know that the Caribs of Parima were the most wandering people of America; possibly some wily individuals of that nation played the same part as the Chaldeans of the ancient continent.
Granite predominates there over the other rocks; and though, in both continents, the granite of ancient formation is pretty generally destitute of gold-ore, we cannot thence conclude that the granite of Parima contains no vein, no stratum of auriferous quartz. On the east of the Cassiquiare towards the sources of the Orinoco, we observed that the number of these strata and these veins increased.
So near the sources of the Orinoco we heard of nothing in these mountains but the proximity of El Dorado, the lake Parima, and the ruins of the great city of Manoa.
The name of the town of the Omaguas is not found in the narrative of Huten; but the Manoas, from whom Father Fritz received, in the seventeenth century, plates of beaten gold, in his mission of Yurim-Aguas, are neighbours of the Omaguas. The name of Manoa subsequently passed from the country of the Amazons to an imaginary town, placed in El Dorado de la Parima.
The Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and almost all the confluents of the Amazon and the Maranon, have falls or rapids, either because they cross the mountains where they take rise, or because they meet other mountains in their course. It flows from west to east in a vast plain, forming a longitudinal valley between the mountains of Parima and the great mass of the mountains of Brazil.
The group of the mountains of Parima, several summits of which attain the height of one thousand three hundred toises, was almost entirely unknown before our visit to the Orinoco.
It divides its waters between the Carony, the Rupunury or Rupunuwini, and the Rio Branco, and consequently between the valleys of the Lower Orinoco, the Essequibo, and the Rio Negro. Toward the south, the Tacutu and the Urariquera form together the famous Rio Parima, or Rio Branco. The rivers at the foot of the mountains of Pacaraimo are subject to frequent overflowings.
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