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real object of our journey, my connections with 

 the higher clergy of Spain, and the knowledge I 

 had acquired of the state of the missions. At 

 the moment of our departure for Angostura, the 

 capital of Guyana, he pressed me earnestly to 

 leave a writing in his hands, bearing testimony 

 to the good order, that prevailed in the Chris- 

 tian settlements on the Oroonoko, and the mild- 

 ness with which the natives are generally treated. 

 This proposition of the superior, arising from 

 a praiseworthy zeal for the good of his order, 

 embarrassed me a little. I answered, that the 

 testimony of a traveller born in the bosom of the 

 Calvinist church could scarcely have any weight 

 in the interminable quarrels, which almost every 

 where, in the New World, divide the secular 

 and ecclesiastical powers. I hinted to him, that* 

 being two hundred leagues from the coast, in 

 the centre of the missions, and, as the inhabi- 

 tants of Cumana say archly, en el poder de los 

 frayles* y a writing, which we should compose 

 together on the banks of the Atabapo, would 

 not perhaps appear an act freely consented to 

 on my part. The president was not alarmed at 

 the idea of having treated with hospitality a 

 Calvinist; the first, I believe, who had been 

 seen in the missions of Saint Francis ; but the 

 missionaries in America cannot be accused of 



* In the power of the monks. 



