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 The Guiana Boitndary 6i vessels to reconnoitre the place and take possession ; but this ves- sel having perished on the way back to Europe, with all on board, par Ic travels dc la Btriiuidc, no Swede has ever again been seen here." This Swedish legend' has been made an object of careful re- search by an English scholar, too, the Rev. George Edmundson, who devoted to it an interesting article in the Eiiglisli Historical Re- view for January, 1899. For a cession to or by the Elector of Bavaria he can find neither proof nor probabihty, nor was a Swedish charter or royal commission ever granted for such a Guiana colony ; whence he concludes that the Barima project " was probably a pri- vate enterprise, connived at perhaps and indirectly supported by the Swedish government, but without any actual sanction of the authorities." Is it not possible that the Bavarian legend is an out- growth of the actual Guiana grant in 1669 by the Dutch to the Count of Hanau ? The promoter of this Hanau scheme, the versa- tile Dr. Becher, had earlier been in relations with the court of Bavaria, and this court is said to have made (about 1665) overtures first to the Dutch West India Company and then to England for the grant of a stretch of the Guiana coast. As to the Amacura, except the evidence already mentioned for the presence of Dutchmen there in 1730-1740, nothing new has come to light. ^ Nor, although Dutch haunting and harassing of the Orinoco was yet more abundantly shown, was there found any evidence of attempt at possession in that river. More fruitful was the research as to the great western branches of the Essequibo. The much vexed question of the Cuyuni posts was set almost at rest by it. Nothing was found, indeed, as to the short-lived, if existent, one of 1703 ; but as to that of 1 754-1 75S there is now produced from the archives at Madrid ' a letter from the banks of the Caroni written on August 27, 1758, by the Capu- chin missionary Father Bispal to the Spanish commandant Iturriaga, which contains this luminous passage : " In the river Cuyuni the 1 As illustrating the obtnisiveness of this legend it is interesting to note that Inciarte, writing in 1779 from the Dutch post of Moruca to his chief the Spanish Intendant at Caracas, reports that the under-postholder there, "Paul Femero " (^Paulus Vermeere), ' ' said that the former Director-General of Essequibo told him in a letter, that the lands and rivers of Moruca and Guaina [Waini] belonged in ownership to the Dutch, and the creek of Barima and its lands to Sweden." The Director-General meant must be Storm van's Gravesande ; but Vermeere' s statement is wholly incredible. ' Something has rather been lost ; for the Spanish mission of Amacuro, mentioned in a footnote of the American Commission's report (I. 297) was on the Paria coast, and the " Amacura " guarded by Indians in 1797 proves but a misreading of Moruca. ' Hydrographic Depository, Madrid, B, 4a, Viceroyalty of Santa Fe, Vol. II., doc. No. 16.