_By Captain J.E. Alexander, H.P., late 16th Lancers, M.R.G.S., &c._
My purpose was now to proceed up the noble Essequibo river towards
the El Dorado of Sir Walter Raleigh, and view the mighty forests of
the interior, and the varied and beautiful tribes by which they are
inhabited. Our residence on the island of Wakenaam had been truly
a tropical one. During the night, the tree frogs, crickets,
razor-grinders, reptiles, and insects of every kind, kept up a continued
concert. At sunrise, when the flowers unfolded themselves, the humming
birds, with the metallic lustre glittering on their wings, passed
rapidly from blossom to blossom. The bright yellow and black
mocking-birds flew from their pendant nests, accompanied by their
neighbours, the wild bees, which construct their earthen hives on the
same tree. The continued rains had driven the snakes from their holes,
and on the path were seen the bush-master (cona-couchi) unrivalled for
its brilliant colours, and the deadly nature of its poison; and the
labari equally poisonous, which erects its scales in a frightful manner
when irritated. The rattlesnake was also to be met with, and harmless
tree snakes of many species. Under the river's bank lay enormous caymen
or alligators,--one lately killed measured twenty-two feet. Wild deer
and the peccari hog were seen in the glades in the centre of the island;
and the jaguar and cougour (the American leopard and lion) occasionally
swam over from the main land.
We sailed up the Essequibo for a hundred miles in a small schooner of
thirty tons, and occasionally took to canoes or coorials to visit the
creeks. We then went up a part of the Mazaroony river, and saw also the
unexplored Coioony: these three rivers join their waters about one
hundred miles from the mouth of the Essequibo. In sailing or paddling up
the stream, the breadth is so great, and the wooded islands so numerous,
that it appears as if we navigated a large lake. The Dutch in former
times had cotton, indigo, and cocoa estates up the Essequibo, beyond
their capital Kykoveral, on an island at the forks or junction of the
three rivers. Now, beyond the islands at the mouth of the Essequibo
there are no estates, and the mighty forest has obliterated all traces
of former cultivation. Solitude and silence are on either hand, not a
vestige of the dwellings of the Hollanders being to be seen; and only
occasionally in struggling through the entangled brushwood one stumbles
over a marble tombstone brought from the shores of the Zuyderzee.
At every turn of the river we discovered objects of great interest.
The dense and nearly impenetrable forest itself occupied our chief
attention; magnificent trees, altogether new to us, were anchored to
the ground by bush-rope, convolvuli, and parasitical plants of every
variety. The flowers of these cause the woods to appear as if hung with
garlands. Pre-eminent above the others was the towering and majestic
Mora, its trunk spread out into buttresses; on its top would be seen
the king of the vultures expanding his immense wings to dry after the
dews of night. The very peculiar and romantic cry of the bell-bird, or
campanero, would be heard at intervals; it is white, about the size of a
pigeon, with a leathery excrescence on its forehead, and the sound which
it produces in the lone woods is like that of a convent-bell tolling.
A crash of the reeds and brushwood on the river's bank would be followed
by a tapir, the western elephant, coming down to drink and to roll
himself in the mud; and the manati or river-cow would lift its black
head and small piercing eye above the water to graze on the leaves of
the coridore tree. They are shot from a stage fixed in the water, with
branches of their favourite food hanging from it; one of twenty-two cwt.
was killed not long ago. High up the river, where the alluvium of the
estuary is changed for white sandstone, with occasionally black oxide of
manganese, the fish are of delicious flavour; among others, the pacoo,
near the Falls or Rapids, which is flat, twenty inches long, and weighs
four pounds; it feeds on the seed of the _arum arborescens_, in
devouring which the Indians shoot it with their arrows: of similar genus
are the cartuback, waboory, and amah.
The most remarkable fish of these rivers are, the _peri_ or
_omah_, two feet long; its teeth and jaws are so strong, that it
cracks the shells of most nuts to feed on their kernels, and is most
voracious; the Indians say that it snaps off the breasts of women, and
emasculates men. Also the genus _silurus_, the young of which swim
in a shoal of one hundred and fifty over the head of the mother, who, on
the approach of danger, opens her mouth, and thus saves her progeny;
with the _loricaria calicthys_, or _assa_, which constructs a
nest on the surface of pools from the blades of grass floating about,
and in this deposits its spawn which is hatched by the sun. In the dry
season this remarkable fish has been dug out of the ground, for it
burrows in the rains owing to the strength and power of the spine; in
the gill-fin and body it is covered with strong plates, and far below
the surface finds moisture to keep it alive. The _electric eel_ is
also an inhabitant of these waters, and has sometimes nearly proved
fatal to the strongest swimmer. If sent to England in tubs, the wood
and iron act as conductors, and keep the fish in a continued state of
exhaustion, causing, eventually, death: an earthenware jar is the vessel
in which to keep it in health.
(_To be concluded in our next._)
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