OBIOIN or THE COLONY. 485 



ferauaded the whites, and those who fancy they are so, that 

 to till the ground is a task fit only for slaves (poitos) and 

 the native neophytes. The colony of Esmeralda had be^n 

 founded on the principles of that of Australia ; but it was 

 far from being governed with the same wisdom. The Ame- 

 rican colonists, being separated from their native soil, not 

 by seas, but by forests and savannahs, dispersed; some 

 taking the road northward, towards the Caura and the 

 Carony ; others proceeding southward to the Portuguese 

 possessions. Thus the celebrity of this villa, and of the 

 emerald-mines of Duida, vanished in a few years ; and Esme- 

 ralda, on account of the immense number of insects that ob- 

 scure the air at all seasons of the year, was regarded by the 

 monks as a place of banishment. The superior of the mis- 

 sions, when ne would make the lay-brothers mindful of their 

 duty, threatens sometimes to send them to Esmeralda ; 

 " that is," say the monks, " to be condemned to the mos- 

 quitos ; to be devoured by those buzzing flies (zancudos gri- 

 tones), which God appears to have created for the torment 

 and chastisement of man."* These strange punishments 

 have not always been confined to the lay-brothers. There 

 happened in 1788 one of those monastic revolutions, of whicli 

 it is difficult to form a conception in Europe, according to 

 the ideas that prevail of the peaceful state of the Christian 

 settlements in the New World. For a long period the 

 Franciscan monks settled in Guiana had been desirous of 

 forming a separate republic, and rendering themselves inde- 

 pendent of the college of Piritu at Nueva Barcelona. Dis- 

 contented with the election of Fray Gutierez de Aguilera, 

 chosen by a general chapter, and confirmed by the king in 

 the important office of president of the missions, five or six 

 monks of the Upper Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio 

 Negro, assembled together at San Fernando de Atabapo ; 

 chose hastily a new superior from their own body; and 

 caused the old one, who, unfortunately for himself, had come 

 to visit those parts, to be arrested. They put him in irons, 

 threw him into a boat, and conducted him to Esmeralda, as 



* " Estos mosquitos que Human zancudos gritones los parece cria la 

 naturaleza para castigo y tormento de los hombres." " Those moequitoi 

 which are called buzzing zaucudos, Nature seems to have created for the 

 especial punishment and tor.ure of man." (Fray Pedro Simon.) 



2 F 2 



