Lake Parime or Lake Parima is a mythical lake located in South America. It was reputedly the location of the fabled city of El Dorado, also known as Manoa, much sought after by European explorers. Repeated attempts to find the lake failed to confirm its existence, and it was dismissed as a myth along with the city. The search for Lake Parime led explorers to map the rivers and other features of southern Venezuela, northern Brazil, and southwestern Guyana before the lake's existence was definitively disproved in the early 19th century. Some explorers proposed that the seasonal flooding of the Rupununi savannah may have been misidentified as a lake. Recent geological investigations suggest that a lake may have existed in northern Brazil, but that it dried up some time in the 18th century. Both Manoa (Lokono language) and Parime (Kalina language) are believed to mean "big lake".
Two other mythical lakes, Lake Xarayes or XaraiesLaguna de los Xarayes in Rare Maps (sometimes called Lake Eupana),Jodocus Hondius, America Meridionalis, 1620John Speed, Map of America, 1626 and Lake Cassipa, are often depicted on early maps of South America.
First attempts at discovery Walter Raleigh, 1595
Sir Walter Raleigh began the exploration of the Guianas in earnest in 1594 and described the city of Manoa, which he believed to be the legendary city of El Dorado, as being located on Lake Parime far up the Orinoco River in Venezuela.Marc Aronson, Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. Much of his exploration is documented in his books The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana,Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596; repr., Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1968) published first in 1596, and The Discovery of Guiana, and the Journal of the Second Voyage Thereto, published in 1606.Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana, and the Journal of the Second Voyage Thereto (1606; repr., London: Cassell, 1887) How much of Raleigh's work is true and how much is fabricated remains unclear:Paul R. Sellin, Treasure, Treason and the Tower: El Dorado and the Murder of Sir Walter Raleigh. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. His account indicates that he only succeeded in navigating up the Orinoco as far as Angostura (what is now Ciudad Bolívar), and did not come close to the supposed location of Lake Parime. Raleigh says of the lake:
According to Raleigh, the lake itself was the source of the gold possessed by the people of Manoa:
Lawrence Kemys, 1596 In 1596 Raleigh sent Lieutenant Lawrence Kemys back to Guyana, to gather more information about the lake and the golden city."Raleigh's Second Expedition to Guiana." Kemys mapped the location of Amerindian tribes between the Amazon and the Orinoco and made geographical, geological and botanical reports. He described the coast of Guiana in detail in his Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (1596)John Knox Laughton, "Kemys, Lawrence" Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Volume 30. and says that indigenous people of Guiana traveled inland by canoe and land passages towards a large body of water on the shores of which he supposed was located Manoa, Golden City of El Dorado. One of these rivers leading south into the interior of Guiana was the Essequibo.Renzo Duin, Wayana Socio-Political Landscapes: Multi-Scalar Regionality and Temporality in Guiana, doctoral dissertation, University of Florida: Gainesville; 2009. Kemys wrote that the Indians called this river "brother of the Orenoque [Orinoco]" and that this river of Essequibo, or Devoritia,
Early maps
As a result of Raleigh's work, maps began to appear depicting El Dorado and Lake Parime. One of the first was the elder Jodocus Hondius' Nieuwe Caerte van het Wonderbaer ende Goudrycke Landt Guiana, which was published in 1598. Hondius' map depicts an elongated Lake Parime south of the Orinoco River, with the majority of the lake positioned south of the equator, and with Manoa on the northern shore, towards the eastern half of the lake. Manoa is noted as "the greatest city in the entire world". Hondius' map was subsequently copied by Theodore de Bry and published in his popular Grands Voyages in 1599.Theodore de Bry, "The map of 'the powerful and gold-bearing kingdom of Guiana", 1599. When Hondius published a completely revised edition of Mercator's Atlas in 1608,Jodocus Hondius, "Typus Orbis Terrarum", Amsterdam, 1608. it included a map of South America featuring Lake Parime with the majority of the lake located south of the equator, and with Manoa again along the northern shore, although not quite so far east."Eliane Dotson, Lake Parime and the Golden City ".
Cartographer Guillaume Delisle was among the first to cast doubts on the lake's existence. In a map of Guyana printed in 1730,Delisle map of Guyana, 1730 he included an outline of the lake, then replaced it with the notation: "It is in these regions that most authors place the Lake Parime and the City of Manoa of El Dorado." Original French: "C'est dans ces quartiers que la pluspart des autheurs placent le Lac de Parime et la Ville de Manoa del Dorado."Renzo Duin, Wayana Socio-Political Landscapes: Multi-Scalar Regionality and Temporality in Guiana PhD dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, 2009; p. 70. Delisle reluctantly included a lake in southwestern Guyana on several subsequent maps, but did not name it or the city of Manoa.Guillaume De L'Isle and Philippe Buache: Carte D'Amerique Dressee pour l'usage du Roy en 1722...Et augmentee desa Nouvelles Decovertes en 1763.
The lake was printed on maps throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and up until the early 19th century. Some cartographers and naturalists moved the lake more to the southeast of the Orinoco River and north of the Amazon River, often situating it south of the mountains that border Venezuela, Guiana, and Brazil. However, by the late 18th century, failure to confirm the lake's existence led to its removal from most maps.Justin Winsor, Spanish Explorations and Settlements in North America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century: Volume 2 of Narrative and critical history of America, Houghton, Mifflin, 1886; p. 589. A 1792 map of the Rio Branco by José Joaquin Freire shows no sign of a lake, although there is now a Parimé River.Jose Joaquin Freire, "Map of the Branco or Parimé River and of the Caratirimani, Uararicapará, Majari, Tacutú and Mahú Rivers," 1792
17th-century explorations Thomas Roe, 1611 In early 1611 Sir Thomas Roe, on a mission to the West Indies for Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, sailed his 200-ton ship, the Lion's Claw, some up the Amazon,Alírio Cardoso, "The conquest of Maranhão and Atlantic disputes in the geopolitics of the Iberian Union (1596–1626)," Rev. Bras. Hist. vol.31 no.61, São Paulo, 2011. then took a party of canoes up the Oyapock River in search of Lake Parime, negotiating thirty-two rapids and traveling about before they ran out of food and had to turn back.James Seay Dean, Tropics Bound: Elizabeth's Seadogs on the Spanish Main, The History Press, 2013. James Alexander Williamson, English colonies in Guiana and on the Amazon, 1604–1668, Oxford, 1923; p. 54.Stanley Lane-Poole, "Roe, Thomas"; Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, Volume 49Michael J. Brown, Itinerant Ambassador: The Life of Sir Thomas Roe, University Press of Kentucky, 2015; p. 15.
Raleigh and Kemys, 1617 In March 1617, Raleigh and Kemys returned to Venezuela in search of Lake Parime and El Dorado. The expedition failed to uncover any new evidence of the lake and ended with the death of Raleigh's son Walter and the suicide of Captain Kemys."Sir Walter Raleigh," NNDB Database
Samuel Fritz, 1689 Between 1689 and 1691 the Jesuit priest Samuel Fritz traveled along the Amazon and its tributaries, preparing a detailed map at the request of the Royal Audiencia of Quito.John Hemming, Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians, 1500–1760, Harvard University Press, 1978. Fritz was skeptical of the existence of a golden city, but thought that Lake Parime probably did exist, and included it prominently in his map.Samuel Fritz, Journal of the Travels and Labours of Father Samuel Fritz in the River of the Amazons Between 1686 and 1723, edited by George Edmundson; Issue 51 of Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, ; Hakluyt Society, 1922.Jesuit Camila Loureiro Dias, "Maps and Political Discourse: The Amazon River of Father Samuel Fritz," The Americas, Volume 69, Number 1, July 2012, pp. 95–116.
18th-century explorations Nicholas Horstman, 1739 In November 1739, Nicholas Horstman (sometimes spelled "Hortsman"), a surgeon from Hildesheim, Germany, who was secretly commissioned by the Dutch Governor of Guiana (Laurens Storm van 's Gravesande), traveled up the Essequibo River accompanied by two Dutch soldiers and four Indian guides.C. A. Harris and John Abraham Jacob De Villiers, Storm Van's Gravesande: The Rise of British Guiana, Compiled from his Works, Hakluyt Society, 1911; University of Michigan. In April 1741 one of the Indian guides returned reporting that in 1740 Horstman had crossed over to the Rio Branco and descended it to its confluence with the Rio Negro. Rumors at the time held that Horstman had planted the Dutch flag on the shores of Lake Parime; however, later explorers determined that he had in fact visited Lake Amucu on the North Rupununi. Nothing further was heard until late November 1742, when the other guides returned, reporting that Horstman and one of the Dutch soldiers had spent four months in a village on the Pará River, where they were discovered and arrested by the Portuguese authorities, and that they had "entered into the Portuguese service". In August 1743 Charles-Marie de La Condamine met and conversed with Horstman,Charles Marie de La Condamine, Relation abrégée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale: depuis la côte de la mer du Sud, jusqu'aux côtes du Brésil et de la Guyane, en descendant la rivière des Amazones..., Jean-Edme Dufour and Philippe Roux, 1778; University of Lausanne [French] who appeared to be living freely with the Portuguese in Pará, and Horstman gave him his fragmentary diary, titled "Journey which I made to the Imaginary Lake of Parima, or of Gold, in the Year 1739." Horstman states that on May 8, 1740,
Horstman also gave La Condamine a remarkably accurate hand-drawn map of his route from the coast through the interior of Northern Brazil. La Condamine then gave the map to the French geographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville. Lake Amucu was incorporated into his Carte de l'Amerique Meridionale in 1748.Neldson Marcolin, "Mapa feito na França em 1748 delineou novas fronteiras do Brasil continental depois do Tratado de Tordesilhas", Espelhos do Mundo, Ed. 225, Nov. 2014. [Portuguese]
Manuel Centurion, 1740 In 1740, Don Manuel Centurion, Governor of Santo Tomé de Guayana de Angostura del Orinoco in Venezuela, hearing a report from an Indian regarding Lake Parima, embarked on a journey up the Caura River and the Paragua River.Edward M. Pierce, The Cottage Cyclopedia of History and Biography: A Copious Dictionary of Memorable Persons, Events, Places and Things, with Notices of the Present State of the Principal Countries and Nations of the Known World, and a Chronological View of American History, Case, Lockwood, 1867, Harvard University According to Humboldt:
During his expedition, "several hundred persons perished miserably" and Centurion failed to confirm the existence of either a lake or a city.
Charles Marie de La Condamine, 1743