Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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He Believed This Gold To Be A Product Of The Granitic Soil That
Covers The Mountainous Country Between The Carichana, Uruana, And
Cuchivero.
In fact the natives have recently found a mass of native
gold in the Quebrada del Tigre near the mission of Encaramada.
Berrio
mentions on the east of the province of Amapaja the Rio Carony
(Caroly), which was said to issue from a great lake, because one of
the tributary streams of the Carony, the Rio Paragua (river of the
great water), had been taken for an inland sea, from ignorance of the
Indian languages. Several of the Spanish historians believed that this
lake, the source of the Carony, was the Grand Manoa of Berrio; but the
notions he communicated to Raleigh show that the Laguna de Manoa (del
Dorado, or de Parime) was supposed to be to the south of the Rio
Paragua, transformed into Laguna Cassipa. "Both these basins had
auriferous sands; but on the banks of the Cassipa was situate
Macureguarai (Margureguaira), the capital of the cacique of Aromaja,
and the first city of the imaginary empire of Guyana."
As these often-inundated lands have been at all times inhabited by
nations of Carib race, who carried on a very active inland trade with
the most distant regions, we must not be surprised that more gold was
found here in the hands of the Indians than elsewhere. The natives of
the coast did not employ this metal in the form of ornaments or
amulets only; but also as a medium of exchange.
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