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Show A 'NOTATIO S AND ADDITIONS. 201 manuscript maps of the Bureau de la Marine at Rio Janeiro from indicating or admitting a con taut connection between the Rupunuri and the lake of Amucu. In D' Anville's maps, the rivers arc better drawn in the first edition of hi outh America, publi hed in 1748, than in the more widely circub.ted edition of 1760. Schomburgk's travels have completely established thi genern.l independence of the basins of the Rupunuri and the Essequibo; but he remarks that during the rainy season the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Cafio Pirara. Such is the state of these river basins, which are, as it were, still imperfectly developed, and are almost entirely without separating ridges. The Rupunuri ancl the village of Anai (lat. 3° 56', long. 58° 34') are at present recognized as the political boundary between the British and the Brazilian territories in these uncultivated regions. Sir Robert Schomburgk makes his chronologically determined longitude of the lake of Amucu depend on the mean of several lunar distances (east and west) measured by him during his stay at Anai, where he was detained some time by severe illness. His longitudes for these points of the Parime are in general a degree more easterly than the longitudes of my map of Columbia. I am far from throwing any doubt on the observations of lunar distances taken at Anai, and would only remark that their calculation is important, if it is desired to carry the comparison from the lake of Amucu to Esmeralda, which I found in long. 68° 23' 19" W. from Paris (66° 21' 19" Gr.). We sec, then, the Great Mar de la Parima- which was so difficult to displace from our maps that, after my return from America, it was still set down as having a length of 160 English geographical miles-reduced by the result of modern researches to the little Lake of Amucu, of two or three miles circumference. The illusions cherished for nearly two centuries (several hundred lives were lost in the last Spanish expedition for the discovery of El Dorado, in 1775,) have thus finally terminated, leaving some results of geographical knowledge as their fruit. In 1512, thousands of soldiers perished in the expedition undertaken by Ponce de Leon for the discovery of the "Fountain of Youth," supposed to exist in one of the Bahama Islands called Bimini, and which is not to be found on |
