TJic Guiana Boundary 63 As to Spanish occupation and Spanish aggressions, however, the Venezuelans produced fresh evidence of some importance. The existence of the westernmost of the Spanish missions, that of Cur- umo, was established by the contemporary testimony of the Ca- puchin prefect, from which we learn the date of its formal dedica- tion, or " founding " (June, 1749), the number and tribe of its Indians (180 Caribs), and the precise duration of its existence (a year and four months), and was confirmed by that of the Spanish governor of the province. Much of detail (which, however, as in the case of the Curumo mission, only strengthened results already reached for the American Commission) was gained, too, as to the identity and activities of these missions in general. Of the remoter Spanish movements in the Wenamu, the Mazaruni, the Siparuni, rumored by a scared Dutch postholder in 1756, nothing more could be learned. The existence and site of the Spanish fortified post on the Cuyuni, they were able, however, to support by added evidence. Regard- ing no point of fact was the controversy so keen or so stubborn. A page of Governor Marmion's manuscript was photographed in the Spanish archives to demonstrate that the new to^vn which in October, 1793, he reported as having been begun was near the union of the Cuyuni with the Curumo, and not (as it had been un- intelligibly transcribed for Great Britain) with the Orinoco ;^ and the original of Schomburgk's great physical map of Guiana had to be produced in court to show his representation of the ruins of this post (on the south of the Cuyuni, a little below its confluence with the Curumo), somehow left out in the British reproduction of the map. As to Spanish doings in the coast region, I have already spoken of the recovery of the interesting journal of Inciarte's bold recon- noissance in 1779, and of the documents showing the Spanish schemes later based on it. Next to these in interest was perhaps a fragment, of the year 1785, from the diary of Captain Mateo Bel- tran, the Spanish coast-guard who during that decade was a terror to the Dutch in the region adjoining the Orinoco. But, while these amply illustrate the Spanish aim to control this district, there is in them no mention of the slightest actual settlement there. Such is what seems to me the most important new evidence brought to light during the course of the arbitral proceedings ; and such in brief are the changes which this evidence makes necessary ' There fell into my hands in 1898, bought from the Paris bookseller Dufosse (in whose catalogue Professor Jameson, my old colleague of the boundary investigation, es- pied it and pointed it out to me), what is clearly an earlier draft of this report of Mar- mion's, corrected and annotated by his own hand. It tells nothing more, but confirms the testimony of the final document. It now belongs to the Cornell University Library.
