Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/69

 The Guiana Boundary 59 found none save that in the latter river, just above where it receives the Tapacuma creek, he saw "a silk cotton tree, at the side of which," as an Arawak Indian assured him, " in times past a Dutch- man from Essequibo had his dwelling and good farms." There, having landed, Inciarte " found almost on the very bank a cocoa plantation of a few huge trees with a multitude of little plants " — probably a survival of the colony of the preceding century. Yet more interesting, perhaps, is the map drawn up at the same time by the young engineer and now first published. It is the most care- ful one of this region prior to the researches of Schomburgk, and it leaves us no doubt as to the site of the points described by In- ciarte. It is amusing to note how even this careful explorer shared the Spanish belief in a toiun of Essequibo — " villa dc Esqidbo " — which he places on the west shore of the river, opposite Fort Island. It was already known — though now in more detail — that, on the basis of his reconnoissance, Inciarte recommended to the Span- ish authorities the establishment of two fortified settlements, one at the site of the Dutch post on the upper Moruca, the other in the Pomeroon ; but the Venezuelans now produce a somewhat startling body of documents showing that this project for the occupation of lower Guiana was never lost from sight by Spain till the very eve of the revolt of the colonies. As to the Waini and the Barima, Inciarte's diary and map are, of course, not less precious evidence than as to their eastern neigh- bors. Of the only trace of European occupation he found here — the abandoned plantation of the Dutchman " Mener Nelch " — he speaks no more fully than in the report we had already ; but its site, on the Aruka, he describes with more minuteness. More novel and not less interesting is the much earlier testimony of the above-quoted letter of De Fijn, Commandeur of the Dutch in the Pomeroon, as to a seventeenth-century reconnoissance of the Barima. " Having left the river Orinoco," writes the Dutch governor, who is reporting to his principals in Holland a trading trip which at their instance he has just made to Santo Thome, " and coming by way of the river Barima on January 15, 1663, I resolved to inspect the aforesaid place, in order to see whether it was suitable to dwell in and whether vessels could navigate the river." Accordingly he pushed up the stream some twenty hours as far as a creek (doubtless the Aruka) 16 or 17 Dutch miles, as he thought, from the mouth of the river. Here, " fully half an hour up," he found high land "with fairly good soil and which could well be settled by our people if the population in these regions be-