after five years of expectation, Sir Robert Schomburgk’s journey has dispelled all doubts. “It is difficult to believe,” says Mr. Hillhouse, in his interesting memoir on the Massaruni, “that the report of a great inland water is entirely without foundation. It seems to me possible that the following circumstances may have given occasion to the belief in the existence of the fabulous lake of the Parime. At some distance from the fallen rocks of Teboco the waters of the Massaruni appear to the eye as motionless as the tranquil surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote epoch the horizontal stratum of granite at Teboco had been perfectly compact and unbroken, the waters must have stood at least fifty feet above their present level, and there would thus have been formed an immense lake, ten or twelve English miles broad and 1500 to 2000 English miles long.” (Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1836, Sept. p. 316.) It is not solely the vast extent of this supposed inundation which prevents me from accepting this explanation. I have seen plains (the Llanos), where during the rainy season the overflowing of the affluents of the Orinoco annually cover with water a space of 400 German geographical square miles (equal to 6400 English geographical square miles). At such times the labyrinth of branches between the Apure, the Arauca, the Capanaparo, and the Sinaruco (see Maps 17 and 18 of my Geographical and Physical Atlas), can no longer be traced, for the separate courses are obliterated, and all appears one vast lake. But the fable of the Dorado of the Parime, and of the White Sea or Lake of the Parime, belongs historically, as I endeavoured to shew in another work thirty years ago, to an entirely different part of Guiana, namely, to the country south of the Pacaraima mountains; and originated in the shining appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name of the Rio Parime (Rio Branco), the overflowings of the tributaries of that river, and especially the existence of the Lake of Amucu, which is in the vicinity of the Rio Rupunuwini or Rupunuri, and is connected through the Pirara with the Rio Parime.