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Show 200 CATARACTS OF TilE ORINOCO. rime and the supposed White Sea. When we visited it in December and January, its length scarcely amounted to a mile, and its surface was half covered with reeds." (This remark is found as early as in D'Anville's map, in 1748.) "The Pil·ara issues from the lake west north-west of the Indian village of Pirara, and falls into the l'liaou or Mahu. The last-named river, from such information as I was able to gather, rises on the north side of the Pacaraima mountains, the easternmost part of which only attains a height of 1500 French (in round numbers 1600 English) feet. The sources of the Mahu are on a plateau, from whence it descends in a fine waterfall called Corona. We were about to visit this fall•when on the third day of our excursion to the mountains_ the sickness of one of my companions obliged us to return to the station near Lake Amucu. The Mahu has "black" or coffee-brown water, and its current is more rapid than that of the Rupunuri. In the mountains through which it makes its way it is about 60 yards broad, and its environs are remarkably picturesque. This valley, as well as the banks of the Buroburo, which flows into the Siparuni, are inhabited by the Macusis. In April, the whole of the savannahs are overflowed, and present the peculiar phenomenon of the waters belonging to different river basins being intermixed and united. The enormous extent of its temporary inundation may not improbably have given occasion to the story of the Lake of Parime. During the rainy season there is formed in the interior of the country a watery communication between the Essequibo, the Rio Branco, and Gran Para. Some groups of trees, which rise like oases on the sand-hills of the savannahs, assume at the time of the inundation the character of islands scattered over the extensive lake: they are, no doubt, the Ipomucena Islands of Don Antonio Santos." In D'Anville's manuscripts, which his heirs have kindly permitted me to examine, I find that the surgeon Hortsmann, of Hildesheim, who described these countries with great care, saw a second Alpine lake, which he places two days' journey above the confluence of the Mahu with the Rio Parime (Tacutu ?). It is a lake of black watel' on the top of a mountain. He distinguishes it clearly from the Lake of Amucu, which he describes as 11 covered. with reeds." The nar· ratives of Hortsmann and Santos are as far as tbe Portugllestl |