330 Timehri. 
I am of opinion that the Indian Drink Ordinance should be repealed 
and a more general law take its place, prohibiting the making and _ 
distribution locally of all fermented liquors (paiwarri alone is partially 
legislated for at present) on all grants and homesteads or in villages ; 
unless a Commissary’s licence for seven specified continuous days be 
previously issued at a price of not less than $2 40. On ungranted 
Crown lands the Indian custom might be permitted as at present, pro- 
vided that the existing law forbidding the presence of non-Indians be 
enforced. My experience is that this prohibition will be welcomed by 
the Indian if he finds that he has the support of the Executive, asa 
conviction already secured has proved. 
In matters of superfluous dress the coast Indians have been greatly 
misjudged. On market days and Sundays they usually appear in 
Morawhanna dressed in their poor best. But at home in their camps, in 
their corials on the river, and even in Morawhanna on off days, they are 
content with much simpler attire. The men are often content with but 
an old pair of trousers and some even with a lap and the women with the 
single petticoat braced over one shoulder,—a costume recorded by our first 
explorers in their pictures of the Amazon on the maps of the Courantyne 
and New Rivers, which may be seen in the Society’s library in George- 
town. Tuberculosis is of very rare occurrence and I have observed 
it only in those who have worked in contact with East Indians. 
A large number of the latter are homesteaders in the district and their 
relations with the Indians are very friendly. Owing to the dearth 
of East Indian women there has been a certain amount of inter- 
marriage which has produced a very satisfactory half-breed, more 
intelligent than the Aboriginal and more robust than the East Indian 
born in the colony. As one Hindoo summed up the case, the coolie girl 
is afraid to travel in a corial and does not know and will not learn how 
to prepare cassava. Hence he says that when he marries he intends to 
marry an Aboriginal. Indeed he promised marriage to a coolie if she 
behaved herself, but the poor girl has not fulfilled the condition laid 
down. It is probable, as a friend has pointed out to me, that when 
access to the savannahs has been facilitated the East Indians will flock 
there and take to cattle-breeding, and then intermarriage will take place 
extensively and a race of cattle-farmers suited in every way to their 
employment and environment will result. 
The East Indian here, however, has his weak side and it is for him 
that the contraband trade in Venezuelan bush rum is principally carried on. 
The Warraus,—lt is fashionable to place this ancient race at the 
bottom of the seale of humanity in the colony, and their study has been— 
ereatly neglected or carried on through the medium of hostile Arawak 
or Carib interpreters. The few specimens of broken Warrau in 
travellers’ tales are mutilated by their interpreters (e.g., ikung for 
hikuno: fire, Isorora for Ho Sororo: falling water, Morawhanna for 
Mora-ho-whanna ; the water passage of the Mora trees, and Bakramani 
