[1] The origin of the name is somewhat obscure, and has been variously interpreted. But the late Col. G. E. Church supplies the following note, which has the weight of his great authority: "I cannot confirm the suggestion of Schomburgk that Guayana 'received its name from a small river, a tributary of the Orinoco', supposed to be the Waini or Guainia. In South America, east of the Andes, it was the common custom of any tribe occupying a length of river to call it simply 'the river'; but the other tribes designated any section of it by the name of the people living on its banks. Many streams, therefore, had more than a dozen names. It is probable that no important river had one name alone throughout its course, prior to the time of the Conquest. The radical _wini_, _waini_, _wayni_, is found as a prefix, and very frequently as a termination, to the names of numerous rivers, not only throughout Guayana but all over the Orinoco and Amazon valleys. For instance, Paymary Indians called the portion of the Purus river which they occupied the _Waini_. It simply means water, or a fountain of water, or a river. The alternative suggestion that Guayana is an Indian word signifying 'wild coast,' I also think untenable. This term, applied to the north-east frontage of South America between the Orinoco and the Amazon, is found on the old Dutch map of Hartsinck, who calls it 'Guiana Caribania of de Wilde Kust,' a name which must have well described it when, in 1580, some Zealanders, of the Netherlands, sent a ship to cruise along it, from the mouth of the Amazon to that of the Orinoco, and formed the first settlement near the river Pomeroon. The map of Firnao Vaz Dourado, 1564, calls the northern part of South America, including the present British Guiana, 'East Peru.' An anonymous Spanish map, about 1566, gives Guayana as lying on the east side of the Orinoco just above its mouth. About 1660, Sebastien de Ruesta, cosmographer of the _Casa de Contractacion de Seville_, shows Guayana covering the British, French and Dutch Guayanas. According to the map of Nicolas de Fer, 1719, a tribe of Guayazis (Guyanas) occupied the south side of the Amazon river, front of the island of Tupinambara, east of the mouth of the Madeira. Aristides Rojas, an eminent Venezuelan scholar, says that the Mariches Indians, near Caracas, inhabited a site called Guayana long before the discovery of South America by the Spaniards. Coudreau in his _Chez nos Indiens_ mentions that the _Roucouyennes_ of Guayana take their name from a large tree in their forests, 'which appears to be the origin of the name Guayane.' According to Michelana y Rojas, in their report to the Venezuelan government on their voyages in the basin of the Orinoco, 'Guyana derives its name from the Indians who live between the Caroni river and the Sierra de