22 T11E CAEIB TRIBES. 



The monks, who like to keep themselves isolated, in order 

 to withdraw from the eye of the secular power, have been 

 hitherto unwilling to settle on the banks of the Orinoco. 

 It is, however, by this river only, or by the Cuyuni and the 

 Essequibo, that the missions of Carony can export their 

 productions. The latter way has not yet been tried, though 

 several Christian settlements* are formed on one of the 

 principal tributary streams of the Cuyuni, the Eio Juruario. 

 This stream furnishes, at the period of the great swellings, 

 the remarkable phenomenon of a bifurcation. It commu- 

 nicates by the Juraricuima and the Aurapa with the Eio 

 Carony; so that the land comprised between the Orinoco, 

 the sea, the Cuyuni, and the Carony, becomes a real island. 

 Formidable rapids impede the navigation of the Upper 

 Cuyuni; and hence of late an attempt has been made to 

 open a road to the colony of Essequibo much more to the 

 south-east, in order to fall in with the Cuyuni much below 

 the mouth of the Curumu. 



The whole of this southern territory is traversed by 

 hordes of independent Caribs ; the feeble remains of that 

 warlike people who were so formidable to the missionaries 

 till 1733 and 1735, at which period the respectable bishop 

 G-ervais de Labrid,f canon of the metropolitan chapter of 

 Lyon, Pather Lopez, and several other ecclesiastics, perished 

 by the hands of the Caribs. These dangers, too frequent 

 formerly, exist no longer, either in the missions of Carony, 

 or in those of the Orinoco ; but the independent Caribs 

 continue, on account of their connection with the Dutch 

 colonists of Essequibo, an object of mistrust and hatred to 

 the government of Guiana. These tribes favour the contra- 

 band trade along the coast, and by the channels or estuaries 

 that join the Eio Barima to the Eio Moroca ; they carry 

 off the cattle belonging to the missionaries, and excite the 

 Indians recently converted, and living "within the sound 

 of the bell," to return to the forests. The free hordes have 

 everywhere a powerful interest in oppposing the progress 



* Guacipati, Tupuquen, Angel de la Custodia, and Cura, where the 

 military post of the frontiers was stationed in 1800, which had been 

 anciently placed at the confluence of the Cuyuni and the Curumu. 



f Consecrated a bishop for the four parts of the world (obispo para laa 

 quacro partes del mundo) by pope Benedict XIII. 



