Up the Puruni River. 323 
further up the river there is a village containing forty or 
fifty inhabitants, and that there is a path thence to the 
north and north-west leading into the savannah, where 
there are several small communities, who travel to the 
Spanish or Venezuelan side and traffic with the miners 
at Caratal. This is probably quite true, for when 
travelling up the Cuyuni in April last year, I met a party 
of eight people in woodskins on their way to George- 
town, who had in their possession forty sovereigns which 
they wished to change into silver money. This gold, 
they said, they had obtained from the white men at 
Caratal in exchange for game and hammocks. 
As a rule, the male Indian will not perform any 
agricultural labour such as tilling the soil. I have 
known of three cases only where the men would dig 
for gold, and in one the Indian was a particularly strong 
fellow, and worked extremely well, quite as well as, if 
not better, his employer said, than any black man. 
I have often asked Indians if they have ever seen gold 
anywhere, or obtained it from the soil, and they have 
invariably either avoided the question or answered " no "; 
and I am perfectly sure they understood the meaning of the 
question, for where the men were ignorant of English I 
employed an interpreter. It is not easy to account for 
this singular reticence on their part touching a subject 
which might become a source of considerable profit to 
themselves. It may arise possibly from their disinclina- 
tion to dig, and their total want of implements such as 
would enable them to dig successfully ; or it may perhaps 
be caused by the remembrance, handed down to them 
by tradition, of the fearful sufferings experienced by 
their ancestors at the hands of the Spaniards, and no 
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