384 



could net openly oppose the projects of his mother Queen 

 Barbara, and the Portugueze party ; the treaty, it was 

 known, would be hostile to the interests of Spain, and all 

 that remained was to gain time in creating obstacles. The 

 craft constructed to convey the remainder of the troops be- 

 yond the cataracts, on the frontier of the Capitania general 

 of Grand Para, were ready to sail, and the orders of 

 King Ferdinand the 6th were precise. Yturiaga caused a 

 Te Deum to be sung at Muitaco (Vol. v, p. 689, &c.) and 

 during the ceremony, set fire clandestinely to the fleet, 

 which was said to have been burnt accidentally. But so 

 little pains had been taken to conceal this stratagem, that it 

 was instantly discovered. The Portugueze commissaries of- 

 fered to send their own boats for Yturiaga, but he answered 

 that he would wait for orders from Madrid. Ferdinand 6th, 

 wearied of the expence and the delays of Yturiaga, recalled 

 the expedition. Solano and Albarados embarked, I believe 

 in 1761, at La Guayra, for San Sebastian. Yturiaga, after 

 having long inhabited the small town of Muitaco, where he 

 hoped to re-establish his health, died at the island of Mar- 

 guerita. The complaints made against him by the monks, 

 and by his colleagues the other commissaries of the bounda- 

 ries, embittered the latter part of his life. Don Apollinario 

 Diez de la Fuente returned from Spain to the Oroonoko with 

 the pompous titles of Capitan poblador del Alto-Orinoco y 

 Cabo militar del Fuerte de Cassiquiare ; he was afterwards 

 made governor of the province of Quixos, and Cosmografo de 

 la real Expedition de limites del Mar anon. If we may judge 

 from his manuscripts, the cosmographers assembled at the 

 congress of Puente de Caya, in 1524, were better informed 

 than this emissary. 



The labors of the commission of the boundaries of 

 the Oroonoko which I have just related, were also as 

 fruitless as the treaty signed January 12th, 1760, at Ma- 

 drid, by which the Portugueze and Spanish nations re- 



