802 



VENEZUELA. 



ancient Spanish settlements on the Orinoco, over 

 the easy slopes of that part of the water-parting, 

 and into the northern part of the Cuyuni basin. 

 The Spanish, now the Venezuelan, sett lements cover 

 a large part of this basin, and the Spaniards also 

 exercised dominion over the unsettled part by ex- 

 cluding other nations from it. When the demand 

 sprang up in the Dutch settlements for red slaves, 

 or Indians, poytos, as they were called (Carib slave- 

 raiders), directed by Dutchmen, captured Indians 

 on Spanish territory, preferably the domesticated 

 Indians of the mission. 



From the time of the early use of Indian slaves 

 in the eighteenth century it was forbidden to cap- 

 ture slaves in the river Essequibo and its districts, 

 because the Dutch authorities wished to avoid re- 

 taliatory attacks from Indians and to diminish the 

 risk of runaways; but the planters were allowed to 

 buy slaves from the Caribs of the lower Orinoco. 

 The Spaniards in 1758 discovered that the slave- 

 raiders had formed an establishment on an island 

 in the Cuyuni river, whereupon the Spanish com- 

 mander sent a strong force which swept down the 

 principal affluent and then the main river, found 

 only one post, destroyed it, and made prisoners of 

 its occupants, refusing to release them at the de- 

 mand of the Dutch Governor. The Barima region 

 was between 1760 and 1770 the scene of similar in- 

 cidents. There were no Dutch settlements beyond 

 the Maruca, where a small armed outpost was main- 

 tained, but Dutch slave traders stayed with the Car- 

 ibs in the delta district, and Dutchmen engaged 

 there in contraband trade. As soon as the Span- 

 iards discovered this they stopped it; the Slates 

 General again complained, and, getting no redress, 

 desisted from complaint. The Spaniards first occu- 

 pied and have ever since occupied the great basin 

 of the Orinoco, used the lower reaches of the river 

 for ingress to their empire within and egress to the 

 sea. and exercised sovereign rights over the mouth 

 of the river by an armed pilot-station on the lowest 

 convenient island, by coast-guard launches, etc. 

 The delta lands, though uninhabited and unfit for 

 habitation, are not vacant territory which another 

 nation can appropriate and thus establish a hostile 

 military occupation, for it is settled law that those 

 who possess the watershed and the firm banks own 

 the delta islands and the shores below. The Eng- 

 lish allegation is that the Dutch established about 

 1666 a post for trade or to watch the Spaniards at 

 Barima Sand, on the delta pass known as Brazo 

 Barima, which they soon abandoned, either volun- 

 tarily or for fear of the Spaniards. Between 1760 

 and 1770 a few Dutch slave-traders lived with the 

 Caribs on one of the tributary creeks. About that 

 time the Dutch were apprehensive that the Span- 

 iards intended to come through the delta bayous to 

 attack the settlements, and the Dutch Governor is 

 said to have put a watchman or two on the Barima. 

 But all these places were destroyed by the Spaniards 

 before 1768. Neither Dutch nor English attempted 

 to reoccupy till the armed invasion in 1884 of the 

 Demerara magistrate Michael McTurk. 



When the new Dutch West India Company was 

 organized, in 1764, the grant in the charter cov- 

 ered only the places of Essequibo and Pomeroon. 

 evidently excluding the Orinoco. 100 miles from 

 these rivers. In the treaty of Aranjuez, made be- 

 tween Spain and Holland in 1791 for the mutual 

 restitution of runaways, the places in South Amer- 

 ica between which such restitution was to take place 

 were all the Spanish settlements on the Orinoco on 

 the one hand and Essequibo and Demerara, Berbice, 

 and Surinam on the other. In 1794 the Dutch Sec- 

 retary of State recognized that Dutch territory be- 

 gan at Maruca. which was described in 1796 by the 

 British officer Pinckard as the remotest point of the 



colony of Essequibo, and was stated to be the limit 

 of British territory by the British Governor in 1839. 

 In that year Schomburgk, taking the line drawn in 

 the sketch map of Bouchcnroeder from the mouth 

 of the Barima or the Amacuro and accepting Ilart- 

 sinck's statement in his history of 1770 that the 

 Dutch once had a post at Point Barima, adapted 

 t lie arbitrary straight line of the Dutch surveyor, 

 who was utterly ignorant of the country beyond the 

 Pomeroon, to the natural lines, mountain ranges, and 

 rivers, and submitted it to the British Government , 

 pointing out in his memoir that the Venezuelan 

 boundary merits the greatest at lent ion "on account 

 of the political importance of the mouth of the Ori- 

 noco." He was directed by Lord Palmerston to 

 survey the line and set some posts on it, which Lord 

 Aberdeen in 1842, on receiving a vigorous remon- 

 strance from Venezuela, ordered to be removed, de- 

 claring that they were not indications of dominion 

 and empire, but a preliminary measure open to dis- 

 cussion. In the subsequent discussions Lord Aber- 

 deen. Lord Gran vi lie, and Lord Kosebery offered 

 to secure to Venezuela the undisturbed possession 

 of the mouths of the Orinoco, recognizing that it 

 was diplomatically inadmissible to claim on such 

 flimsy pretenses what were described as the Darda- 

 nelles of the Orinoco. Lord Salisbury is the only 

 minister who has insisted upon a different view, and 

 his claims grew every time he recurred to the subject. 

 The Schomburgk line, put forward at the outset 

 merely as a basis for discussion, became the irre- 

 ducible minimum, and all that Great Britain was 

 willing to submit to arbitration was newly claimed 

 territory extending far outside of that line. Even 

 the Schomburgk has been altered and expanded 

 from one running approximately north and south, 

 cutting across the Cuyuni and its southern basin, 

 as laid down on all the maps published prior to 

 IWi;, in which year the Colonial Office discovered 

 that it went around by the great bend of the 

 Cuyuni. The line on all the maps made before the 

 discoveries of gold gave a new speculative value to 

 the land outside as well as inside of it, strikes the 

 Cuyuni, not at the Acarabisci river, but at the Oto- 

 mong river. 20 miles below. The two nations hav- 

 ing in 1850 mutually agreed that there should be 

 no occupation of the disputed territory by either, 

 Venezuela severed diplomatic relations with Great 

 Britain on Feb. 23, 1887, after British armed forces 

 had in 1884 and subsequent years invaded the dis- 

 puted territory and taken possession up to the ex- 

 panded Schomburgk line. Venezuela, for the sake 

 of a settlement, offered in 1890 to exempt the set- 

 tled districts from arbitration. The region which 

 it did then require to be arbitrated, and in which 

 the recent gold diggings are found, contains no set- 

 tlements even to-day. They are worked exclusively 

 by negroes, who are hired on the coast and go up 

 for three months at a time. There are no houses 

 there, for they live in huts built in the Indian fash- 

 ion, or mere shanties, and no families or permanent 

 residents, with the exception of a few foremen or 

 officials whose duties keep them there and some 

 negroes who have kitchen gardens. Nor have the 

 English spent any money in permanent improve- 

 ments in those regions. With scarcely an excep- 

 tion the gold is got by simple washing, by hand 

 labor. The highest estimate of the total capital is 

 $2.000,000, and that is chiefly to pay wages and cur- 

 rent expenses until the product can be marketed. 

 The total output of gold, by official returns, har, 

 been $10.500,000 up to 1896. The Guiana Govern- 

 ment gets a royalty of 90 cents an ounce, which has 

 amounted to upward of $500,000. In 1895 the sum 

 collected was $119,000. The total expenses of clear- 

 ing streams, making roads, etc., have been less than 

 that, so that if every British subject were required 



