SAILING UP THE ESSEQUIBO.
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.)