Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/641

 COLONIES. 617 oient for a sea voyage, made them for the present relinquish the 1763-5 project of quitting the Strait. To increase the means of subsist- ence, it was determined to separate the people into small divisions. About twenty returned to San Felipe : the remainder spread them- selves in small parties along the coast. Some ground had been cleared and sown with grain ; but their agricultural attempts were not productive. Pretty, in his account of the voyage of Mr. Cavendish, has related that during the time the Spaniards were in the S|trait "they could never have anything to grow or in anywise Hoetiie prosper, and on the other side, the Indians preyed on them." It native* is probable that the natives, with whom the Spaniards were not upon friendly terms, destroyed their crops and prevented their deriving assistance from the cultivation of the ground. A short time before the arrival of the vessels of Mr. Cavendish, all who remained living of the parties along the coast, and of the Reduced to people of San Fdipe, joined ; their number being reduced by hunger ®^***®«^ and sickness to eighteen (fifteen men and three women). In the town of San Felipe, many lay dead in their houses, and a dead even in their clothes, those who were left alive not having strength *°'^°* or spirits to bury their deceased companions. The town at length became so tainted that the survivors could not longer remain in it. Some among them proposed that they should attempt to go by land to the Biver de la Plate ; but the smallness of their number, their exhausted strength, and the danger of finding the natives every- where hostile, were objections to this plan; and the majority trust- ing to the arrival of some ship for their deliverance, it was there- fore agreed to travel to the first settlement (Nombre de Jesus). In their journey along the coast, they passed many dead bodies of their countrymen who had perished in seeking for subsistence, or in travelling from one to the other settlement, and some who had been killed by the natives. The history of the French colony sent out in 1763 to Cayenne FreDch (French Guiana) forms another illustration of the same kind Uon. " Chois^ul, the Prime Minister, having obtained for himself and his cousin Praslin a concession of the country between the Kourou and the Marone, sent out about twelve thousand volunteer colonists, mainly from Alsace and Lorraine [which had been ceded to France in 1697]. They were landed at the mouth of the Kourou, where no preparation had been made for their reception, and where even water was not to be obtained. The necessary tools for tillage were wanting. By 1765, no more than nine hundred and eighteen colo- nists remained alive, and these were a famished, fever-stricken band. Some A long investigation by the Parliament of Paris proved only that blundered. some one had blundered. '^ — ^Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art Guiana. Digitized by VjOOQIC