POPULATION OF GUIANA. 19 



const, will some day offer the greatest attraction to Euro- 

 pean settlers. 



The whole population of this vast province in its present 

 state is, with the exception of a few Spanish parishes, scat- 

 tered on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, and subject to 

 two monastic governments. Estimating the number of the 

 inhabitants of Guiana, who do not live in savage independ- 

 ence, at thirty-five thousand, we find nearly twenty-four 

 thousand settled in the missions, and thus withdrawn as it 

 were from the direct influence of the secular arm. At 

 the period of my voyage, the territory of the Observantin 

 monks of St. Francis contained seven thousand three hun- 

 i red inhabitants, and that of the Capuchinos Catalanes 

 seventeen thousand ; an astonishing disproportion, when we 

 reflect on the smallness of the latter territory compared to 

 the vast banks of the Upper Orinoco, the Atabapo, the 

 Cassiquiare, and the Bio Negro. It results from these state- 

 ments that nearly two-thirds of the population of a province 

 of sixteen thousand eight hundred square leagues are found 

 concentrated between the Rio Imataca and the town of 

 S;uito Thome del Angostura, on a space of ground only 

 titty-five leagues in length, and thirty in breadth. Both 

 of these monastic governments are equally inaccessible to 

 "Whites, and form status in statu. The first, that of the 

 Observantins, I have described from my own observations ; 

 it remains for me to record here the notions I could procure 

 respecting the second of these governments, that of the 

 Catalonian Capuchins. Fatal civil dissensions and epidemic 

 fevers have of late years diminished the long-increasing 

 prosperity of the missions of the Carony; but, notwith- 

 standing these losses, the region which we are going to 

 examine is still highly interesting with respect to political 

 economy. 



The missions of the Catalonian Capuchins, which in 1804 

 contained at least sixty thousand head of cattle grazing in 

 the savannahs, extend from the eastern banks of the Carony 

 and the Paragua as far as the banks of the Imataca, the 

 Curumu, and the Cuyuni ; at the south-east they border on 

 English Guiana, or the colony of Essequibo; and toward 

 the south, in going up the desert banks of the Paragua and 

 the Paraguamasi, and crossing the Cordillera of Pacaraimo, 



c 2 



