BRITISH GUIANA.
On the vast extent of the South American continent the far-reaching empire of Great Britain has planted its flag in one place only; it possesses one-fifth of the country of Guiana, which lies within the Torrid Zone, and forms the northern portion of South America. Of that fifth section of Guiana, which is called Demerara—the capital of which is George-town—only the civilised and cultivated part is known to the dwellers in the colony, or to its chance visitors. The remaining portion of the country was, however, a terra incognita to all but a very few, until Mr Barrington Brown, in his Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana (London: Edward Stanford), published the results of his explorations.
The civilised and cultivated portion of the colony of British Guiana consists of a narrow strip of sea-coast. Immediately behind this lies a broad expanse of swampy ground, then comes rising wooded land, and finally mountains and savannas which stretch westward, and are still in their primitive condition, inhabited by little-known Indian tribes and various species of wild animals. It is owing chiefly to the ‘Coolie Labour Question’ that public attention has been of late years at all directed to British Guiana; and as the colony is likely to become of increased importance, an opportunity of learning particulars about the hitherto mysterious territory which lies behind the utilised strip of coast belonging to it, yet utterly unreckoned in the sum of civilisation, is one to be welcomed. This wild region is called vaguely ‘the Interior,’ and with the exception of a few settlements on the banks of the Lower Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo rivers, a traveller penetrating its recesses at the present time would behold the same condition of things there which existed in the days of Sir Walter Raleigh. Mr Barrington Brown visited and explored a considerable extent of this ‘Interior’ while he was engaged on the government geological survey of the West Indies. He accomplished his journeys by means of canoe-travelling; a method preferable to any other, as affording opportunities for close observation, for obtaining picturesque aspects, and in itself very agreeable.
His first voyage was up the Essequibo to the penal settlement of the colony, where his Indian boatmen refused to remain even for one night, such is their timid dread of the very notion of a prison. They would not hang their hammocks in the empty sheds, but crossed the river and camped in the forest, though one of them was suffering severely from fever. At the penal settlement boats were purchased, and a crew hired for the navigation of the Cuyuni, which afforded the Indians ample opportunities for exhibiting their skill. ‘They worked splendidly in the cataracts, swimming, diving, and wading in the strong currents from rock to rock, while leading out the tow-ropes and hauling the boats up.’ During the journey up this river the traveller encountered in many parts a succession of rapids and cataracts. The difficulties thus entailed, and the graphic account of how these difficulties were surmounted, afford some notion of the laboriousness of nearly every river voyage made by Mr Brown in the course of his explorations.
The scenes through which he passed were of rich and varied beauty. Nothing terrible or threatening met his sight in that unknown land, which seems to bear upon its face one broad beaming smile, answering with fidelity to the smile of the sun. Rocky islets bearing clusters of low trees, whose stems and branches are covered with orchids and wild pines, rise from the broad bosom of the river, while its banks are clothed with forest trees; and on the rocks under its waters is a luxuriant growth of water-plants, bearing exquisite flowers. When the sun is high, gorgeous butterflies, yellow, orange, and azure blue, frequent the water’s edge in clusters, or flit over the open spaces near the cataracts; and the river abounds in deep-bodied silvery-scaled fish of various kinds.
The character of the scenery along the banks of the rivers, which form a kind of network over the face of the country in Guiana, is chiefly of the kind described above; but there is no monotony in it, and the traveller is kept constantly amused by the birds and the insect life. Morning and evening are marked by bands of screeching parrots crossing the river to and from their feeding-grounds, and all along the banks the kingfisher and the ibis abound. The Indian villages are generally within a short distance of the river, and the harmless people are unusually smart in their attire. The women wear an apron called a queyon, formed of cotton and bead-work, ingeniously manufactured, each bead being slipped on the cotton thread in its proper place as it is being woven. The traveller frequently halted at the villages while the natives prepared cassava bread for him, and he had a fair opportunity of forming a judgment upon their intellectual status and social condition. Both are superior to those of the average ‘natives’ with which books have made us acquainted, and Mr Brown notes as a ‘pleasing feature’ of the British Guiana Indians, that, as a rule, they treat their women well, regarding them as equals and not as slaves. The planters of the civilised portion of the country, kidnappers and tyrants of the ‘coolie,’ might learn lessons of humanity and justice from the ‘savages’ of the ‘Interior.’
A march through primeval forest to the Puruni was a less pleasant experience than the river voyage; for the ‘ticks’ which infest the forest took possession of the travellers. Of the numerous kinds of pestilent insects Mr Brown gives a horrid description; but he counterbalances it by that of the birds, the trees, the flowers, the skies, and the wonderfully exhilarating influence of the climate.
The many mysterious sounds which proceed from primeval forest in all countries where such forest exists, have given rise to superstitious beliefs and fears. On their return journey to the penal settlement, Mr Brown was made acquainted with the legendary ‘Didi’ of those remote realms of forest and river. ‘The first night after leaving Peaimah,’ he says, ‘we heard a long, loud, and most melancholy whistle proceeding from the depths of the forest; at which some of the men exclaimed in an awed tone of voice: “The Didi!” Two or three times the whistle was repeated, sounding like that made by a human being, beginning in a high key and dying slowly and gradually away in a low one. There were conflicting opinions amongst the men regarding the origin of these sounds. Some said they proceeded from the wild hairy man or Didi of the Indians; others that they were produced by a large and poisonous snake which lives in one tree from its youth up, where it attains a great size, living on birds which are so unfortunate as to alight near it, and thus become victims to its powers of fascination. The Didi is said by the Indians to be a short, thick-set, and powerful wild man, whose body is covered with hair, and who lives in the forest. A belief in the existence of this fabulous creature is universal over the whole of British, Venezuelan, and Brazilian Guiana. On the Demerara River I afterwards met a half-bred woodcutter, who related an encounter that he had with two Didi, a male and female, in which he successfully resisted their attacks with his axe.’
The main object of the explorer’s most important voyage up the Essequibo was to obtain a sight of the great Roraima Mountain, which has been seen by few white men.