Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Matthew Arnold: The Future.
The problem of improving the Colony’s lines of communication into the interior may be said to be the problem of circumventing the Essequebo River. For instance, it is the Essequebo and its tributary the Rupununi which ought to form a natural highway across British Guiana to Brazil. But the cattle-track, just opened to Georgetown from the Colony’s lowland savannahs near the Brazilian border, studiously avoids the Essequebo, which it touches only at Kurupukari, there crossing the river and leaving it for good. Again, the Essequebo and its tributary the Cuyuni should form the main avenue of approach from British Guiana to Ciudad Bolivar on the Orinoco, in the heart of Venezuela. But it is very likely that, when the time comes for linking this Colony to Venezuela by road or railway, the line will but touch the Essequebo to bridge its estuary, and then make across country to the Tumeremo savannahs. Similarly, the problem of reaching Kaietuk and the highland savannahs of British Guiana has now become the problem of avoiding the Essequebo.
It is a tantalizing river. Twelve miles wide at its mouth; two miles wide at Bartika, where the commingled Cuyuni and Mazaruni join it; and still fully the same width at Rockstone, where the Demerara-Essequebo Railway strikes it—nevertheless, its innumerable cataracts and rapids make it a snare and an illusion to the navigator. In fact, the raison d’être of the Demerara-Essequebo Railway is to short-circuit the extremely dangerous series of cataracts between Rockstone and Bartika, in which many lives have been lost. By crossing the low divide between the two rivers, the traveller reaches the Essequebo at Rockstone, well above these dangers. He then has a navigable stretch of sixty miles before him to Tumutumari.
Watersmeet of commingled Cuyuni and Mazaruni Rivers with Essequebo.