Morten. 317 
thickly planted with the stately coconut palm, their greyish stems and 
spreading branches, some green, some tinted with gold, and some all 
golden, making a most beautiful feast of colour, together with the other 
varieties of green scattered here and there in their midst. Through this 
wealth of colour peeps out and looks down to the waters below the ‘pretty 
little Church of Santa Rosa, with its tower surmounted by a cross. 
Behind it stands the priest’s house, out of sight, as is also the large school- 
building which stands on the opposite slope of the Santa Rosa hill, at the 
bottom of which is the building serving for the present as Convent for 
the Sisters of Mercy who have charge of the school. It is the old con- 
vent building of former days. The only other building in sight is a store 
almost at the water's edge. We pass on. The dreary savannah stretches 
to right and left. The inhabited parts now are few and distant from one 
another and always on our left ; they cease long before we come to the 
Moruea source which is lost in the savannah beyond. The last inhabited 
locality is a short turn over the savannah on our left and is called 
Kamwatta ; it is inhabited by a considerable number of Warraus received 
into the Catholic Church by the late Fr. 8, Gillet, S.J., a few years ago. 
We have seen little enough of life in our passage through, perhaps 
only the feathered inhabitants, always more or less in evidence, especially 
the ubiquitous Kiskadee. Not that there is no animal life in Moruca but, 
like the Indian there, the animals are timid and watch you, all unconscious 
of their presence, till distance “lends enchantment to the view.” Once 
IT had an excellent proof of this. I was passing through the Bara Bara 
Creek when a piece of wood, a few inches long, fell from one of the trees 
bordering the Creek. There was something in the way it fell that 
attracted my attention and aroused my curiosity. I told my two Indians 
to stop a moment and from our position some little distance past where 
the wood had fallen we looked back and up at the tree. Instantly was 
heard a shrieking and a whistling and a big blackish monkey started out 
of his leafy shelter and swung himself rigidly from tree to tree out of 
sight. His cries were evidently meant for the rest of the family, for 
they were instantly answered from deeper in the bush and then were seen 
some seven or eight other blackish creatures following swiftly after num- 
ber one. It was a pleasant diversion only too short. 
We will now go into the bush and search for its inhabitants that we 
may get to know them. But before we do so we had better learn some- 
thing of the history of the peoples we are going to visit. After the 
Venezuelan War of Independence a number of immigrants came to 
Moruca. Had they stayed at Morawhanna or thereabouts they would, 
of course, have been under British protection, but doubtiess they felt 
that was too near the Venezuelan frontier for safety, so they put the 
length of several rivers and finally broad savannahs between them and 
their old home and so came into the quiet of Moruca. These immigrants 
were of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. They settled among the 
Arawaks of Moruca with whom they intermarried. A few otber settlers 
of British and Portuguese origin came to Moruca, These too inter- 
