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 water on the top of a
mountain. He distinguishes it clearly from the Lake of
Amucu, which he describes as “ covered with reeds.” The
narratives of Hortsmann and Santos are as far as the
Portuguese manuscript maps of the Bureau de la Marine at
Rio Janeiro from indicating or admitting a constant connec-
tion between the Rupunuri and the Lake of Amucu. In
D’Anville’s maps the rivers are better drawn im the first
edition of his South America, published in 1748, than in
the more widely circulated edition of 1760. Schomburgk’s
travels have completely established this general independence
of the basins of the Rupunuri and the Essequibo; but he
remarks that during the rainy season the Rio Waa-Ekuru,
a tributary of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caio
Pirara. Such is the state of these river basins, which
are, as it were, still imperfectly developed, and are almost
entirely without separating ridges.
The Rupunuri and the village of Anai (lat. 3° 56’, long.
58° 34’), are at present recognised as the political boundary
between the British and the Brazilian territories in these
uncultivated regions. Sir Robert Schomburgk makes his
chronologically determined longitude of the Lake of Amucu
depend on the mean of several lunar distances (Kast and
West) measured by him during his stay at Anai, where he
was detained some time by severe illness. His longitudes
for these points of the Parime are in general a degree more
easterly than the longitudes of my map of Columbia. I am
far from throwing any doubt on the observations of lunar


954 CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO.
