761 



toward the south ; on the north are meadows 

 Intersected with woody hills. The most pictu- 

 resque scenes lie near the falls of the Carony, 

 and in that chain of mountains, two hundred 

 and fifty toises high, which separates the tribu- 

 tary streams of the Oroonoko from those of the 

 Cuyuni. There are situate the P ilia de Upata *, 

 the capital of the missions, Santa Maria, and 

 Cupapui. Small tablelands afford a healthy 

 and temperate climate. Cacao, rice, cotton, 

 indigo, and sugar, grow in abundance, wherever 

 a virgin soil, covered with a thick coat of grasses, 

 is subjected to cultivation. The first Christian 

 settlements in those countries are not, I believe, 

 of an earlier date than 1721. The elements of 

 which the present population is composed are 

 the three Indian races of the Guayanoes, the 

 Caribbees, and the Guaycas. The last are a 

 people of mountaineers, and are far from being 

 so diminutive in size as the Guaycas whom we 

 found at Esmeralda ~f*. It is difficult to fix them 



* Founded in 1762. Population ; 657 souls in 1797 ; 

 769 souls in 1803. The most populous villages of these 

 missions, Alta Gratia, Cupapui, Santa Rosa de Cura, and 

 Guri, had between 600 and 900 inhabitants, in 1797 ; but 

 in 1818 epidemic fevers diminished the population more than 

 a third. In some missions these diseases have swept away 

 nearly half of the inhabitants. See Trip from Angostura to 

 the Capuchin Missions of the Caroni, in the Jour, of the Royal 

 InsM., 1820, No. 16, p. 260—287, and No. 17, p. 1-132. 



t See above, p. 565. 



