The Three Counties under the Dutch. 43 
only to make annual presents to them, but also to send 
Europeans to live among them as ' postholders' to gain 
their good will, and to collect and lead them when they 
were wanted for expeditions for slave hunting and other 
such purposes. We have already seen that at an earlier 
time, the Indians had been craftily used by the colonists, 
by playing on the mutual hatred of the tribes, to keep 
each other in check ; so now they were used to keep in 
check the Africans, whom all Indians united in hating. 
To complete the picture of the two colonies as PlNC- 
KARD saw them it is absolutely necessary to tell of the 
yellow fever which then, as long after, formed the greatest 
scourge and danger to Europeans in that country. The 
name of Guiana had in Europe long been suggestive 
chiefly of fever ; but it was only about that time that the 
difference was first clearly recognized between the remit- 
tent fever, to which those long resident in the colonies 
were ever subject, and the far more terrible continued 
yellow fever which chiefly affected new comers. On the 
English occupation of the colonies in 1796 a large num- 
ber of new comers, not only of soldiers but also of capital- 
ists seeking a new field for business, poured into the 
place ; and as was natural, a terrible epidemic of yellow 
fever before long broke out and rapidly increased among 
these. Gloom spread through the colony, so that men fell 
ill and died from very fear. Nor was it till long after 
this period that, chiefly by a much needed improvement 
in the drainage, such epidemics, which broke out each 
time that large numbers of new comers arrived in the 
colony, were checked. 
The new comers at once began to change the colony 
for the better, and for the first time gave rapid movement 
F3 
