20 INDIAN TRIBES. 



they touch the Portuguese settlements on the Eio Eranco. 

 The, whole of this country is open, full of fine savannahs, 

 and no way resembling that through which we passed on 

 the Upper Orinoco. The forests become impenetrable only 

 on advancing toward the south ; on the north are meadows 

 intersected with woody hills. The most picturesque scenes 

 lie near the falls of the Carony, and in that chain of moun- 

 tains, two hundred and fifty toises high, which separates the 

 tributary streams of the Orinoco from those of the Cuyuni. 

 There are situate the Villa de Upata* the capital of the 

 missions, Santa Maria, and Cupapui. Small table-lands 

 afford a healthy and temperate climate. Cacao, rice, cotton, 

 indigo, and sugar, grow in abundance, wherever a virgin 

 soil, covered with a thick coat of grasses, is subjected to 

 cultivation. The first Christian settlements in those coun- 

 tries are not, I believe, of an earlier date than 1721. The 

 elements of which the present population is composed are 

 the three Indian races of the Guayanos, the Caribs, and the 

 Guaycas. The last are a people of mountaineers, and are 

 far from being so diminutive in size as the Guaycas whom 

 we found at Esmeralda. It is difficult to fix them to the 

 soil; and the three most modern missions in which they 

 have been collected, those of Cura, Curucuy, and Arechica, 

 are already destroyed. The Guayanos, who early in the 

 sixteenth century gave their name to the whole of that vast 

 province, are less intelligent, but milder ; and more easy, if 

 not to civilize, at least to subjugate, than the Caribs. Their 

 language appears to belong to the great branch of the 

 Caribbee and Tamanac tongues. It displays the same ana- 

 logies of roots and grammatical forms, which are observed 

 between the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the 

 German. It is not easy to fix the forms of what is indefi- 

 nite by its nature ; and to agree on the differences which 

 should be admitted between dialects, derivative languages, 

 and mother-tongues. The Jesuits of Paraguay have made 



* Founded in 1762. Population in 1797, 657 souls; in 1803, 769 

 souls. The most populous villages of these missions, Alta Gracia, 

 Cupapui, Santa Rosa de Cura, and Guri, had between 600 and 900 inha- 

 bitants in 1797 ; but in 1818, epidemic fevers diminished the population 

 more than a third, In some missions these diseases have swept way 

 nea ly half of the inhabitants. 



