22 
THE CAEIB TEIBE3. 
The monks, who like to keep themselves isolated, in order 
to withdraw from the eve of the secular power, have been 
liitherto unwilling to sktle on the banks of the Orinoco. 
It is, however, by this river only, or by the Cuyuni and the 
Essequibo, that the missions of Carony can export their 
productions.^ The latter way has not yet been tried, though 
several Christian settlements* are formed on one of the 
principal tributary streams of the Cuyuni, the Eio Juruario. 
This stream furnishes, at the period of the great swellings, 
the remarkable phenomenon of a bifurcation. It commu- 
nicates by the Juraricuima and the Aurapa wdth the Eio 
Carony; so that the land comprised between the Orinoco, 
the sea, the Cujnmi, and the Carony, becomes a real island. 
Formidable rapids impede the navigation of the Upper 
Cuyuni; and hence of late an attempt has been made to 
open a road to the colony of Essequibo much more to the 
south-east, in order to fall in with the Cuyuni much below 
the mouth of the Curumu. 
The whole of this southern territory is traversed by 
hordes of independent Caribs ; the feeble remains of that 
warlike people who were so formidable to the missionaries 
till 1733 and 1735, at which period the respectable bishop 
Gervais do Labrid.t canon of the metropolitan chapter of 
Lyon, Father Lopez, and several other ecclesiastics, perished 
by the hands of the Caribs. These dangers, too frequent 
formerly, exist no longer, either in the missions of Carony, 
or in those of the Orinoco ; but the independent Caribs 
continue, on account of their connection with the Dutch 
colonists of Essequibo, an object of mistrust and hatred to 
the government of Guiana. These tribes favour the contra- 
band teade along the coast, and by the channels or estuaries 
that join the Bio Barima to the Eio Moroca; they carry 
off the cattle belonging to the missionaries, and excite the 
Indians recently converted, and living “within the sound 
of the beU,” to return to the forests. The free hordes have 
everywhere a powerful interest in oppposing the progress 
* Guacipati, Tupuquen, Angel de la Custodia, and Cura, where the 
military post of the frontiers was stationed in 1800, which had been 
anciently placed at the confluence of tlie Cuyuni and the Curumu. 
+ Comscerated a bishop for the four parts of the world (obispo para la> 
quatro partes del mundo) by pope Benedict XIII. 
