20 
INDIA.N TKIBE8. 
they touch the Portuguese settlements on the Eio Branco. 
The, whole of this country is open, full of fine savannahs, 
and no way resembling that through which we passed on 
the Upper Orinoco. The forests become impenetrable only 
on advancing toward the south ; on the north are meadows 
intersected with woody hiUs. The most picturesque scenes 
lie near the falls of the Carony, and in that chain of moun- 
tains, two hundred and fifty toises high, which separates the 
tributary streams of the Orinoco from those of the Cuyuni. 
There are situate the Villa de TIpata* the capital of the 
missions, Santa Maria, and Cupapui. Small table-lands 
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 coun- 
tries 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 Guayanos, the Caribs, and the 
Guayeas. The last are a people of mountaineers, and are 
far from being so diminutive in size as the Guayeas whom 
we found at Esmeralda. It is difficult to fix them to the 
soil; and the three most modern missions in which they 
have been collected, those of Cura, Curucuy, and Arechica, 
are already destroyed. The Guayanos, who early in the 
sixteenth century gave their name to the whole of that v.ast 
province, are less intelligent, but milder ; and more easy, if 
not to eivUize, at least to subjugate, than the Caribs. Their 
language appears to belong to the great branch of the 
Caribbee and Tamanac tongues. It displays the same ana- 
logies of roots and grammatical forms, which are observed 
between the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the 
German. It is not easy to fix the forms of what is indefi- 
nite by its nature ; and to agree on the differences which 
should be admitted between dialects, derivative langitages, 
and mother-tongues. The Jesuits of Paraguay have made 
* Founded in 1762. Population in 1797, 657 souls; in 1803, 769 
souls. The most populous villages of these missions, AlUi Gracia, 
Cupapui, Santa Rosa de Cura, and Guri, had between 600 and 900 inlia- 
bitants in 1797 ; but in 1818, epidemic fevers diminished the population 
more than a third. In some missions these diseases have swept »way 
nearly half of the inhabitants. 
