The Manuscript Notes Of Don Apollinario Also Mention The Gold Of The Rio Uaupes.

La Condamine, Voyage a l'Amazone.

We must not confound the Laguna de Oro, which is said to be found in going up the Uaupes (north latitude 0 degrees 40 minutes) with another gold lake (south latitude 1 degree 10 minutes) which La Condamine calls Marahi or Morachi (water), and which is merely a tract often inundated between the sources of the Jurubech (Urubaxi) and the Rio Marahi, a tributary stream of the Caqueta.) At Maroa, the most westerly mission of the Rio Negro, the Indians assured me that that river as well as the Inirida (a tributary of the Guavare) rises at the distance of five days' march, in a country bristled with hills and rocks. The natives of San Marcellino speak of a Sierra Tunuhy, nearly thirty leagues west of their village, between the Xie and the Icanna. La Condamine learned also from the Indians of the Amazon that the Quiquiari comes from a country of mountains and mines. Now, the Iquiari is placed by the French astronomer between the equator and the mouth of the Xie (Ijie), which identifies it with the Iguiare that falls into the Icanna. We cannot advance in the geologic knowledge of America without having continually recourse to the researches of comparative geography. The small system of mountains, which we may provisionally call that of the sources of the Rio Negro and the Uaupes, and the culminant points of which are not probably more than 100 or 120 toises high, appears to extend southward to the basin of Rio Yupura, where rocky ridges form the cataracts of the Rio de los Enganos and the Salto Grande de Yupura (south latitude 0 degrees 40 minutes to north latitude 0 degrees 28 minutes), and the basin of the Upper Guaviare towards the west.

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