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Show CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO. 171 known in the interior of the country. Nations in a rude state de ignate by proper geographical name only such objects as can be confounded with each other. The Orinoco, the Amazons, and the l\lagdalena rivers, are called simply "The River," or "The Great Jtiver," or" The Great Water;" whil t those who dwell on their banks distinguish even the smallest streams by particular names. The current produced by the Orinoco, between the mainland and the I land of Trinidad, with its asphaltic lake, is so strong, that ships with all sail set, and with a favorable breeze, can with difficulty make way against it. This deserted and dreaded part of the sea is called the Bay of Sadness (Golfo Triste); the entrance forms the Dragon's Mouth (Boca del Drago). Here detached cliffs rise like towers above the foaming floods, and seem still to indicate the ancient site of a rocky bulwark, (3) which, before it was broken by the force of the current, united the Island of Trinidad with the Coast of Paria. The aspect of this region first convinced the great discoverer of the New World of the existence of an American continent. Familiar with nature, he inferred that so immense a body of fresh water could only be collected in a long course, and "that the land which supplied it must be a continent, not an island." As, according to Arrian, the companions of Alexander, after crossing the snow-covered Paropanisus, (4) on reaching the Indus, imagined, from the presence of crocodiles, that they recognized in that river a branch of the Nile ; so Columbus, unaware of the similarity of physiognomy which characterizes the various productions of the climate of Palms, readily supposed this new continent to be the eastern coast of the far-projecting Continent of Asia. The mild coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity of the starry firmament, the balsamic fragrance of the flowers wafted to him by the land breeze-all led him (as Herrara tells us in the Decades), (5) to deem that he had approached the Garden of Eden, the sacred dwelling-place of the first parents of the human race. The Orinoco appeared to him to be one of the four rivers descending from Paradise, to divide and water the earth newly decked with vegetation. This poetic passage, from the journal of Columbus's voyage, or rather from a letter written from Hayti, in October, 1498, to Ferdinand and Isabella, has a |