The Gold Industry in Guiana. 8i 
Golden Adventure, the Governor, by his Letters, com- 
manded (for they sent some of the Gold to him) that a 
Guard should be set at the mouth of the River, and 
prohibited all People from going up that River, it con- 
ducting to those Mountains of Gold.."* 
The Dutch, however, do not appear to have always 
enforced the prohibition of mining, as in the year 17 19, 
the authorities of Berbice contracted with SlMON ABRA- 
HAMS, a Jew, to search for gold and silver, of which he 
was to have a sixteenth share. It appears that he found 
gold, but not in paying quantities, therefore the specu- 
lation was abandoned and ABRAHAMS returned to 
Holland in 1724. The Jews appear to have been the 
principal goldsmiths in the seventeenth century, and 
played an important part in the gold expeditions of the 
time. It is probable that the persons mentioned in the 
following despatch of CHARLES II. to Lord WiLLOUGHBY 
in 1665, may have heen employed in prospering in 
Surinam : — " Whereas certain Jews, under pretence of 
ability to discover and improve a gold mine in the West 
Indies, have fraudulently induced His Majesty to make 
them free denizens of England, with power to trade 
everywhere, — it is His Majesty's pleasure that their 
patents of denization be esteemed void, that they make 
good stranger's customs for all the gold wherein they 
have traded to Barbados, and then be banished thence. 
The names of the Jews in Barbados are, ISAAC ISRAEL 
de Piso, Aaron Israel de Piso, with his two sisters 
and two brethren, MOSES and his mother, sent thither 
by Abraham COHEN. And, whereas His Majesty for 
* Oroonoko, about 1670. 
I 
