The drooping body will desert the mind;
But built anew with health-conferring fare,
With limbs and soul untam’d, he tires a war.
At length, on the 8th, a barge arrived, not only with a supply of salt beef and rusk, but a bullock and two hogs, as a present from Mr. Felman, who, accompanied by his lady, &c. came actually on a visit to Fourgeoud, in this very strange encampment. The above animals being immediately killed, they were distributed among four hundred people; so that it may well be conceived the shares, though sweet, were not very large, after which the company walked about to view our different habitations. Being arrived at my dwelling, Fourgeoud led them round and round, but seeing no door to get in, he called out, “Nobody at home?” When [[333]]I instantly thrust my head through the thatch, with a pancake in my hand, and offered to haul in the ladies; but this they civilly declined. I never saw Fourgeoud laugh so much in my life. As soon, however, as he was able to recover his gravity, he exclaimed, “Sacre Dieu! Il faut être Stedman,—il faut être original comme lui;” and re-conducted the company to his own apartment, where he gave me an invitation to follow them. Indeed, when Captain Small and I went out, we generally spent our time in a beautiful savannah, where we had erected a green shed, to be free in conversation, and called it Ranelagh; here we caroused and cracked a bottle in private, till we could crack no longer, having lived so well that in a little time more than a week my cheese and bacon hams quite disappeared, and not a drop of wine or rum was left in the flasks.—After this he, as well as I, were obliged to live on short allowance; while Small had the satisfaction, however, to see his ship-mates do the same: who, not being acquainted with the œconomy necessary in a forest, had made all their flour into plum-pudding, and were already obliged to break their teeth on a piece of rye rusk.
In short, so early as the 12th, one hundred and fifty of these newly-arrived people were already ordered to march; when, by the way of seasoning them, besides heavy accoutrements and a hammock, they had orders each man to carry a stuffed knapsack on his back. Of this party, my friend Small happened to be one, who being as corpulent as Sir John Falstaff, and I having accoutred him in the above [[334]]manner, the poor fellow could hardly walk at all; till declaring to Fourgeoud that I must roll him along like a hogshead, he got leave to be disengaged from a part of his unweildy encumbrances.
Every thing being ready, this loaded detachment now faced to the right, and set out, with Colonel Fourgeoud at their head, for the river Marawina: and while I must here acknowledge that this chief was now become to myself as civil as I could expect or desire, yet justice compels me to add, that to all others he remained just as inflexible a tyrant as ever I had known him; which character he unhappily seemed to think incompatible with his rank.
During their absence, I crossed the water, and cut down a cabbage-tree on the other side of the river Cottica, not only for the cabbage, but for the sake of the groe-groe worms, with which I knew it would swarm in about a fortnight.
Straying here through the woods with my black boy Quaco, I met with the following trees, still left for description, viz. the cedar, the brown-heart, and the bullet-tree. The first, though it bears that name, is different from the cedars of Lebanon, which grow in a pyramidical form. The Surinam cedar, however, grows also to a great height, but is principally esteemed because the wood is never eaten by the worms or other insects, on account of its great bitterness; it has also a most agreeable smell, and is therefore used in preference to most others for making chests, cupboards, lockers, and all sorts [[335]]of joinery; besides which, it is employed in making the tent-barges and other boats. The colour of the timber is a pale orange: it is both hard and light, and from the trunk exudes a gum (not unlike the gum Arabic) which is transparent, and diffuses a most agreeable flavour.
The brown-heart is in hardness of the same consistency as the purple-heart, and the green-heart already mentioned, and is shaped into heavy timber for the same purposes, such as constructing sugar-mills, &c.: the colour of this wood is a beautiful brown.—The other is the bullet-tree; this tree grows sometimes to sixty feet, but is not so thick in proportion as many others: the bark is grey and smooth, the timber brown, variegated or powdered with white specks. No wood in the forest is equal to this in weight, being heavier than sea-water, and so very durable, that when exposed to the open air neither rain or sun have any effect on it; for this reason, besides its other various uses, it is split into shingles to roof the houses, instead of slates or tiles, which, as I formerly mentioned, would be too heavy and too hot. These shingles are sold for £. 4 sterling a thousand at Paramaribo, and continue sometimes twenty-four years before they are renewed.
I ought to mention also a kind of mahogany, which is found in the woods of Guiana, called the ducolla-bolla, and which is of a superior quality to any which is imported here, being of a deeper red colour, and of a finer, more equal, and compact grain; also of greater hardness [[336]]and weight, and thus capable of receiving a more elegant polish.