p. 11 | Dutch Guiana by Prof. H. E. Dosker, D.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 20, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 33.

Dutch Guiana.

By Prof. H. E. Dosker, D.D.

Dutch Guiana is hemmed in between British and French Guiana, and covers a territory of some sixty thousand square miles, of which all but one-fifteenth part is an unexplored and impenetrable wilderness. The sources of the Surinam are still veiled in mystery, and explorers are deterred by the deadly malaria of the upper-river regions. The mixed population of Dutch Guiana is estimated at about sixty thousand, exclusive of some eighteen thousand bush negroes and an uncertain number of Indians.

These bush negroes are the descendants of runaway slaves, and they inhabit the dense jungles of the interior. There are three tribes of them—the Aukanians, the Saramaccans, and the Bekon, or Moesinga. All have lapsed into complete heathenism, but there are some traces of a former connection with Christianity. As chief god they worship Gran-Gado (great God), whose wife is Maria, and whose son is Jesi Kist. They are, however, polytheists, and worship forest-gods, water-gods, air-gods, etc. The country they inhabit is called by themselves the land of the shadow of death. The climate, especially in the rainy season, is pestilential, and the swift and turbulent rivers are practically unnavigable.

In the heart of the maiden forest, on the banks of the Saramacca, lies the village of Maripastoon, and here the first missionaries (Moravian), Calker and Bramberg, began their labors, in 1863. There they found that a work of reformation was being carried on by a negro man, who had come to the country with his parents from Paramaribo, when but thirteen years of age. He had not known anything about Christianity, and his parents were heathen. But in his own mysterious way God gave him light, and led him to labor, amid many trials and much tribulation, for the rescue of the people from heathenism. When the missionaries arrived, they met a cordial welcome, and found that John King's influence had extended far beyond his home village. John King is the name he assumed on being baptized.—Prof. H. E. Dosker, D.D.