Settlement in Guiana From earliest times IV

(CONTINUED FROM APRIL 21)

It is well here to try to realize the relative position of the three centres of Dutch population by that time established in Guiana, on the Pomeroon, the Essequibo and the Berbice. Each stood, as it were, in a clearing of land otherwise everywhere covered with dense forest down to the edge of the water. Between these clearings there was no road and no means of communication except by water. Between them lay a dense, trackless forest, inhabited only by [indigenous] Indians.
Gradually, however, in spite of the isolation, the settlers on the Essequibo on the one side, and on the Berbice on the other, began to extend their cultivation towards the then hardly known Demerara River, which lies between the two.

The Demerara, a river of large size was known, but so little was it regarded that when, at as late a time as 1672, the boundary between the two settlements of Essequibo and Berbice was defined, not the Demerara, but the small river Abary, probably because of the insignificant settlement which had existed for a brief time on it, was selected for the purpose.
It is time to turn to the history of the efforts of the English to colonize Guiana.
[After first forming small settlements in 1604 that ultimately failed in what is now French Guiana, the English by way of a Captain Roger North, in 1623] submitted to the English king further statements of the advantages of Guiana, of the injustices of the Spanish claim, and that the newly formed Dutch West India Company, though they had not as yet gained footing to the east of Essequibo, in the district covered by the English king’s grant (which was made in 1613 covering “of all that part of Guiana on the continent of America between the rivers Amazon and Dollesquebe”), were then designing to send two to three ships to take possession of that part of the country.
The Dutch expedition to which this referred was that which in the following year 1624, did in fact take possession of the Berbice and there formed the colony of that name. But North’s petition seems to have met with no immediate response. Yet in 1626 the attorney general of England was directed to prepare a bill of incorporation of the “Amazon Company” for the formation of which North had so long striven.
Accordingly a grant was prepared… [and] even though the company does not seem to have flourished; for about two years later a petition was presented to the king to take “the adventure to Guiana” under his protection…[as] it would appear that the [English] settlers were much harassed by enemies.
[In] 1635…the king was urged to prevent certain Dutch who seemed likely to find their way to Guiana, lest their settlement there should “cause quarrel and bloodshed between the two nations”, and in 1638 [another petition was] presented to the king… in which, after expressing mighty fears that the Dutch were likely to take possession of those parts, and complaining bitterly of the apathy of the old company, the writer craves that the king will once more interfere.
It is convenient to pause again for a moment, to recall to memory the number and nature of the centres of population then in Guiana. North-westward were the settlements on the twin rivers Pomeroon and Morooca, which had no definite and distinctive government and cannot therefore be called colonies. Next, to the eastward, was the colony of Essequibo, and still more to the east, the colony of Berbice. These places had all been founded by Dutchmen and were in possession of Dutchmen. (TO BE CONTINUED)
(From: ‘Timehri: being the journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana’ 2. The founding of the Colonies A.D. 1580 – 1745. Edited by E.F.Im Thurn. Vol 11:1883.)
CORRECTION: Last week’s caption ‘Cannon at Kykoverall’ should have read ‘Cannon at Fort Zeelandia’