expect, Rose, to find any happiness in a union so hastily and wilfully
contracted? How could you think of fleeing by night from the home
where you have been sheltered since your childhood, where your every
wish has been gratified, and ample provision made for your happiness,
by one whose noble love you are incapable of appreciating? You have
been strangely deluded to think of trusting your life to one who could
propose so base a scheme.’
‘But what else could we do?’ said Rose, trying to defend her lover.
‘All things are fair in love and war. We knew that Mr Aslatt would
never consent to our marriage. But if he heard that we were actually
married, so that it was out of his power to separate us, he must then
have forgiven us.’
‘So I have no doubt Mr Hammond thought,’ I remarked. ‘But Rose, do you
positively think that Mr Aslatt would withhold his consent to your
marriage if he were convinced that it would promote your happiness?’
‘No, not if he believed that,’ replied Rose. ‘But nothing would
persuade him that Fritz Hammond could make me a good husband; he is
dreadfully prejudiced against him. And he would never overlook Mr
Hammond’s inferior position or forgive him for being poor, although he
comes of a good family, and no one can say anything against him.’
‘It is strange,’ I remarked, ‘that being of good family he should be in
his present position.’
‘There now; you are going to find fault with him!’ exclaimed Rose
pettishly. ‘He is not to be blamed for his position, for great
misfortunes have reduced him to it.’
‘How long is it since you promised to marry Mr Hammond?’ I inquired,
after a pause.
‘A little while before you came here,’ was the reply. ‘At first we
meant to tell Mr Aslatt all, and ask his consent; but he seemed so much
opposed to Mr Hammond, that he—I mean _we_—feared to do so. We thought
that if we settled the matter ourselves, it would cause Cousin less
pain in the end.’
‘Less pain to find that you had been deceiving him, and putting more
confidence in a comparative stranger, than in one who has befriended
you all your life! It was by strange reasoning you arrived at such a
conclusion, Rose!’
She made no reply.
‘I suppose you have been in the habit of meeting Mr Hammond
clandestinely in the garden,’ I continued; ‘you gaining access to it
unobserved by means of the so-called haunted rooms, against which you
were so careful to warn me. I could not have believed you so skilled in
subterfuge.’
Rose coloured deeply, and her head drooped in shame. ‘I am very sorry,
Miss Bygrave,’ she said penitently, after a long pause; ‘I see now that
I have acted wrongly. I have felt very unhappy all along at the thought
of deceiving my good Cousin, for indeed I love him truly; but I could
not bear to think of giving up Mr Hammond. I have often longed to
confess all to you, and I asked Fritz once if I might; but he said it
would be most imprudent, and would lead to his being parted from me for
ever. And now that will come to pass, I suppose. O dear me! what shall
I do? I am the most miserable girl in the world!’ So saying, Rose again
buried her face in the pillow and sobbed aloud.
‘Do you know what I should advise you to do?’ I said, when her emotion
had somewhat exhausted itself.
‘What?’ she asked in a smothered voice, without raising her head.
‘I think the best thing—the right thing for you to do is to confess all
to Mr Aslatt, and beg his forgiveness. He will accord it, I have no
doubt. It will give him great pain to hear of your folly; but it will
grieve him less to learn it from your lips than from mine.’
‘Oh, I cannot, Miss Bygrave! I cannot tell him! I don’t know what he
would do or say. He would be so angry with Mr Hammond!’
‘And he has just cause to be,’ I could not help saying. ‘But surely,
Rose, your past experience of Mr Aslatt’s goodness should lead you to
put more trust in his kindness of heart. You must know that he seeks
your happiness in everything. He will undoubtedly feel indignant
with the schoolmaster on account of the underhand manner in which he
has acted. But if he is convinced that you are sincerely attached to
each other, he will not, I believe, oppose your union; unless he has
grave reasons for thinking Mr Hammond unworthy of the place he holds
in your heart. You cannot expect that he will all at once consent to
your marrying a man who may be a mere adventurer, for all that we know
to the contrary, and who has certainly acted towards Mr Aslatt in a
dishonourable manner, which the hopelessness of his suit does not seem
to me to excuse.’
Rose made no reply; and I trusted my words would have their influence.
She lay still for some time, evidently engaged in deep and painful
thought. Gradually, however, the cloud passed from her brow, and
as morning was beginning to dawn, she fell into a sound sleep. I
watched her for a while; but by degrees weariness overcame my mental
excitement, and I also fell asleep.
BRITISH GUIANA.
On the vast extent of the South American continent the far-reaching
empire of Great Britain has planted its flag in one place only; it
possesses one-fifth of the country of Guiana, which lies within the
Torrid Zone, and forms the northern portion of South America. Of that
fifth section of Guiana, which is called Demerara—the capital of which
is George-town—only the civilised and cultivated part is known to
the dwellers in the colony, or to its chance visitors. The remaining
portion of the country was, however, a terra incognita to all but a
very few, until Mr Barrington Brown, in his _Canoe and Camp Life in
British Guiana_ (London: Edward Stanford), published the results of his
explorations.
The civilised and cultivated portion of the colony of British Guiana
consists of a narrow strip of sea-coast. Immediately behind this lies
a broad expanse of swampy ground, then comes rising wooded land, and
finally mountains and savannas which stretch westward, and are still
in their primitive condition, inhabited by little-known Indian tribes
and various species of wild animals. It is owing chiefly to the ‘Coolie
Labour Question’ that public attention has been of late years at all
directed to British Guiana; and as the colony is likely to become of
increased importance, an opportunity of learning particulars about
the hitherto mysterious territory which lies _behind_ the utilised
strip of coast belonging to it, yet utterly unreckoned in the sum
of civilisation, is one to be welcomed. This wild region is called
vaguely ‘the Interior,’ and with the exception of a few settlements
on the banks of the Lower Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo rivers, a
traveller penetrating its recesses at the present time would behold the
same condition of things there which existed in the days of Sir Walter
Raleigh. Mr Barrington Brown visited and explored a considerable extent
of this ‘Interior’ while he was engaged on the government geological
survey of the West Indies. He accomplished his journeys by means of
canoe-travelling; a method preferable to any other, as affording
opportunities for close observation, for obtaining picturesque aspects,
and in itself very agreeable.
His first voyage was up the Essequibo to the penal settlement of the
colony, where his Indian boatmen refused to remain even for one night,
such is their timid dread of the very notion of a prison. They would
not hang their hammocks in the empty sheds, but crossed the river and
camped in the forest, though one of them was suffering severely from
fever. At the penal settlement boats were purchased, and a crew hired
for the navigation of the Cuyuni, which afforded the Indians ample
opportunities for exhibiting their skill. ‘They worked splendidly in
the cataracts, swimming, diving, and wading in the strong currents
from rock to rock, while leading out the tow-ropes and hauling the
boats up.’ During the journey up this river the traveller encountered
in many parts a succession of rapids and cataracts. The difficulties
thus entailed, and the graphic account of how these difficulties were
surmounted, afford some notion of the laboriousness of nearly every
river voyage made by Mr Brown in the course of his explorations.
The scenes through which he passed were of rich and varied beauty.
Nothing terrible or threatening met his sight in that unknown land,
which seems to bear upon its face one broad beaming smile, answering
with fidelity to the smile of the sun. Rocky islets bearing clusters
of low trees, whose stems and branches are covered with orchids and
wild pines, rise from the broad bosom of the river, while its banks
are clothed with forest trees; and on the rocks under its waters is a
luxuriant growth of water-plants, bearing exquisite flowers. When the
sun is high, gorgeous butterflies, yellow, orange, and azure blue,
frequent the water’s edge in clusters, or flit over the open spaces
near the cataracts; and the river abounds in deep-bodied silvery-scaled
fish of various kinds.
The character of the scenery along the banks of the rivers, which form
a kind of network over the face of the country in Guiana, is chiefly
of the kind described above; but there is no monotony in it, and the
traveller is kept constantly amused by the birds and the insect life.
Morning and evening are marked by bands of screeching parrots crossing
the river to and from their feeding-grounds, and all along the banks
the kingfisher and the ibis abound. The Indian villages are generally
within a short distance of the river, and the harmless people are
unusually smart in their attire. The women wear an apron called a
_queyon_, formed of cotton and bead-work, ingeniously manufactured,
each bead being slipped on the cotton thread in its proper place as
it is being woven. The traveller frequently halted at the villages
while the natives prepared cassava bread for him, and he had a fair
opportunity of forming a judgment upon their intellectual status and
social condition. Both are superior to those of the average ‘natives’
with which books have made us acquainted, and Mr Brown notes as a
‘pleasing feature’ of the British Guiana Indians, that, as a rule, they
treat their women well, regarding them as equals and not as slaves.
The planters of the civilised portion of the country, kidnappers and
tyrants of the ‘coolie,’ might learn lessons of humanity and justice
from the ‘savages’ of the ‘Interior.’
A march through primeval forest to the Puruni was a less pleasant
experience than the river voyage; for the ‘ticks’ which infest the
forest took possession of the travellers. Of the numerous kinds
of pestilent insects Mr Brown gives a horrid description; but he
counterbalances it by that of the birds, the trees, the flowers, the
skies, and the wonderfully exhilarating influence of the climate.
The many mysterious sounds which proceed from primeval forest in all
countries where such forest exists, have given rise to superstitious
beliefs and fears. On their return journey to the penal settlement, Mr
Brown was made acquainted with the legendary ‘Didi’ of those remote
realms of forest and river. ‘The first night after leaving Peaimah,’ he
says, ‘we heard a long, loud, and most melancholy whistle proceeding
from the depths of the forest; at which some of the men exclaimed in
an awed tone of voice: “The Didi!” Two or three times the whistle was
repeated, sounding like that made by a human being, beginning in a
high key and dying slowly and gradually away in a low one. There were
conflicting opinions amongst the men regarding the origin of these
sounds. Some said they proceeded from the wild hairy man or Didi of
the Indians; others that they were produced by a large and poisonous
snake which lives in one tree from its youth up, where it attains a
great size, living on birds which are so unfortunate as to alight near
it, and thus become victims to its powers of fascination. The Didi is
said by the Indians to be a short, thick-set, and powerful wild man,
whose body is covered with hair, and who lives in the forest. A belief
in the existence of this fabulous creature is universal over the whole
of British, Venezuelan, and Brazilian Guiana. On the Demerara River I
afterwards met a half-bred woodcutter, who related an encounter that he
had with two Didi, a male and female, in which he successfully resisted
their attacks with his axe.’
The main object of the explorer’s most important voyage up the
Essequibo was to obtain a sight of the great Roraima Mountain, which
has been seen by few white men.
He began to ascend from the river-bank, under the guidance of an
Indian, at the valley of the Cotinga; and first he saw, rising two
hundred feet above the level of the plain, the great Waetipu or Sun
Mountain, formed of horizontal beds of sandstone (this formation is
as peculiar to the region as the strange level hill-tops are to the
Cape district of South Africa), the alternate hard and soft layers of
which produced most singular traces on its sides, while near it stood
two curious conical peaks. He rested that night in an old mud-walled
palm-thatched house, situated on a great lonely elevated land, and
early next forenoon the travellers rounded the end of the Sun Mountain,
and a glorious view of Roraima burst upon them, with the sun’s rays
lighting up its curious details. ‘Turn,’ says our author, ‘in any
direction I would, most wonderful scenery was presented to my view,
from the great pink precipiced Roraima in the north-west, looking like
a huge fortification surrounded by a gigantic glacis, to the great
undulating plain stretching southward as far as the eye could reach,
where at the horizon land melted into sky.’
This wonderful mountain is one of the greatest natural curiosities on
the face of the earth, and it is much to be regretted that Mr Brown
was not able to inspect it more closely, and examine its structure
and individual features more in detail. This was, however, rendered
impossible by that prosaic but irresistible obstacle, want of food! In
the vicinity of the mountain he found only deserted villages, and the
scanty supply of provisions which he and his guide had carried up from
the plain was speedily exhausted. Our traveller succeeded in ascending
the sloping portion of the marvellous mountain—in which Nature seems to
have furnished Art with a perfect model of a fortress—to a height of
five thousand one hundred feet above the level of the sea. Between the
highest point reached by him and the foot of the great perpendicular
portion, towering high above, is a band of thick forest. ‘Looking up at
the great wall of rock,’ says the writer, ‘two thousand feet in height,
I could see that a forest covered its top, and that in places on its
sides where small trees or shrubs could gain a hold with their roots,
there they clung. The great beds of white, pink, and red sandstone of
which it is composed are interbedded with layers of red shale, the
whole resting upon a great bed of diorite.’
One tries in vain to picture to one’s fancy this wondrous mass of
upheaved earth, stone, and forest, looking like a fortress reared
by Titans against the assaults of all the forces of Nature besides.
Science tells us that Roraima and its surrounding similarly shaped
neighbours once stood as islands in the ocean; but at what period of
the earth’s history, how far back in the awful lapses of time, who can
say? ‘If,’ says the author, ‘any mammals then lived upon them, when the
sea washed the bases of their cliffs, the descendants of those mammals
may live there still, for all communication with their tops and the
surrounding country has been ever since effectually cut off by their
perpendicular sides.’
The length of Roraima is about twelve miles; and its top is perfectly
level. ‘The area of the surface,’ says Mr Brown, ‘must be considerable,
for Sir R. Schomburgk, who visited its southern end, to the westward of
the point to which I ascended, describes some beautiful waterfalls as
leaping from its sides, forming the drainage of part of its top, and
when viewing it from a mountain on the Upper Mazaruni, I distinctly
saw, at a distance of thirty miles, an enormous waterfall on its
north-east side, of very considerable width and extraordinary height.’
Next in importance to the great mountain Roraima is the great Kaieteur
Fall, which the traveller reached by the difficult ascent of Kaieteur.
The very existence of this beautiful Fall was previously unknown to the
dwellers in George-town, the capital of Demerara, who were astonished
to learn that their colony possessed such a gigantic natural wonder;
and indeed received Mr Brown’s account of it with some incredulity.
On a subsequent journey, undertaken by command of the governor Sir
John Scott, Mr Brown and some other English gentlemen made a thorough
examination and a scientific report of the Fall.
The Kaieteur Valley is of great extent; bounded by gloomy mountains,
whose outlines are broken by gaps and gorges, whence noisy cascades
pour down the sides of the great sandstone steeps, while in the far
distance is seen the upper portion of the Kaieteur pouring its foaming
water over the precipice edge into the depths below. The journey from
the landing-place on the river to the head of the Fall is difficult,
the way lying through blocks of sandstone and through tangled forest,
where it is necessary to cut away the mass of vines, bushropes, shrubs,
and undergrowth which obstruct the path. The regular forest ends in a
confused mass of rocks at the water’s edge, covered with shrubs and
mosses, and directly facing the Fall at a distance of a quarter of a
mile from its foot. A more perfect position from which to contemplate
this wonder of Nature could not be conceived. The travellers stood on
the verge of the rock reef, and before them thundered the Kaieteur
Fall, from a height of eight hundred and twenty-two feet, in a cataract
four hundred and twenty-two yards wide, fed by the stream at a velocity
of four miles an hour; its contact with the water of the basin being a
confused scene of fleecy masses of tossing waters, spurting high in the
air in front of the downpour, and giving birth to mist-clouds, which
rose continuously upwards and over the precipice on the right.
Two of the exploring party swam across the foaming river and visited
the edge of the basin on the eastern side; after which they returned to
the landing, accompanied by all the Indians but three. The others did
not like to pass the night in such a mysterious place. Mr Brown and one
of his friends had poles rigged up and lashed together under a large
rock, which formed a sort of cave, where they slung their hammocks
for the night. That must have been a night never to be forgotten,
when, in the primeval wilds of that unknown land, the traveller lay in
his swinging couch and watched and listened to the eternal fall and
multitudinous roar of the mighty waters. ‘A subdued light,’ he says,
‘penetrated even into our valley of shadows, and I knew that the moon
must have risen above the eastern horizon. By this light I could make
out the brink of the Fall against the sky; and as I gazed upon it two
bright stars rose slowly beyond, looking as if they had emerged from
the water itself. Then the first rays of the moon, as it rose above the
mountain in the east, shed a silvery light across the Fall’s crest, and
lit up a portion of the descending fleecy column.’ During the day the
sun’s rays, shining on the mist, produced a lovely rainbow, reaching
from the top to the foot of the Fall, which, moving slowly outwards
with the mist, faded gradually away, while with each accession of mist
a new one was formed.
After they had thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle from opposite the foot
of the Fall, the travellers proceeded to its head, camped in the bush
on the river’s brink, about fifty feet above the edge of the Fall,
and there made their measurements. On both evenings of their stay
they watched with interest the swallows’ homeward flight to their
roosting-places in a cave _behind the Fall_. The birds came late in the
afternoon in large flocks from all quarters of the compass, and wheeled
round in great circles at different altitudes. Gradually one flock
amalgamated with another, till at last near sundown they had gathered
into two or three immense bodies, which kept wheeling round in a
compact mass about one hundred yards above the heads of the travellers.
Mr Brown asked his friend how he would describe their numbers, and he
replied that he thought ‘myriads of millions’ would about do it.
While the travellers were wondering how the birds would get into
the cave behind the giant sheet of falling water, the question
was solved in an extraordinary manner, and the intruders on that
wonderful scene beheld a spectacle which in itself would have made
the occasion memorable. ‘Suddenly a portion of the mass swooped down
with incredible, with extraordinary velocity to the edge of the Fall,
seemingly close to the face of the column of water, and then being lost
to our view. The rushing sound of their wings in their downward flight
was very strange, and produced the feeling that birds of ill omen were
about. Approaching the edge of the precipice we waited to see the next
lot go down, so as to observe how they managed to get behind the water.
We had not to wait long before down dropped a cloud of them over the
edge, past the face of the Fall, for about one hundred feet; then, with
the rapidity of lightning, they changed their downward course to one at
right angles, and thus shot through the mist on either side into the
gloomy cave. Their motions were so rapid that we could hardly make out
how they were executed. It appeared to me that, as they swooped down,
their wings were but half spread, and their heads downwards; but after
passing the edge they turned their bodies in a horizontal position,
descending by gravity alone until they arrived at the required level,
when they again made use of their wings and flew off at right angles
into the cave. Just before dusk the greater portion descended in
a continuous stream for a considerable time, but small flocks and
single birds kept arriving until it was quite dark. When a single bird
shot down, its velocity was so great that it seemed to form a short
continuous black line against the sky.’ This gives the reader a vivid
idea of the speed with which a bird can cleave the air while on the
swoop.
At all times the valley of the Kaieteur is beautiful, but it is most
beautiful when, in the afternoon, great shadows are flung across it,
and the opening is lit up by the golden reflection of the sky over
the great plains beyond. On the Upper Essequibo—which is inhabited by
caymans of great size ‘and fearfully tame,’ there are also several
beautiful Falls; and as for a great portion of its extent the banks of
the river are totally devoid of human population, the birds and mammals
are as tame as the caymans. Jaguars, whose prey are the wild hogs,
abound, and large tigers are tolerably numerous. It is curious that
they should not be more numerous, for no animals prey upon them, and
the few killed by wandering Indians would not affect their number in
any sensible degree. Not until the thirtieth day of their voyage on the
Upper Essequibo did the travellers see any ‘natives;’ then they fell
in with a tribe of redskins with artificially elongated and flattened
heads, who were terrified at the sight of white men. They proved to
be harmless and friendly people. It is said that in this wild region,
farther to the south, near the head-waters of the Trombetas, there
is a tribe who have ponds of water encircled by stockades, to which
they retire for the night, sleeping with their bodies submerged. This,
however, the author holds to be an Indian ‘yarn.’