THROUGH BRITISH GUIANA TO THE SUMMIT OF RORAIMA
[Illustration: KAIETUK FALL.
Frontispiece.]
THROUGH BRITISH
GUIANA TO THE
SUMMIT OF RORAIMA
BY
MRS. CECIL CLEMENTI, M.B.E.
WITH FOURTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
_Printed in Great Britain_
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE DEMERARA RIVER 11
II. THE ESSEQUEBO RIVER 29
III. THE POTARO DISTRICT 47
IV. THE POTARO GORGE 59
V. KAIETUK, MOTHER OF MISTS 71
VI. THE ASCENT TO THE HIGHLAND SAVANNAHS 89
VII. THE HIGHLAND SAVANNAHS OF BRITISH GUIANA 119
VIII. A CORNER OF BRAZIL 149
IX. THE VENEZUELAN APPROACH TO RORAIMA 183
X. RORAIMA, FATHER OF STREAMS 199
XI. THE RETURN JOURNEY 217
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
KAIETUK FALL _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE DEMERARA RIVER: VIEW FROM THREE FRIENDS’ MINE ACROSS TO AKYMA 24
WATERSMEET OF COMMINGLED CUYUNI AND MAZARUNI RIVERS WITH ESSEQUEBO 31
MOUNT SAKWAI ON POTARO RIVER NEAR TUKEIT 62
WATERSMEET OF POTARO AND AMUK RIVERS AT AMATUK, SHOWING MOUNT
KENAIMA ON RIGHT AND MOUNT KUKUI IN CENTRE ABOVE RIVER-MIST 62
POTARO GORGE FROM KAIETUK 78
BARAMAKU SAVANNAH 113
MOUNT KOWATIPU FROM THE KARTO TABLELAND 128
WARATUK RAPIDS 172
OPAMAPÖ WATERFALL 172
FORDING THE KOTINGA RIVER 174
THE SOUTH-WEST FACE OF MOUNT RORAIMA, SHOWING THE TÖWASHING
PINNACLE 186
CAMP ON MOUNT RORAIMA 208
MOUNT WEITIPU FROM THE LEFT BANK OF THE KOTINGA RIVER 225
MAP OF ROUTE FROM HOLMIA TO MOUNT RORAIMA _at end_
THROUGH BRITISH GUIANA TO THE SUMMIT OF RORAIMA
THE DEMERARA RIVER
CHAPTER I
THE DEMERARA RIVER
Men travel far to see a city, but few seem curious about a
river. Every river has, nevertheless, its individuality, its
great silent interest. Every river has, moreover, its influence
over the people who pass their lives within sight of its
waters.—H. S. MERRIMAN: _The Sowers_, chap. ii.
British Guiana, as first seen from the shoal-water near the Demerara
lightship, is a mournful and monotonous picture. Mud flats, fringed with
courida and mangrove, stretch endlessly along the shore. Never a hill
is to be seen. The coastal flats are four feet below the level of high
spring tides, and the Atlantic slops over the sea dams in yellow waves
of muddy water. The wide expanses of rich sugar-fields and smiling rice
lands begin about a mile from the seaside and stretch “aback” to the “wet
savannahs,” by means of which they are irrigated. These wet savannahs
are vast natural swamps converted artificially into shallow lakes by
“stopping off” their seaward outlets. South of them spreads “the bush,”
that great primeval forest so hostile to man, but sheltering in its
mysterious recesses a million varieties of insects, a multitude of beasts
and reptiles, and a wealth of bird life unequalled, perhaps, in any other
part of the world.
Little, however, does the average colonist or the chance visitor to
British Guiana see of the wonder and beauty of South America. The forest
builds an impenetrable barrier, keeping him a close prisoner upon seaside
mud flats, which are in the main a dreary waste of uncultivated land.
Lack of labour renders it impossible for more than a small fraction
even of the coastal fringe to be made to yield its increase. A land the
size of England, Scotland, and Wales combined; a population equal to
that of Hertfordshire, and a cultivated area less than one-fifth the
size of Kent; a land for the greater part unknown and unsurveyed, whose
only roads extend along the seaboard and for a few miles up the banks
of its main rivers—such is British Guiana, ever since the close of the
Napoleonic Wars a possession of the British Crown, the only one in South
America, and rich in unexplored possibilities.
But the colonists of British Guiana have never made any serious attempt
to investigate the interior of their heritage. Their revenue has always
been spent upon coastal development; and a conviction exists that the
interior is not only a death-trap, but also a wilderness of useless
jungle and sandy deserts. Many attempts were made to dissuade me from
venturing into it with my husband, and I was assured that I was risking
my health—nay, my life. But the call of the wild was too strong, and I
shall always be glad that I decided to go; for the fact that a woman has
traversed these forests and the highland prairies beyond during many
strenuous weeks and came back with health and vigour renewed may perhaps
dispel the legends accumulated about the horrors of “the bush,” and
induce people to investigate for themselves the charms and opportunities
of this neglected land, or at least to travel with us in spirit into
those great expanses of sleeping Nature which await the day of man’s
occupation. British Guiana lies, like the princess of the fairy-tale, in
an enchanted sleep. One day, surely, the fairy prince will come, mounted
upon an iron horse, and bid her awake!
Two long years my husband and I lived continuously in Georgetown, at
the mouth of the Demerara River. Then, exhausted in mind and body by
the enervating atmosphere and dismal monotony of a tropical coast, near
the equator and below sea-level, we decided to spend a brief holiday in
exploring a part of the Colony’s interior hitherto blank upon the map,
hoping to find there some of that strength which cometh from the hills.
A journey up cataract-barred rivers and through primeval forests by
Indian trails was in itself an attractive prospect; but we had a still
more potent lure. On the 21st March, 1914, my husband had spent a day
at the Kaietuk Fall, and had gazed from the brink of the great chasm
into which the Potaro River there plunges, up its dreamy reaches towards
the forest-clad ridges that stand above the Arnik creek and away to
the towering, cliff-faced mass of Mount Kowatipu. It was then that he
resolved to visit some day the wonders which Nature might hold in the
forests and savannahs farther to the west and the south-west, and perhaps
even to make his way to that famous Mount Roraima, of which the residents
in British Guiana hear so much and see so little. Then, in October,
1915, he made the acquaintance of Mr. J. C. Menzies, whose occupation
as a diamond and gold prospector had carried him into distant parts of
our Colony’s interior. Mr. Menzies’ account of prairie tablelands at
high altitudes, to be reached by travelling a few days beyond Kaietuk,
and affording a view of Mount Roraima, where the boundaries of British
Guiana, Brazil, and Venezuela meet, and whence streams flow to the
Amazon, Orinoco, and Essequebo, determined us to attempt the journey
across those tablelands to that mountain of mystery. During the previous
seven years Mr. Menzies had frequently traversed the little-known and
unsurveyed part of the Colony that lies between the Potaro River and our
frontier with Brazil, and he had been greatly struck by the opportunities
for cattle-ranching afforded on its highland savannahs. He had, moreover,
bought and driven cattle from Brazil over the Ireng River into British
territory, where they wander freely under the nominal guardianship of
a tribe of Makusi Indians. He was therefore well qualified to make the
preliminary arrangements for the expedition which we had in mind, and he
very kindly agreed to place his experience unreservedly at our disposal
and to accompany us. His knowledge of our proposed route did not extend
beyond the Colony’s boundaries; but he felt sure that an Indian guide
could be found in one of the villages near the Ireng, who would be able
to lead us on to the goal of our hopes, Mount Roraima.
We started on the 20th December, 1915, our first stage being by steamer
from Georgetown to Wismar, a small settlement sixty miles up the Demerara
River. The journey takes eight hours, and the scenery is not interesting.
For the most part the land on both sides is absolutely flat and screened
from the traveller by a dense fringe of jungle growth. Not that the
river-banks are entirely unoccupied; tenements and farms are dotted along
each bank for miles after the tall chimneys of the sugar factories are
left behind. Indeed, between Georgetown and Wismar there remains hardly
an acre of Crown land by the river-side, and the titles of some estates
date back to the year 1746, when the Dutch still ruled in Demerara. But
a former Governor of the Colony decreed that a belt, several yards wide,
should be reserved along the façade of all riverine grants, so that
his successors might be free, if so disposed, to make roads or build
wharfs on the river-bank. This untenanted strip of land was, of course,
rapidly overgrown with jungle, and the dense _mokka-mokka_ which grows
at the water’s edge makes a forbidding-looking fringe to the Demerara’s
yellow tide. This plant, a member of the arum family, is said to offer
an excellent paper-making material. It grows sometimes just above the
surface of the water, and sometimes reaches a height of thirty feet
or so, forming a happy sanctuary for birds of many kinds. Their nests
among the broad leaves, that clothe the thick stems rising straight out
of the water, are secure from snakes and such-like enemies. Once I saw
a tiny humming-bird, a veritable jewel of colour, seated on her minute
nest, regarding us trustfully as we paddled by. This was not, indeed,
on the banks of the Demerara, but during an expedition to one of the
wet-savannah conservancies already mentioned. She sat on her airy throne,
perched in the fork of a low _mokka-mokka_ stem, a few feet above the
wind-swayed rushes and broad lily leaves which cover the wide expanses on
each side of the water-paths, kept clear for boats. As we sat in our low
corial, her background was blue sky, and a prettier sight can scarcely be
imagined.
The Demerara River has several large creeks, navigable by corials or even
motor-boats for many miles, but their mouths, screened by _mokka-mokka_
plant, are mostly impossible to distinguish from the deck of a river
steamer. The only one of these streams I have explored is the Kamuni
creek, which my husband and I once visited in order to see the now almost
deserted Chinese settlement of Hopetown. Strange that such lonely jungle
should ever have had attractions for Chinese settlers! Everywhere broods
the heavy silence of the tropical “bush,” broken now and then by the whir
of a beetle or the cry of a bird swooping across the creek; nor does
this forest afford any variations of colour save in the intense green
of the overarching foliage, reflected leaf for leaf in the still, black
water. Now and then some glorious orchid decorates a decaying tree-trunk,
or the blossoms of some brilliant flowering creeper, fallen from the
distant tree-tops, float down the stream. Here and there a splendid blue
butterfly flits into the sunshine, and an occasional splash betrays an
alligator subsiding into a dark pool.
The Hopetown Settlement, which was once a flourishing village engaged
chiefly in charcoal-burning, now consists only of a few hovels, thatched
with troolie palm, and of some ill-kept rice-fields, the one redeeming
feature being a nice wooden church. When we went in, there were flowers
on the altar, and a pair of Cantonese vases, which must wonder how they
got there. An aged Chinese catechist conducted the service, and a priest
visits the place at rare intervals.
The people, I remember, welcomed us gladly, and were delighted to
hear a few words in Cantonese spoken by my husband. The whole village
accompanied us as we walked along the dam, which serves it both as a main
road and as a safeguard against inundation. We visited the “cultivation,”
but there was nothing satisfactory to be seen. A few miserable plantains,
a few poor cacao-bushes, untended and uncared for, was all we could
observe. A paddy-field, to which we were led, was merely a rough clearing
in the bush, the trees having been cut down, but the stumps left
standing, and no attempt was made to irrigate or drain. There had been
no manuring, nor, indeed, was there any sign of tillage. The sight was a
sad one to eyes accustomed to the smiling, carefully tended rice-fields
of China, with their neatly dammed divisions for conserving water, fields
from which the laborious Cantonese, by unceasing toil, reap their annual
reward of two rice harvests and one crop of “dry cultivation.” The
Hopetown settlers told us that they could only raise a rice crop from a
given area once in five years; but with care the land could, of course,
be made productive. The settlement possessed no animals; not even the
pig, so universal in China, was to be seen. In fact, the people evidently
lacked energy to make an effort to improve their condition. Most young
Chinese, desirous of better things, have doubtless discovered that by
going to Georgetown they can with thrift, industry, and the business
instincts of their race, find more promising openings for making a
livelihood, in trade or otherwise, than Hopetown offers. Hence only the
aged, the feeble, or the indolent, remain in the settlement; and Hopetown
no longer answers to its name, for little hope of its future is now left.
The Chinese, however, came late in the story of the Demerara. Only Caribs
lived there in 1598, when the river was first made known to Europe by the
report of two Dutch ships that had cruised along the coast of Guiana, but
had not traded in the “Demirara,” because they were pressed for time, and
because the Caribs informed them that “not much was to be found there,”
and also, perhaps, chiefly “because their provisions were growing scant.”
In those days, maybe, there was a numerous Carib population hereabouts;
but the inhabitants are now a curious medley, almost amphibious, for
once the sugar estates are passed the river is their only road, and the
smallest child navigates his corial. The census of 1911 records that
only 8,101 people were in that year inhabiting the Demerara. Of these,
2,983 were blacks; 1,756 were East Indians; 1,741 were of mixed race;
124 were Chinese; 178 were Portuguese; and 48 were Europeans other than
Portuguese. Only 1,229—say 15 per cent. of the whole—were aborigines.
There is the history of British Guiana in a nutshell! A ceaseless
struggle to people from overseas an empty land! The Portuguese came from
Madeira. The blacks are descended from negro slaves brought here from
Africa by the Dutch West India Company. No black slaves were ever brought
to Demerara under British rule; for the slave trade was abolished by
Parliament in 1807, and this Colony did not become definitely British
until seven years later. The East Indians have all been introduced as
indentured labourers under a system of immigration which began in 1845
and ended in 1917. They hail chiefly from Bengal and Madras. The Chinese
also came here under indenture, as the result of a scheme of immigration,
from Hong-Kong, Canton, and Amoy, which lasted from 1853 intermittently
until 1874, and was then discontinued.
On the whole, the Lower Demerara is distinctly monotonous and void of
interest, but shortly below Wismar there are hints of better things. The
river, which at Georgetown is a mile wide, narrows considerably; the
banks rise on either side, crowned by big forest-trees, telling of their
mighty brethren in the far interior, and greenheart logs lie steeping in
the river, waiting to be shipped. They cannot be drifted downstream in
the usual fashion, as greenheart is heavier than water and does not float.
Moreover, the river-water, previously an opaque yellow from the influx
of the tides that wash seas of mud along the British Guiana coasts, now
changes to the beautiful black “bush-water,” which, coming from the
forest depths, is darkly stained by vegetable matter held in suspension.
Sometimes it has a reddish tinge, and then again turns amber-coloured,
especially over sandy shallows. It makes a wonderful mirror for sky,
cloud, and tree, reflected in its sleeping depths; and it is quite safe
and pleasant to drink, when boiled.
The township of Wismar on the Demerara River is the terminal point of
the small piece of railway built in 1896 by Sprostons Limited to cross
the divide, here less than nineteen miles wide, between the Demerara and
Essequebo Rivers. Close to the railway-station, alongside which is a
steamer wharf, cluster the police-station, post office, magistracy, and
a few shops. The train is a little toy affair, very dirty; the engine
burns wood fuel, and the sparks which fly from its funnel give as fine
a display of fireworks after nightfall as one could wish to see. They
are, however, somewhat dangerous. A case in point was the occasion when
Princess Marie-Louise travelled over the line in 1914. The train had been
specially decorated in her honour; but it had not proceeded more than
half a mile from Wismar before the sparks set all the decorations on
fire, and a halt was necessary in order to divest the passenger-coaches
of all combustible embellishments.
Crossing the divide by motor-trolley is quite an agreeable experience,
especially in the cool of the evening, and the line is seen to better
advantage. The scenery, however, is disappointing. On the Essequebo side
of the water-parting, Sprostons have considerable timber-cutting grants,
to which they run branch lines. But near the main line all big trees have
long ago been cut down, and some years ago a terrible forest fire swept
down the divide, leaving behind it a desolation of stark and charred
tree-trunks, unlovely to look at. The soil is a white sand, dazzling in
the equatorial sunlight.
Just above Wismar the Demerara Bauxite Company has begun mining
operations, and it is very interesting to visit the Company’s settlements
at Fair’s Rust and Akyma. Fair’s Rust is a mile above Wismar and can
be reached by ocean-going steamers, but the principal bauxite mines,
or rather quarries, are twelve miles farther up, where the low hills
consist of almost solid pink-coloured ore, once the overburden has been
removed. The Company pays great attention to the health of its employés:
good houses are built; bush is cleared away, and drainage and sanitation
carefully contrived.
[Illustration: THE DEMERARA RIVER: VIEW FROM THREE FRIENDS’ MINE ACROSS
TO AKYMA.
To face page 24.]
A very pleasant way of accomplishing the journey to Wismar is to travel
as a guest of the Company in one of its comfortable motor-boats, starting
from Georgetown at about tea-time and following the silvery pathway of
the river, aglow in the setting sun; to anchor in the starlight and sleep
in the grateful coolness and velvet silence of the river night; to get
under way again in the dawn, and to reach the settlement at Akyma before
the full heat of the day. Especially is this delightful when such a
journey is but the first stage on towards all the glories of mountain and
river which lie awaiting those who venture to explore the wonders of an
unknown land.
THE ESSEQUEBO RIVER