No. 398.

said Captain, from the thirteenth day of October of last year to date, with the said cruising launches under his command, and sent by the aforesaid Commandant General of Orinoco, has seized on the said Guarapiche and Theresen rivers a Spanish launch with twelve heifers, an English sloop with eighty mules, six horses, and five negroes, two columpos, or large sloops, one English and the other French, three English schooners, one small Bermuda sloop, of the same nation, one Spanish launch, with seven horses, some goods and implements, against which proceedings are now pending.

And in order that it may go on record, at the verbal request of the said Commandant General, Don Manuel Centurion, I issue this for all the legal and necessary effects.

Done in this Royal Accountant's office of Guayana, on the twentyeighth day of January, of the year seventeen hundred and sixty nine.

No. 399.

Certificate of Capuchin Fathers as to a visit by them to the Moruca; February 28, 1769.

[Reprinted from Blue Book, No 3, p. 163.]

WE, the Undersigned, certify, as by mandate of our Superior and permission of the Honourable Commandant-General of the River Oronoque, Don Manuel Centurion, that we have passed into Maruca in search of the Indians belonging to the Missions of the Capuchin Fathers of Catalonia, and by authority of the Fathers we give these presents the 28th day of February, 1769.

On behalf of the above-mentioned Fathers, we sign it.

BRO. F. DE CARRADIAC.
BRO. JPH A. DE CERVERA.

No. 400.

Extract from letter from Fray Benito de la Garriga, Prefect of the Capuchin Missions of the Lower Orinoco, to the King of Spain, exculpating himself for having sent Missionaries under his charge to take Indians from Point Barima and the Rivers Wayne and Moruca ; July 6, 1769.

[Reprinted from Blue Book, No. 1, pp. 117-118.]

Fray Benito de la Garriga, Prefect of the Missions of the Capuchins, of Catalonia, of the Province of Guayana, most humbly and reverently, and with profound respect, represents and makes known to your Majesty that some Aruaca and Guarauno Indians, having fled from our Missions of

No. 400.

Piacoa and San Joaquin, I sent two missionaries of our religious to collect them; and they went with an escort of soldiers and a launch, together with some other assistance, which your Commandant-General, Don Manuel Centurion, gave me, as he is accustomed to do.

They entered from the Orinoco by the Barima to the savannah which extends between the Rivers Wayne and Moruca, and which, as I understand, is territory of the jurisdiction of this province.

The missionaries there collected 140 Indians, besides some wild men of the said villages, and other Gentiles. And they found in the power of the Dutchman, living in the post of Moruca, three Indians with their children, whom he had enslaved and taken from the mouths of the Orinoco, as they explained to us, and from the River Maseruni. These the religious took away, together with others above mentioned, without violence or causing any injury to the Dutch.

And now the Governor of Essequibo finds in this a motive for complaining of your Commandant-General, charging him with the infraction of Treaties, outrages, and offences, being indignant because the same Commandant-General should have dislodged the people which he had surreptitiously in Barima last year.

The Commandant has replied to him, and among other things has said that the religious did not go by his orders, but by those of their Prefect, as is quite true, although they (the religious) did not act well in mistakingly giving to the Dutchman of the post a certificate ("papelito"), in which they stated that they were sent by order of the abovenamed Commandant, when it was by my order.

I am sure that I would not have complied with my obligations and the duty of my office if I had not sent the said religious on that commission, and as to what they have done in bringing the Indians to the Mission, I consider it is very lawful in my judgment.

And if the said Governor, without any reason, complains, I declare, for the reasons that I here give, that during the twenty-two years of my missionary office I have seen, and long beforehand, and in all the three chapters of the prefecture I hold, that the Dutch always have compelled me to be very vigilant, like my predecessors, to prevent the injuries they cause to our Missions.

The practice of those foreigners is now, as always, to penetrate to the interior of this province in order to kidnap and enslave Indians, your Majesty's vassals, and take them to their colony; their practice is as common as it is authorized by the Governor of Essequibo, and thus I understand it from the licences and passports which the said Governor gives, under his own hand, to the persons leaving the Colony for this traffic of enslaving Indians, until, without respect, they enter our Missions.

No. 401.

Complaint of Minister from Holland, referred to Manuel Centurion, Commandant of Guayana, for report, September 23, 1769.

[Reprinted from Blue Book, No. 3, pp. 280-281.]

The Minister of Holland has presented a note complaining of the proceedings of the Spaniards established on the Orinoco against the Colony of Essequibo, as stated in detail in the annexed paper. By order of the King I send you this document in order that, in view thereof, you may, with all possible despatch, and with all the necessary proofs, report what may have occurred in reference to the acts mentioned therein, and what may suggest itself to you on the subject for the information of His Majesty. May God preserve you many years!

No. 402.

Indorsements on file of Papers relating to Complaints by Dutch Minister, showing action taken and reference to the Fiscal for report, October 25, 1769.

FOR THE COUNCIL:

[Reprinted from Blue Book, No. 3, p. 314.]

Expediente" called for by the Dutch Minister, wishing to allege right and dominion in the Colony of Essequibo and fishery in that part of the River Orinoco, and that your Majesty's subjects trouble and unjustly disturb it.

The Señor Fiscal, in the inclosed answer of the 6th of the present month, August, requests that the whole affair may be handed over to some persons chosen by the Council to draw up a detailed report of it, and an abstract of all the previous papers, and whatever there may be thereto relating at the present day, and let the whole be returned to him for his opinion thereon.

Reply of the Fiscal of the 17th October, in which he says to deal with the "Expediente" in reference to the representation of the Dutch Minister, alleging the right of fishing in the Orinoco (upon which affair His Majesty has commanded to be informed), there are wanting documents, and requests that a search be made in the correspondence division (Secretaria) of New Spain, or, failing that, in the "Via Reservada."

NOTE. Having made a search in the "Secretaria " referred to for the papers mentioned in the reply of the Fiscal, the only ones found are those relating to the [official] visit of the Province of Cumaná, drawn up by the Governor, Don Joseph Diguja, in 1761, the map which accompanied this Report being in the Council Chamber, by virtue of their command. To the Fiscal for report.

Council, October 25, 1769.

No. 403.

Judicial Proceedings in 1770, resulting from the Complaints by the Minister from Holland.

[Reprinted from Blue Book, No. 3, p. 280.]

Year 1770. Judicial proceedings instituted in the Tribunal of the Commandant of Guayana concerning the affairs in the matter of the complaint made by the Minister of the Republic of Holland to the King our Sovereign in regard to the proceedings of the Spaniards of Orinoco against the Colony of Essequibo.

Order of Manuel Centurion, Commandant of Guiana, that Complaint by Holland be Judicially Investigated and Reported on; March 24, 1770.

[Reprinted from Blue Book, No. 3, p. 281.]

In the City of Guayana, on the 24th of March, 1770, I, Don Manuel Centurion, Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry and Commandant General of Orinoco and of the Province of Guayana, together with judicial witnesses in default of a notary; declare that for the more exact and punctual fulfilment of the Royal Order, which, under date of the 23rd of September last, His Excellency Friar Don Julian de Ariaga, Knight of Malta, communicated to me, together with a copy of another, extracted from the Book of Resolutions of their High Mightinesses the States-General of the United Provinces, presented by the Minister of Holland, complaining of the proceedings of the Spaniards established on the Orinoco against the Colony of Essequibo, in respect whereof His Excellency directs nie, by order of the King, to report with all possible despatch and with all necessary proofs what may have occurred in reference to the acts mentioned therein, and what may suggest itself to me on the subject for the information of His Majesty; therefore I must order, and do order, that, placing at the head of these papers the said Royal Order and the document sent with it, there be drawn up and made in this tribunal a judicial report of the acts which the annexed note of the States-General recites in detail: and that for this purpose the most creditable and truthful witnesses who may be found to have knowledge of the said acts in this city and its environs do make formal dep. ositions upon oath. Thus I have decreed, ordered, and signed together with the undersigned witnesses, whereunto we certify.

No. 405.

Extracts from Deposition of Friar Benito de la Garriga, ex-Prefect of the Catalan Capuchin Mission of Guayana, as to the Complaint of the Minister from Holland; March 24, 1770.

[Reprinted (with corrections) from Ven. Sp. Docs., Vol. 2, pp. 187-192.]

On the same day, month, and year [Mar. 24, 1770], in order to carry out the investigation to be instituted, in compliance with the above rule the Tribunal had before it the Reverend Father ex-Prefect of the Catalan Capuchin Mission of Guayana, Fr. Benito de la Garriga, to whom the Commander General administered the oath in legal form, tacto pectore in verbo sacerdotis, and promised to tell the truth of everything that he knew and was interrogated, and having been examined by the tenor of the above paper, presented by the Minister of Holland and inserted in folios 1 to 6 of this proceeding, which was read to him literally, he said:

That the Hollanders are not nor have ever been in possession of the rivers or rivulets emptying into the sea, from Esquivo exclusive down to the mouth of Orinoco; that they had been only tolerated, on that side, to have a small guard of two Europeans and a few Indians at a Barrack called the Post, on the eastern margin of the Moruca river, called by the Hollanders Maroco; that this establisment is not of "an almost immemorial time," because none of the Colony is so, for we know that said Colony commenced to exist towards the year sixteen hundred and fifty-nine. That it is not true that the Hollanders had had, nor have now possession of the Cuyuni river (called by them Cayoeny), because when they established a guard and Barrack, like that of Maruca, in the year seventeen hundred and forty seven (1747), to facilitate the inhuman traffic and capture of Indians, whom they surreptitiously enslaved, within the dominions of the King our Lord, for the culture of the plantations and improvement of their Colony, as soon as it came to our knowledge, in the year seventeen hundred and fifty-seven (1757), they were dislodged from there, so that neither in the Cuyuni, Maserony, Apanony nor any other rivers emptying into the Esquivo, have the Hollanders any possession; nor could it be tolerated that they should have it, because those rivers embrace almost all the territory of the Province of Guayana in their course from their western termini, where their headwaters originate, down to the eastern limit emptying into the Esquivo river. From that fancied possession it should result that the Hollanders would be the owners of the extensive Province of Guayana and that we, the Spaniards, had no more part of it than the said margin of Orinoco which is an absurdity.

That they are merely tolerated on the banks of the Esquivo river, running from southeast to northwest, almost parallel with the ocean coast, the eastern terminus of this Province of Guayana, the interior of which is left free to the Spaniards, their lawful possessors.

That he does not know, nor ever heard that the Spaniards have built any stronghold on the Cuyuni river nor in its vicinity, with a few nor