La Providence (Suriname)

Former Labadist plantation on the upper Suriname River. In The Girl Who Drew Butterflies Maria Merian travels upstream to it and finds it nearly deserted.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies	Joyce Sidman	journey waypoint	Maria travels upstream to the Labadists’ old outpost and finds it eerily quiet.

The Girl Who Drew Butterflies — Joyce Sidman (2018)

Source: The Girl Who Drew Butterflies · Original · Readwise highlight

She and Dorothea journeyed far upstream to La Providence, the former Labadist outpost where Cornelis van Sommelsdijk had collected the specimens Maria had seen at Waltha Castle.

• Role: journey waypoint
• In the book: Maria and Dorothea journey far up the Surinam River to La Providence, the outpost from which the specimens she saw at Waltha Castle came. They find it eerily quiet, with only a few Labadists left; the castle’s lord Cornelis van Sommelsdijk had been killed by his own soldiers and many enslaved people had escaped into the jungle.
• Why it matters: It links her Labadist years with Surinam and shows the colony’s dangers; the text gives it only a short passage.