Diodorus’s descriptions of the Paropanisus (Diodor. Sicul. lib. xvii. p. 553, Rhodom.) might almost pass for a description of the Andes of Peru. The Army passed through inhabited places where snow fell daily! [57] p. 211.--“_Herrara in the Decades._” Historia general de las Indias occidentales, Dec. i. lib iii. cap. 12 (ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Bautista Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, Examen Crit. T. iii p. 111. [58] p. 213.--“_The Sources of the Orinoco have never been visited by any European._” Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in the first edition of the “Ansichten der Natur,” and I have to repeat the same statement after an interval of 41 years. The travels of the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important for all departments of natural knowledge and geography, have afforded us thorough investigations of other and more interesting facts; but the problem of the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only approximately solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. It was from the West that M. Bonpland and myself advanced as far as Esmeralda, or the confluence of the Orinoco and the Guapo; and I was able to describe with certainty, by the aid of well-assured information, the upper course of the Orinoco to above the mouth of the Gehette, and to the small Waterfall (Raudal) de los Guaharibos. It was from the East that Robert Schomburgk, advancing from the mountains of the Majonkong Indians, (the altitude of the inhabited portions of which he estimated by the boiling point of water at 3300 F., or 3517 E. feet), came to the Orinoco by the Padamo River, which the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu (Reisen in Guiana, 1841, S. 448). In my Atlas I had estimated the position of the confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco at N. lat. 3° 12′, and W. long. 65° 46′: Robert Schomburgk found it by direct observation, lat. 2° 53′, long. 65° 48′. The leading object of this traveller’s arduous journey was not the pursuit of natural history, but the solution of the prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical Society of London in November 1834,--viz. the connection of the coast of British Guiana with the easternmost point which I had reached on the Upper Orinoco. After many difficulties and much suffering, the desired object was completely attained. Robert Schomburgk arrived with his instruments on the 22d of February, 1839, at Esmeralda. His determinations of the latitude and longitude of the place agreed more closely with mine than I had expected would be the case (S. xviii. and 471). Here let us allow the observer to speak for himself:--“I want words to describe the feelings which overpowered me as I sprang to shore. My aim was attained; my observations, began on the coast of Guiana, were brought into connection with those of Humboldt at Esmeralda: I frankly own, that in the course of this enterprise, at a time when almost all my