D'Anville's 1795 map shows both Lake Amucu and Lake Parime; the latter is portrayed as a source of the Orinoco as well as the Rio Branco. A very small Lake Cassipa is also shown, just south of the Orinoco.
English: A Map of South America — containing Tierra-Firma, Guayana, New Granada, Amazonia, Brasil, Peru, Paraguay, Chaco, Tucuman, Chili and Patagonia from M. d'Anville with Several Improvements and Additions, and The Newest Discoveries. This is probably the most important two panel wall map of South America produced in the 18th century. Largely based upon the earlier D’Anville map, this map has been enlarged and expanded by the English publishing house of Laurie and Whittle. Depicts the continent in full with an inset of the Falkland Islands. This map is unique in that it is a serious attempt to compile all of the accurate scientific knowledge of the South American continent available at the time. Offers a smorgasbord of factual, speculative, and historical detail. This extraordinary and highly decorative map bears up to almost endless perusal and volumes could be composed upon its content. The cartographer attempts to depict both known and unknown parts of the continent with actual data reported by both contemporary and historic travelers. In most cases it is extremely difficult to identify specific sources as much of the data is vague and uncertain. Our survey of this map beings with the coast which Spanish and Portuguese navigators had mapped with considerable accuracy as early as the late 16th century. This, like most early maps of the area, contrasts a detailed mapping of the coast with a speculative discussion of the interior, particularly Patagonia and the Amazon Basin. Offers a fairly accurate discussion of both the east and west coasts with exceptional detail in the populated Andean regions of Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador (Labeled Quito), and Peru. Notes Cuzco, Lima, Quito, Valladolid, Arequipa, Trujillo and other important trading centers of the region. In Portuguese controlled Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, San Salvador and San Sebastian are noted. It is in the interior that this map becomes exceptionally fascinating. In the northern part of the continent D'Anville maps a number of confusions associated with the English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh's search for El Dorado. Believing El Dorado to lie in the northern part of the Amazon, Raleigh sailed down the Orinoco River just before the onset of the rainy season. Reaching a remote tribal village, Raleigh noted canoes arriving bearing gold, silver, and other treasures. Asked where the gold came from, the natives replied, Manoa, the term for the tribe to which the river traders belonged. Manoa, the natives claimed could be reached following a long river voyage southward to a Great Lake, called Parima. Raleigh and his associates immediately associated Manoa and Lake Parima with the golden kingdom of El Dorado, though they never visited the city or lake. Subsequent maps, including this one, mapped El Dorado and Lake Parima in this location for several hundred years. Both Raleigh and the natives were describing an actual event known to occur annually in the region. Rains would annually swell the Amazon and Orinoco river systems creating a linkage in the Parima flood plain, which, during heavy rains, can resemble a massive lake. The Manoa were a large and populous trading nation active pre-colonial days whose vast empire, based in the Amazon Basin, extended form the Andes to the Orinoco. Curiously, in addition to noting the city of Manoa on Lake Parima, D'Anville also correctly maps the center of the ancient Manoan civilization between the Amazon tributaries Rio Negro and Rio Yapura. Sadly the Manoa and many of the other populous South American indigenous nations noted by the earliest explorers to the region vanished, brought low by European epidemics. A similar error appears far to the south where the Paraguay rivers empties into the Laguna de Xarayes. The Xarayes, a corruption of Xaraiés meaning Masters of the River, were an indigenous people occupying what are today parts of Brazil's Matte Grosso and the Pantanal. When Spanish and Portuguese explorers first navigated up the Paraguay River, as always in search of El Dorado, they encountered the vast Pantanal flood plain at the height of its annual inundation.