The Jefe Civile at Catalina assisted me in my effort to open up the country and active operations were soon under way. The natives, who were living just as when Columbus discovered them, and wearing no more clothes than could be noticed, were attracted by the prosperity which it was presumed would follow our development work, and little _pueblos_ sprang up along the river on both sides of us. These people, working directly for the company or under a license on a royalty basis, were employed chiefly in cutting timber and collecting _balata_ gum, which has many of the qualities of rubber without its elasticity and is caught by tapping the trees. The native labor was not very satisfactory at the best, as judged by American standards, and we imported some negroes from Trinidad, who were little better. Our concession covered a territory larger than the State of Massachusetts, nearly all of which was _terra incognita_. It was out of the question to think of trying to go all over it, but, to gain an intelligent idea as to the nature of the inland country and its resources, I made one trip into the interior, toward the disputed border of British Guiana, which was our eastern limit. But for the boundary dispute between Venezuela and England the Orinoco Company never would have secured its concession, for the shrewd Guzman granted it with the idea that the Americans would colonize the territory and effectively resist the British invasion, which he was powerless to do. In their progressive search for gold--the continued pursuit of Raleigh’s will-o’-the-wisp--the Englishmen in Guiana were advancing farther and farther into Venezuela and carrying the boundary with them, or claiming that it was always just ahead of them, which, so far as Venezuela’s protests went, amounted to the same thing. It was, in fact, the sweet siren song of gold that caused the establishment of the three Guianas, so that the British, French, and Dutch might prosecute the search under the most favorable conditions.