318 Timehri. 
married with those they found there. Besides these there were a certain 
number of Warraus generally in some more retired part of the river, and 
these have been considerably added to of late years from various sources. 
Therefore, Moruca, it will be seen, contains a very mixed race. The 
Venezuelan immigrants were Catholics, therefore was the Roman Catholic 
Mission of Santa Rosa started and the Church of Santa Rosa _built- 
Their first priest was a Father Cullen, an Irishman, who laboured in and 
around Moruca for thirteen years. After him came the ever-famous 
Father Messini, S.J., who spent thirty years of his devoted life among 
the Indians of Moruca. There is no doubt about it, the acknowledged 
superiority of the Spanish Arawaks, as they are called, of Santa Rosa 
Mission over the other Indians of the colony is due to the self-sacrificing 
labours of these two devoted priests, although it may be admitted that 
the mixture of blood resulted in a somewhat more perfect piece of 
humanity than is usually found among the Aboriginal pure and simple. 
The difference between the descendants of the Spanish Arawaks, and, for 
example, the Warraus in their midst is very marked, even making allow- 
ance for the inferiority of race of the latter. While we are listening to 
their history we are gradually making our way through the bush to 
visit them. Wesoon come to one of their habitations. It is of the 
simplest construction but solid and lasting. A number of sturdy 
posts, the number varying according to the size of the building, planted 
firmly in the earth at regular intervals; yet more posts resting on and 
firmly fixed to the tops of these, some stretching across from side to 
side, from post to post, others forming a frame-work on which to rest 
the roof ; this is usually very steep and thatched with troolie. Sometimes 
a corner is shut off by troolie walls, making a little room. From the 
cross-beams hang the hammocks. slung over them during the day if 
not needed. At one of the corners usually stands a construction, some- 
times a piece of an old corial, which serves to hold the few kitchen uten- 
sils, such as the fan for fanning the fire, &c., and the cassava bread before 
and after the baking. Some of the more enterprising have a second and 
smaller building with wattles round for kitchen which is also used as a 
dwelling house in emergency. Here and there you will find a rough 
bench, rarely an Indian chair, a construction something after the form of 
a deck chair but wooden throughout ; usually the hammock serves as bed 
and chair. Then, a cooking vessel or two, a few articles in the way of 
plates, mugs, spoons, &c., a gourd for holding water, an iron for baking 
cassava bread, a jar and a matapi, and you have exhausted the house- 
hold furniture of most ; some have less, some more. As the roof comes 
down feirly low and a little trench surrounds the building, the inmates 
are secure against the heaviest rain, even in times of high wind, for the 
thick bush, never far away, acts as a protecting wall. Generally a few 
coffee bushes and banana trees grow in the immediate neighbourhood ; 
sometimes a coconut tree or two, an orange or tangerine or lime and other 
fruit trees, but these were all there, I am told, before the Indians came, 
for they do not seem very enterprising in this matter. Long ago the 
s 
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