_Historia general de las Indias Occidentales_, Dec. i. lib. iii. cap. 12 (ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Batista Muñoz, _Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, _Examen Crit._, t. iii. p. 111. Footnote 58: p. 158—“_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 repeat with equal truth the same statement after an interval of forty-one years. The travels of the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important in reference to all departments of natural science and geography, have established other and more interesting facts; but the problem of the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only partially solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. M. Bonpland and myself advanced from the west as far as Esmeralda, or the confluence of the Orinoco with the Guapo; and I was enabled, by the aid of well-attested information, to describe the upper course of the Orinoco to above the mouth of the Gehette, and to the small waterfall (Raudal) de los Guaharibos. From the east Sir Robert Schomburgk, proceeding from the mountains of the Majonkong Indians, the inhabited portion of which he estimated by the boiling point of water to be 3517 feet in height, succeeded in reaching the Orinoco by the Padamo River, which the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu.[IF] I had placed this confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco in my Atlas, in 3° 12′ N. lat., and 65° 46′ W. long. but Schomburgk found it by direct observation in 2° 53′ lat. and 65° 48′ W. long. The main object of this traveller’s journey was not ‘natural history,’ but the solution of the prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical Society of London, in November, 1834,—on the connection of the coast of British Guiana with the easternmost point which I had reached on the Upper Orinoco. After undergoing many sufferings, this object was thoroughly achieved. Robert Schomburgk reached Esmeralda, with his instruments, on the 22nd of February, 1839. His determinations of the latitude and longitude of the place agreed more closely with mine than I had anticipated. Let us here allow the observer to speak for himself:—“Words are inadequate to describe the feelings which overwhelmed me when I sprang on shore. My object was attained; my observations, begun on the coast of Guiana, were brought into connection with those of Humboldt at Esmeralda, and I freely admit that at a time when my physical powers had almost entirely deserted me, and when I was surrounded by dangers and difficulties of no ordinary kind, the recognition which I hoped for from him, was the sole inducement which inspired me with a fixed determination to press forward towards the goal which I had now reached. The emaciated figures of my Indian companions and my faithful guides proclaimed more fully than any words could do, what difficulties we had had to surmount, and had