Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds

by William La Varre

Nothing startling occurred that day. I believe I saw more birds than usual, and the banks became less marshy. The jungle seemed to be slightly changing into a trifle higher and drier forest land. It was still thick, almost impenetrable, yet a bit different.

On the seventeenth day we came to a small portage. We could not paddle over it, yet it was not necessary to remove all of our five tons of supplies. Lightening our cargo about one half, the men jumped out, fastened the ropes astern and the single rope to the bow for the last time on our upriver trip and hauled away with a will.

Soon we were over, goods repacked and the blacks paddling in still, smooth water, but more vigorously than usual as they, too, were glad to be at the end of their hard journey. Seventeen days of paddling a fifty-foot boat made of great planks and laden with five tons of goods, hauling it over portages, is not exactly a picnic, and the men certainly earned their forty-eight cents a day. And so they thumped and scraped their much-worn paddles along the gunwales of that old boat, worn smooth with constant paddling, and they sang their everlasting paddle song with more cheerfulness than they had done for days.

Finally Captain Peter spoke something to the bowman while he swung his steering paddle over, and our craft put in shore. We nosed about and found just the site we needed, and proceeded to unload everything, this time to set up our mining camp.

A temporary shelter went up to store the goods under, with low hanging eaves to keep out the rain. We had now got into a country where there were no more haphazard rains. We could almost set our watches by the rains, which came regularly every morning about daybreak, for a half hour or more, and again every night right after sunset, for a little while. Although these twice-a-day rains were of short duration the water certainly came down in bucketfuls while it was raining.

A rack of poles kept our goods from the ground so that the rain could run underneath. Our shelters went up for that night, and eagerly I began to study the gravel formation, really not expecting to see any diamonds, but anxious to study the soil and somehow all the time wondering if, by chance, I might not see a diamond in the dirt. Every sparkling bit of rock I picked up. Lewis laughed good-naturedly at this, but he was quite as eager as I to get at the business for which we had the long, tiresome and really costly trip.

We had journeyed 300 miles up the river. At this point the Mazaruni had once flowed over the dry land where our camp was located. Some convulsion of nature, probably of volcanic origin, had changed the course of the river, and it was in this dry and ancient river bed that we hoped to find a fortune.

For tools we had brought along only the simplest kind, good old picks and shovels, and a hand pump. We had plenty of material with us for making the mining apparatus, crude but necessary, but there was a great deal to be done and we decided to get well settled and start in right.

First we had to have a permanent home, a “logie,” which is much like a bungalow, only more open and quite high and dry. Then we had to make good shelters for our three groups of blacks, and also for what Indians we would find it necessary to hire.

We also had to set up our mine, arrange with Indians to hunt a steady supply of food, make a permanent cooking place and get as comfortable as possible so that we could go ahead with our diamond mining without interruption.