Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Gumilla Having Gone But Little Above
The Confluence Of The Meta, It Is Not Surprising That He Had No
Knowledge Of The Bifurcation Of The Orinoco, Which Is Found By The
Sinuosities Of The River To Be One Hundred And Twenty Leagues Distant
From The Raudal Of Tabaje.
La Condamine, during his memorable navigation on the river Amazon in
1743, carefully collected a great number of proofs of this
communication of the rivers, denied by the Spanish Jesuit.
The most
decisive proof then appeared to him to be the unsuspected testimony of
a Cauriacani Indian woman with whom he had conversed, and who had come
in a boat from the banks of the Orinoco (from the mission of Pararuma)
to Grand Para. Before the return of La Condamine to his own country,
the voyage of Father Manuel Roman, and the fortuitous meeting of the
missionaries of the Orinoco and the Amazon, left no doubt of this
fact, the knowledge of which was first obtained by Acunha.
The incursions undertaken from the middle of the seventeenth century,
to procure slaves, had gradually led the Portuguese from the Rio
Negro, by the Cassiquiare, to the bed of a great river, which they did
not know to be the Upper Orinoco. A flying camp, composed of the troop
of ransomers,* favoured this inhuman commerce. (* Tropa de rescate;
from rescatar, to redeem.) After having excited the natives to make
war, they ransomed the prisoners; and, to give an appearance of equity
to the traffic, monks accompanied the troop of ransomers to examine
whether those who sold the slaves had a right to do so, by having made
them prisoners in open war.
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