Case file · Folklore / legend
Lake Parime on the maps
From 1599 maps by Hondius and later Blaeu showed a huge Lake Parime in the Guiana highlands with the golden city of Manoa on its shore. It stayed on many maps for nearly two centuries.
1599 CE · 2.26, -59.63 · status: explained
The account
Raleigh had described a salt lake 200 leagues long. Expeditions in 1611, 1617 and the 1700s failed to find it. The position used here is the small Lake Amucu on the Rupununi savannah in Guyana, later associated with the legend.
The sceptical view
Charles Waterton (1812) and Robert Schomburgk (1840) suggested the legend came from seasonal flooding of the Rupununi savannah, which turns grassland into a vast shallow lake.
Connections in the atlas
- Antonio de Berrío's search for Manoa
- Humboldt dismisses Lake Parime
- Raleigh's last expedition and San Thomé
- Schomburgk at Lake Amucu
- Walter Raleigh's El Dorado voyage