1 8 TlMEHRI. 
Within this land there were only two towns, Stabroek 
and New Amsterdam ; but there were also one or two 
military posts, of which the most important were that on 
the river Morooca and that on the Mahaica, a river about 
twenty miles east of the Demerara. Along the coast were 
scattered various plantations, though none of these had 
been very long established ; and up some of the rivers, 
especially on the Berbice for nearly fifty miles of its course, 
there were plantations, also scattered, but of much older 
date. Between these centres of population, towns, 
military posts, and plantations alike, the only com- 
munication was by water. 
The most striking feature in the account given by 
PlNCKARD is the joy, in their own capture by an enemy, 
which was evidently felt, and almost universally ex- 
pressed in hospitality, by the settlers. Yet there was 
still a very large Dutch element in the population. Many, 
probably most, of the merchants and their dependents in 
the town of Stabroek were English ; but everywhere else 
planters and towns people alike were chiefly Dutch. In 
his journeys up the rivers, PlNCKARD found that the 
residents were more often than not unable to speak any 
language but Dutch, with perhaps a little French ; in 
short there is hardly a page in the letters of that writer 
which does not very plainly show that by descent, as well 
as in language and habits the people of Guiana were in 
his day still for the most part Dutch. Yet these people 
welcomed their new rulers with a hospitality probably 
unparallelled on any other occasion, as coming from a just 
conquered people. They received the new comers into 
1 Pinckard.— Vol. iii., p. 250. 
