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Show 188 CATARACTS OF TilE ORINOCO. cisco Lcmaur, who made a trigonometrical survey of the Bay of Xagun.. I have been farther to the South in the group of islands called the Jardines del ~ey (the King's Gardens), making astt·onomical observations for latitude and longitude j but I have never been at Xagua itself. C) p. 171.-" The ancient site of a 1·oclc!J bulwarlc." Columbus, whose unwearied spirit of observation exerted itself in every direction, propounds in his letters to the Spanish monarchs a geognostical hypothesis respecting the forms of the larger Antilles. Having his mind deeply impressed with the strength of the east and west equinoctial current, he ascribes it to the breaking up of the group of the smu.ller West Indian islands, and the singularly lengthened configuration of the southern coasts of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, which all follow almost exactly the direction of parallels of latitude. On his third voyage (from the end of May 1498 to the end of November 1500), in which, from the Boca del Drago to the Island of Margarita, and afterwards from that island to Haiti, he felt the whole force of the equinoctial current, " that movement of the waters which is in accordance or conformity with the movement of the heavens-movimiento de los cielos" - he says expressly that the island of Trinidad had been torn from the main land by the violence of the current. He alludes to a chart which he sends to the monarchs-a "pintura de la tierra" - by himself, which is often referred to in the celebrated lawsuit against Don Diego Colon respecting the rights of the Admiral. "Es la carta de marear y figura que hizo el Almirante sefialando los rumbas y vientos por los quales vino a Paria, que dicen parte del Asia" (Navarrete Viages y Descubrimientos que hicieron par mar los Espafioles, t. i. pp. 253 and 260 j t. iii. pp. 539 and 587.) (") p. 171.- " Ove1· the snow-covend Pu.ropanisus." Diodorus's descriptions of the Paropanisus (Diodor. Sicul. lib. xvii. p. 553, Rhodom.) might almost pass for a description of the Andes of Peru. The army passed through inhabited places where snow fell daily ! |