POPULATION OF GUIANA. 
19 
coast, ■will some day offer the greatest attraction to Euro- 
pean settlers. 
The ■whole population of this vast province in its present 
state is, -with the exception of a fe-w Spanish parishes, scat- 
tered on the banks of the Lo-sver Orinoco, and subject to 
two monastic governments. Estimating the number of the 
mhahitants of Guiana, -who do not live iu savage independ- 
ence, at thirty-five thousand, we find nearly twenty-four 
thousand settled in the missions, and thus wdthdrawn as it 
e^ere from the direct influence of the secular arm. At 
the period of my voyage, the territory of the Observantin 
Jponks of St. Erancis contained seven thousand three hun- 
' I’^d inhabitants, and that of the Capucliims Catalanes 
seventeen thousand ; an astonishing disproportion, when we 
reflect on the smallness of the latter territory compared to 
TOe -Nmst banks of the Upper Orinoco, the Atabapo, the 
'-'“ssiquiare, and the Eio Negro. It results from these state- 
ments that nearly two-thirds of the population of a province 
m sixteen thousand eight hundred square leagues are found 
concentrated between the Eio Imataca and the town of 
Thome del Angostura, on a space of ground only 
f +L ® leagues in length, and thirty in breadth. _ Both 
e these monastic governments are equally inaccessible to 
form status in statu. Tne first, that of the 
'f _®ervmtins, I have described from my own observations ; 
^ remains for me to record here the notions I could procure 
^specting the second of these governments, that of the 
^atalonian Capuchins. Fatal civil dissensions and epidemic 
evers have of late years diminished the long-increasing 
of the missions of the Carony; but, not-wnth- 
stanclmg these losses, the region which we are going to 
is stiU highly iuterestmg -with respect to political 
f he missions of the Catalonian Capuchins, which in ISOi 
contained at least sixty thousand liead of cattle grazing iu 
a ®^^^^nahs, extend from the eastern banks of the Carony 
• na the Paragua as far as the banks of the Imataca, the 
Cuyuni ; at the south-east they border on 
mghsh Guiana, or the colony of Essequibo; and toward 
the south. 
the ParaguamLT find 
in going up the desert banks of the Paragua and 
crossing the Cordillera of Pacaraimo, 
c 
