Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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These Dangers, Too Frequent Formerly, Exist No Longer,
Either In The Missions Of Carony, Or In Those Of The Orinoco; But The
Independent Caribs Continue, On Account Of Their Connection With The
Dutch Colonists Of Essequibo, An Object Of Mistrust And Hatred To The
Government Of Guiana.
These tribes favour the contraband trade along
the coast, and by the channels or estuaries that join the Rio
Barima
to the Rio Moroca; they carry off the cattle belonging to the
missionaries, and excite the Indians recently converted, and living
within the sound of the bell, to return to the forests. The free
hordes have everywhere a powerful interest in opposing the progress of
cultivation and the encroachments of the Whites. The Caribs and the
Aruacas procure fire-arms at Essequibo and Demerara; and when the
traffic of American slaves (poitos) was most active, adventurers of
Dutch origin took part in these incursions on the Paragua, the
Erevato, and the Ventuario. Man-hunting took place on these banks, as
heretofore (and probably still) on those of the Senegal and the
Gambia. In both worlds Europeans have employed the same artifices, and
committed the same atrocities, to maintain a trade that dishonours
humanity. The missionaries of the Carony and the Orinoco attribute all
the evils they suffer from the independent Caribs to the hatred of
their neighbours, the Calvinist preachers of Essequibo. Their works
are therefore filled with complaints of the secta diabolica de Calvino
y de Lutero, and against the heretics of Dutch Guiana, who also think
fit sometimes to go on missions, and spread the germs of social life
among the savages.
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