- Serritos, On The Road To The Plaga Chicha, Where We Meet With Some Fine Tamarind Trees; St. Francis, Towards The South-East; And The Great Suburb Of The Guayquerias, Or Guayguerias.

The name of this tribe of Indians was quite unknown before the conquest.

The natives who bear that name formerly belonged to the nation of the Guaraounos, of which we find remains only in the swampy lands of the branches of the Orinoco. Old men have assured me that the language of their ancestors was a dialect of the Guaraouno; but that for a century past no native of that tribe at Cumana, or in the island of Margareta, has spoken any other language than Castilian.

The denomination Guayqueria, like the words Peru and Peruvian, owes its origin to a mere mistake. The companions of Christopher Columbus, coasting along the island of Margareta, the northern coast of which is still inhabited by the noblest portion of the Guayqueria nation,* (* The Guayquerias of La Banda del Norte consider themselves as the most noble race, because they think they are less mixed with the Chayma Indian, and other copper-coloured races. They are distinguished from the Guayquerias of the continent by their manner of pronouncing the Spanish language, which they speak almost without separating their teeth. They show with pride to Europeans the Punta de la Galera, or Galley's Point, (so called on account of the vessel of Columbus having anchored there), and the port of Manzanillo, where they first swore to the whites in 1498, that friendship which they have never betrayed, and which has obtained for them, in court phraseology, the title of fieles, loyal.

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