54 
Indians Dving Out. 
til some fresh requirement drives him to town again. The Colony owes 
the poor neglected Indian an old-time heavy debt, the present-day re- 
payment of which is not to be expected. While it wanted him to suppress 
xhe many insurrections of the slaves, it used to wheedle him and once a 
year fix a certain day to give him a big spread and valuable presents, 
whereat several thousands, wearing the most beautiful feather ornaments 
would generally be gathered : all these means of recognition have been 
abandoned . "They are now of no more use to us, and there is no need 
to worry any more about them,” is the stereotyped answer which the 
astonished questioner receives. No one remembers that almost all 
the negro revolts were suppressed through the help of the aborigines, 
and that in the Coromantyn negro rebellion in 1793 and 1794 the Car- 
tbs alone sent S00 young warriors to assist the overpowered Colonists. 
194. During our almost four years’ stay with these “Tribes without 
Tears,” all the signs we gathered point incontestably to the fact that 
the Present is the closing scene for them in that great drama which 
everywhere is, and will be, renewed where European culture gains and 
lias gained a footing. 
195. The many European-introduced diseases that have become in 
different ways indigenous amongst the tribes of the interior, particularly 
small pox, are helping on this closing scene to an increased degree. In 
1794 the Caribs were still able to place 800 young lighters in the held: 
according to the census of 1841 the whole coast tribe including women 
and children only amounts to 500. Nine-tenths of the Arawaks have dis- 
appeared in the interval, and half of the Akawais and Warraus are no 
more. 
190. After several days' stay in the city I was constrained to visit 
the more or less distant environs, to make myself at home and conver- 
sant with the field of my labours. Of course my earliest excursions 
could and only dared be of short duration, my brother and new acquaint- 
ances having impressed upon me the most sacred duty of not exposing 
myself too suddenly to the sun's rays which exert such a harmful in- 
fluence on the newly-arriving European. My trips were accordingly 
limited to between six o’clock day-break and eight, when it was always 
incumbent on me to hurry back to the protecting roof and avoid the 
danger threatening. 
197. On leaving the city proper, almost all the roads lead to the 
same surrounding sugar, plantain, and abandoned cotton estates: upon 
the latter, which at present form pasturage for cattle as already men- 
tioned, one now and then finds an isolated cotton-tree ( Gossypium her- 
baceum), dotted over with its large yellow mallow-like flowers, that, rises 
like a sort of memorial of former extensive cultivation. What a beau- 
tiful and fairy-like sight must these cotton-fields in blossom have pres- 
ented in the olden days! 
19S. the whole cultivated portion of the Colony, but particularly 
in the immediate neighbourhood of Georgetown, is an alluvial flat, ex- 
posed to flooding during the spring-tides. A front dam extending along 
the whole stretch of coast line parallel with the sea or river on the inner 
side of which run the public streets, protects the estates and has to be 
kept in repair by the respective owners of estates bordering on it. To 
