6o G. L. Burr came so great that all the lands now lying idle were cultivated." It is our earliest tidings of Dutch interest in the Barima. Nor does the new research bring us aught else which adds to our knowledge of Dutch activity in these parts or makes more probable the exist- ence there at any time of a Dutch post or of other settlers than those already known ; for the present-day testimony, Indian and official, to the presence along the Barima of signs of old-time cul- tivation proves nothing as to its date or source. But to the history of the Barima there comes a contribution from an unexpected quarter. In April of 1899 M. Henri Froide- vaux, than whom there is no more eminent student of French co- lonial history (he has since been called to a lectureship in that sub- ject at the Sorbonne), wrote for the Rcviic dcs Questions Historiqitcs an admirable review of " the American reports on the Anglo-Vene- zuelan controversy." It is not merely a review: it supplements. Much more, he states from personal knowledge, might have been learned of the part played in the Barima by the French of the An- tilles in the eighteenth century. The errand of Nicolas Gervais, the French Bishop of Oran, on these shores about 1730 was, he intimates, something beyond the conversion of the Indians. He knows of " French designs on this region between 1730 and 1740," mentioning the formation at this date at St. Pierre in Martinique of a private company whose object was to colonize the territories be- tween the Orinoco and the Essequibo and which sent in 1738 an e.xpedition, under one Foucaut du Razet, " to visit these places and there make the inspection necessary for the proposed establishment." This expedition, whose report, he says, may be found in the ar- chives of the French Ministry of the Colonies,' coasted the mainland from the Essequibo to the Barima and along the southern mouth of the Orinoco, seeking four Frenchmen who were alleged to have been for seventeen months in that region. The Caribs entered readily into negotiations with them, which are recounted at some length. Foucaut du Razet heard also, in these parts, from a Frenchman who had long lived in the Essequibo, the story that this region had been given to the Elector of Bavaria, who had ceded it to the King of Sweden — only, in this French version, it was not the King of Spain, but La France," that "gave this part of la France eqninoxialc ' ' to Bavaria. What is more, he can tell us what became of the Swedish enterprise which, a few years earlier, stirred such alarm in Orinoco and Essequibo. "The King of Swe- den," he says, "sent thither three years and a half ago- one of his • " Correspondance Generale, C'*, Guyane, Tome XVII. ( 1737-1740), fol. 339 ets. 2 It is not easy to reconcile ttiis date, so exactly given, with the 1732 of which we learn from the Spanish testimony.
