324 tiMEHRI. 



improved race both morally and physically. Humanity 

 must mourn the extinftion of that system of instruflion 

 which had gone so far in rescuing these children of the 

 forest from natural vice and its consequences. It must 

 indeed have been a noble system when its effe£ls, after 

 20 years of abandonment, are still enduring, for I make 

 no scruple in asserting that the refugee Indians of the 

 Upper Cuyuny are, as were the same class in the Morocco 

 Creek till the heartless negleft of Government ruined the 

 latter, the most moral industrious, good mannered and 

 trustworthy of any free labourers in the Colony, without 

 respe6l of country or colour. 



Of a far different description are those who, preferring 

 the rum of the plantations to the fruits of honest indus- 

 try, have come down the falls and settled in the vicinity of 

 civilization. A total disregard to honour in their dealings, 

 beastly intemperance, with a spice of cant and fanaticism 

 acquired from casual visits to the Mission at Bartika and 

 a few casual visits of the Missionary to them — this is the 

 class of people that the protestant mission has to convert 

 and I need not say that the attempt is a hopeless one. 

 I have every wish to see the work of conversion carried 

 on to the utmost, I care not by what sect of Christians 

 so they be such. But as an Indiati Mission the Bartika 

 one is a total failure. The Indians of the vicinity are 

 much more depraved than they were before the Mission 

 was established. Famine has driven numbers from their 

 homes to seek a mendicant subsistence on the coast, and 

 Georgetown swarms with Indian women living by prosti- 

 tution. I make no charge against the founders or the 

 acting agent but I insist on it that the first duty of the 

 Missionary amongst the Indians is to promote agricul- 



