"_IN THE LAND O' MAZARUNI_"
Eagerly I scanned the waters and either shore, determined that nothing
should escape me, that I should see everything and enjoy all that
there was to be enjoyed.
The captain sat, complacently smoking, at the stern of the boat, the
great steering paddle, tied to the stern with thongs, in his hands. He
looked as bored as if crossing the street to buy an evening paper. How
could he, when there was such glorious adventure, I wondered. But
afterwards I realized that twenty years of navigating the river had
somewhat dulled the novelty of it for him. With him it was work, and
nothing more.
To a boy used to paddling our own style of light canoes, the paddling
methods of those black men seemed the most awkward in the world. Yet
they "got there," and I doubt if any crew of white men, without years
of practice, could have propelled the heavy craft as easily as they.
Their method was to bend forward, holding the paddle horizontally and
sliding it along the gunwale with a loud scraping noise, then suddenly
lean over sidewise and dig the paddle viciously into the water, giving
a sturdy backward tug with it, still scraping the paddle against the
gunwales. At the end of this stroke they returned the paddle to the
horizontal position with a loud thumping noise, sat up straight, then
leaned forward and repeated the stroke.
They kept perfect time. No varsity crew boys ever worked in unison at
the oars any better, and they were forever singing. It didn't matter
whether they were paddling twenty feet across a narrow inlet or making
an all day pull upstream, they always had music with their paddling.
They were crude songs, partly English that was scarcely
understandable, partly native dialect and partly something else that
may have been handed down to them from their ancestors who were
captured in Africa so many generations ago and brought over by the
early Dutch and English slave traders.
If the water was smooth and open, with no current, our twenty paddle
men would sing as softly as the whispering of a summer breeze. But if
there was a current they would sing louder. And the more difficult the
paddling, the louder they would sing. In boiling rapids where it took
every ounce of their strength and they had to take quick, short
strokes to keep going, their voices arose to an almost howling
crescendo.
Soon Bartica was lost to view around a point of land. For nearly six
months we were to see no more civilization than Indian villages here
and there, hidden far back from the river bank. As we swung up into
the broad river where the current became strong enough to cause the
paddlers to use a little extra "elbow grease" they broke into a queer
song which I heard so many times after that, that it still rings in my
ears. I cannot translate it. I do not know what it means, but imagine
that it is some sort of love song to some dusky "Lena." This is the
way it sounds:
"_San, Lena, chile, I do love yo';
Me know so, hear so, yes!
Le, le, le, le, le, le,
Blow, ma booly boy, blow! Califo 'ge 'ole!
Splenty o'gol's for A've been tol'
I' th' lan' o' Mazaruni!_"
We came in sight of another boat. On the Mazaruni every boat one sees
that is going in the same direction is an "adversary" and every
paddler believes that it is his duty to pass it. Then you see some
fancy paddle strokes, so weird and unusual and grotesque that they are
difficult to describe. One would think that they were trying more to
awe each other with their paddle gesticulations than with speed. How
they race upstream, each determined to get and keep the lead! The
captain told me that many lives were lost at rapids because the racing
paddlers would give thought only to getting into the narrow passes
first and were frequently crashed upon the rocks and overturned.
Not far from the little town is Kalacoon, the biological station where
at various times Professor Beebe and the other scientists take up
their intimate studies of tropical life. This station is on a high
hill where the Mazaruni and Essequibo Rivers join. It was at this
place that Colonel Roosevelt stopped when he visited the colony.
From this point the vegetation on both sides of the river became so
dense that it seemed almost like greenish-black solid walls. No huts
or signs of human life were visible at first. But finally, with sharp
eyes, we got so we could detect a slight opening, a log landing at the
water's edge or a faint suggestion of a thatched hut in back of the
shore row of trees.
It would have been fearfully monotonous but for the fact that Lewis
and I devised a new sort of game--to see which one could detect the
greater number of signs of human habitation. Our natives, with sharper
eyes, would verify our discoveries. All this was in the Boviander
section, where the natives come down from "'Bove yonder." Just before
nightfall we reached the foot of the first falls and landed to make
camp for the night.
Before the big boat touched land Lewis and I had leaped ashore to
stretch our legs. The blacks jumped out into the shoal water and
swung the boat into place and made it fast. Jimmy began taking ashore
our shelters. Suddenly he began a frantic search and in despair cried:
"No cookum!"
"You bet you 'cookum,'" I shouted, "I'm starved."
"No cookum! No cookum!" repeated the distracted boy, mournfully.
Lewis investigated and came back with a long face.
"We did a bright thing," he muttered.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Left all of our cooking outfit down at the village!"
"There's two things to do, go without them or go back and get them," I
suggested.
"Can't go without 'em," said Lewis.
"Then there's one thing to do," I laughed. I was not to be filled with
gloom. The prospects of a great adventure were far too joyous. Our
landing was at the last settlement of the Bovianders. These half
Dutch, half Negro natives speak fairly understandable English. I
scouted around amongst them, found a good canoe, took three black men
and set out downriver. The two paddlers were sturdy boys and, going
down with the current, they fairly made that old canoe whizz.
It was midnight when we got back to the village. Everyone was asleep
except the dogs. They greeted us with howls, and many of the men
turned out. Perhaps they thought they were to be attacked by some
savage tribe. But we soon explained, got our cooking outfit, lashed it
carefully to the canoe and started back.