62 G. L. Burr Dutch continue doing somewhat; last year, 1757, in an island of the said Cuyuni called Tocoropati, two days' journey above the mouth of the said river, they commenced a fortified house on the top of a little hill in the said island, and a cane plantation and a sugar mill in the lower part of the island ; and this year the house is already built and fortified, and the mill is grinding the cane from the plantation." This testimony is confirmed and amplified by two letters of the following month (from the same archives), in which the Capuchin prefect, Benito de la Garriga, reports to Iturriaga the Spanish raid on the Dutch post. " Navigating down stream," he writes, "they found an island of much elevation called Tocoropata, where the Post was a short time previously (it was abandoned be- cause it had not sufficient lands for plantations), and on the way they burnt the houses, with those of the ten negroes, in which also lived several postholders ; and, after half a day's navigation, they arrived at Aguigua, on the mainland, on this side of Cuyuni, where the Dutch had taken the preliminary steps for establishing the post — the farm cleared and not burned, large, with one or two huts, with the ofject of at once making a stronghold when they had sufficient provisions— in the meantime maintaining themselves on flour of maize and wheat, spending the articles of barter given them by the Governor for their support." In the face of such evidence the British relinquished their claim that the post was at or near the mouth of the Curumo, and both sides agreed in recognizing the is- land of Tokoro as the first site of the post. Adequate explanation seeming to both thus found of Schomburgk's Indian tradition of a post in that island, they further concurred in placing the restored post of 1 766- 1 769 not far above that island in the Tonoma rapids where it found its last site. It is not improbable that in this they were right ; yet, in view of the explicitness of that tradition, of the absence of evidence for any other site, of the known presence of bread-grounds at the new post, and of the Dutch governor's ag- gressive purpose, I must still think it possible that the first site of this later post too was at Tokoro. No other Dutch dealings in the upper Cuyuni or Mazaruni were disclosed, save that the dye-col- lecting, timber-cutting, and food-gathering there was made more vivid by fresh illustration. On Dutch or Spanish claim to boundary in Guiana no new light was thrown. It was made clearer than ever that the Spaniards counted the Dutch intruders and that the Dutch felt free to encroach on unoccupied lands ; but the Dutch remonstrance of 1769 remains the one official communication between the two states suggesting a definite frontier.
