SAILING UP THE ESSEQUIBO.
(Concluded from page 360.)
A family of Indians was seen crossing the river in their log canoe, and disappearing under the bushes on the opposite side; my companion and myself paddled after them, and we landed under some locust trees, and found an Indian settlement. The logies were sheds, open all round, and covered with the leaves of the trooly-palm, some of them twenty-four feet long; and suspended from the bamboo timbers of the roof were hammocks of net-work, in which the men were lazily swinging. One or two of those who were awake were fashioning arrow-heads out of hard wood. The men and children were entirely naked, with the exception of the blue lap or cloth for the loins; the women in their blue petticoat and braided hair were scraping the root of the cassava tree into a trough of bark; it was then put into a long press of matting, which expresses the poisonous juice; the dry farina is finally baked on an iron plate. The old women were weaving the square coëoo or lap of beads, which they sometimes wear without a petticoat; also armlets and ankle ornaments of beads. Some were fabricating earthen pots, and all the females seemed actively employed. They offered us a red liquor, called caseeree, prepared from the sweet potato; also piwarry, the intoxicating beverage made by chewing the cassava, and allowing it to ferment. At their piwarry feasts the Indians prepare a small canoe full of this liquor, beside which the entertainers and their guests roll together drunk for two or three days. Their helpmates look after them, and keep them from being suffocated with the sand getting into their mouths: but piwarry is a harmless liquor, that is to say, it does not produce the disease and baneful effects of spirits, for after a sleep the Indians rise fresh and well, and only occasionally indulge in a debauch of this kind. Fish, which the men had shot with their arrows, and birds, were brought out of the canoe, and barbacoted or smoke-dried on a grating of bamboos over a fire; and we followed an old man with a cutlass to their small fields of cassava, cleared by girdling and burning a part of the forest behind the logies. These Indians were of the Arrawak nation; we afterwards saw Caribs, Accaways, &c.
The rivers and creeks, and the whole of the interior of British Guiana at a distance from the sea, are unknown and unexplored. October and November are the driest months in the year, and the best for expeditions into the interior. I was unable to go as far up the river as I wished, from the great freshes; the rain fell every day, yet I penetrated in all directions as far as I could, and I trust to be able, at some more favourable season, to return to that interesting country.
Two years ago, a Mr. Smith, a mercantile man from Caraccas, was joined at George Town by a Lieutenant Gullifer, R.N. They proceeded down the Pomeroon river, then up the Wyeena creek, travelled across to the Coioony, sailed down it, and then went up the Essequibo to the Rio Negro, which, it appears, connects the Amazons and Oroonoco rivers. At Bara, on the Rio Negro, Mr. Smith, from sitting so long cramped up in coorials or canoes, became affected with dropsy; and allowing himself to be tapped by an ignorant quack, died after a fortnight's illness. Lieutenant Gullifer sailed down the Rio Negro to the Amazons, and remained at Para for some months, till he heard from England. From domestic details he received at Para, he fell into low spirits, and proceeded to Trinidad, where, one morning, he was found suspended to a beam under the steeple of the Protestant church! His papers, and Mr. Smith's, consisting of journals of their travels, were sent to a brother of Lieutenant Gullifer's, on the Marocco coast of Essequibo, where I went and saw the papers, and was most anxious to obtain them for the Geographical Society; but Mr. Gullifer said that he must consult first with the other relatives.
Among other interesting details I found in the notes, I may mention the following:—High up the Essequibo they fell in with a nation of anthropophagi, of the Carib tribe. The chief received the travellers courteously, and placed before them fish with savoury sauce; which being removed, two human hands were brought in, and a steak of human flesh! The travellers thought that this might be part of a baboon of a new species; however, they declined the invitation to partake, saying that, in travelling, they were not allowed to eat animal food. The chief picked the bones of the hands with excellent appetite, and asked them how they had relished the fruit and the sauce. They replied that the fish was good and the sauce excellent. To which he answered, "Human flesh makes the best sauce for any food; these hands and the fish were all dressed together. You see these Macooshee men, our slaves; we lately captured these people in war, and their wives we eat from time to time." The travellers were horrified, but concealed their feelings, and before they retired for the night, they remarked that the Macooshee females were confined in a large logie, or shed, surrounded with a stockade of bamboos; so that, daily the fathers, husbands, and brothers of these unfortunate women, saw them brought out, knocked on the head, and devoured by the inhuman cannibals. Lieutenant Gullifer, who was in bad condition, got into his hammock and slept soundly; but Mr. Smith, being in excellent case, walked about all night, fearing that their landlord might take a fancy to a steak of white meat. They afterwards visited a cave, in which was a pool of water; the Indians requested them not to bathe in this, for if they did, they would die before the year was out. They laughed at their monitors and bathed; but sure enough were both "clods of the valley" before the twelvemonth had expired.—Journal of the Geographical Society, Part 2.