Learning of our presence at Potaro Landing, a Mr. McKenzie, manager of the Minnehaha Development Company, very kindly invited us to his bungalow, eighteen miles away, and later sent a carriage for our transportation. The distance was covered in half a day, and lay mainly through the heavy forest, although there was occasionally an area of considerable extent covered with tall, rank grass and bushes. The company was operating one small dredge in Minnehaha Creek, and notwithstanding the fact that the entire region had been gone over before, quantities of gold were being recovered from the bed of the stream. As there had been no “clean-up” for two weeks, one was arranged for our benefit. The gold, which was in very fine particles, was brought up from the dredge in tin cans, and then placed in an iron retort and heated to a very high temperature; this freed the mercury with which the yellow metal had been collected from the mud and water in passing over the sluiceway of the dredge. Later it was again placed in the retort, together with pulverized glass and borax, to gather up the impurities, and melted; then it was poured into moulds. Four bars, weighing one hundred and twenty-five ounces each, were recovered. It was then inspected and passed by an official, who also made a note of the amount of tax due the government. A coolie servant was despatched to take it to Georgetown to the company’s headquarters, and although he would be on the way a number of days and be compelled to mingle with all sorts of people, he carried no weapon of any kind with which to protect his precious burden. This speaks well for the law and order maintained throughout the colony.
The country along Minnehaha Creek is rolling and covered with a good stand of timber. Numerous small streams flow through ravines between the hills, and while the current is strong the streams are not deep. A footpath continues to a point seven miles beyond, on the Konamaruck, and from this a network of short, narrow trails branch out in all directions. The rainfall is very great in the entire region; during the month of August (1913) it was twenty-seven inches, while only nineteen inches fell at Tumatumari in the same period of time. One result of the great amount of moisture is that there is an increase in density of the lower growth, and the branches are covered with hanging moss.
As one moves quietly along the narrow lanes, enclosed on both sides by walls of trees, the lofty tops of which form a leafy vault overhead, he cannot fail to be impressed with the great breathless silence of the forest. The gloomy solitude seems pregnant with mysterious forces that draw the thoughts of the lonely wayfarer to far-off regions of blissful oblivion. Then, suddenly, a low, wailing cry of anguish rising in tremulous crescendo, but with liquid smoothness, smites the wanderer’s revery and brings him back to earth with palpitating heart and throbbing pulses; the whinny rapidly decreases in volume and dies with a few short sighs. “Something, perhaps the combination of all these, makes one feel as if he had been caught with his soul naked in his hands; when, in the midst of subdued and chastened revery, this spirit voice takes the words from his tongue and expresses so perfectly all the mystery, romance, and tragedy that the struggling, parasite-ridden forest diffuses through the damp shade.” It is the voice of the forest tinamou.
The notes of several species of ant-thrush (Grallaria and Chamæza) are remarkable for their quality and even beauty. One of them has a peculiar call resembling the words compra pan (buy bread), and by this name it is known among the natives of Colombia. Another gives a very good imitation of a moon whistle, the song lasting fifty seconds at times, without the slightest intermission. These birds are very long-legged, almost tailless, and obscurely colored above; the breast is frequently streaked. They spend their entire lives in the damp gloom of the forest floor, and although the song may come from but a few feet away, it is impossible to get even the briefest glimpse of the bird in ninety-five per cent of the cases where it is heard.
If we stopped to rest on the buttressed roots of some great cottonwood, we saw a few of the minor creatures whose existence is hardly suspected by the casual observer. What at first appeared to be a maze of cobwebs filling the entrance to a dark cavern under the roots, resolved into a moving, living mass. A closer inspection, and small, black specks could be distinguished in the madly weaving and revolving haze, and also long, threadlike legs dangling so idly that one wonders why they do not become hopelessly entangled with those of their neighbors. This peculiar, wavering flight of the crane-fly seems to form the delicate, spidery creature’s chief occupation, for I rarely found them at rest. Presently, other little insects, encouraged by the silence, make their appearance. First among them may be a small Gastaracantha spider, slowly letting itself down from an overhead twig on a thread of finest gossamer. At first glance one may easily mistake the insect for a minute crab that has fallen from the leafage into a silken snare, but when, at the watcher’s first movement, it either runs nimbly up the dangling thread, or drops to the ground with a rapid slacking of line, one is convinced that it must be a spider. The hard shell, or back, is fringed with sharp, upturned spines and is of an orange color marked with a number of small black dots.
After a shower, mosquitoes were numerous and attacked with the utmost persistency. This irresistible thirst for blood is very extraordinary; it does not seem possible that more than a very small proportion of the countless millions of these insects living in a given area ever have an opportunity for satiating their appetite for blood during their entire lifetime; yet the instinct remains, and they attack on sight ferociously and without hesitation any living thing whose skin their beaks can penetrate. It is also a well-known fact that malarial fever, so prevalent in the tropical lowlands, is transmitted by a genus of mosquito, Anophiles. The germ of this fever, however, passes only one period of its existence within the insect’s body, and the spores must be secured from some living creature, and after development transmitted to another to complete the life cycle. Some of the areas in which malaria abounds are practically uninhabited by human beings, so this agent in the propagation of the disease is of course lacking—at least to a considerable extent. It naturally follows, therefore, that some other creature or creatures, may be preyed upon and inoculated by Anophiles. I have on several occasions observed pet cebus and woolly monkeys (Lagothrix) that showed decided symptoms of suffering from malaria, and to me it seems highly possible that monkeys may be at least one of the animals that serve to keep the infection alive.
While at Minnehaha Creek I received the information that Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was shortly to embark on a voyage to South America; and also, much to my pleasant surprise, that I had been selected as a member of his expedition. The time remaining at our disposal was very limited, so we rather reluctantly gave up our intended visit to Kaieteur Falls and Mount Roraima, and returned to Wismar for our last work in British Guiana. A strip of land several miles wide on either side of the railroad connecting Rockstone and Wismar, is owned by Sproston’s, and the greater part of it has been cleared of forest. Instead of the dense growth of tall trees there are now impenetrable thickets of high slender sprouts and bushes. These jungles harbor almost every bird and animal found in the region, and while it is impossible to enter them for any great distance, we had not the slightest difficulty in making large and varied collections along the borders. One evening the superintendent of the line was returning from a tour of inspection, and as the motor-car in which he was riding slowly rounded a curve, a jaguar suddenly appeared on one side of the track; he promptly killed it with a shotgun as it was only a few yards distant.
We returned to Georgetown, from which place Mr. Igleseder, who had been my assistant, started for New York, while I sailed for Barbados, where I planned to await the arrival of Colonel Roosevelt and join him on his expedition into the wilderness of Brazil.