Me know so, hear so, yes!
Le, le, le, le, le, le,
Blow, ma booly boy, blow! Califo ’ge ’ole!
Splenty o’gol’s for A’ve been tol’
I’ th’ lan’ o’ Mazaruni!”
We came in sight of another boat. On the Mazaruni every boat one sees that is going in the same direction is an “adversary” and every paddler believes that it is his duty to pass it. Then you see some fancy paddle strokes, so weird and unusual and grotesque that they are difficult to describe. One would think that they were trying more to awe each other with their paddle gesticulations than with speed. How they race upstream, each determined to get and keep the lead! The captain told me that many lives were lost at rapids because the racing paddlers would give thought only to getting into the narrow passes first and were frequently crashed upon the rocks and overturned.
Not far from the little town is Kalacoon, the biological station where at various times Professor Beebe and the other scientists take up their intimate studies of tropical life. This station is on a high hill where the Mazaruni and Essequibo Rivers join. It was at this place that Colonel Roosevelt stopped when he visited the colony.
From this point the vegetation on both sides of the river became so dense that it seemed almost like greenish-black solid walls. No huts or signs of human life were visible at first. But finally, with sharp eyes, we got so we could detect a slight opening, a log landing at the water’s edge or a faint suggestion of a thatched hut in back of the shore row of trees.
It would have been fearfully monotonous but for the fact that Lewis and I devised a new sort of game—to see which one could detect the greater number of signs of human habitation. Our natives, with sharper eyes, would verify our discoveries. All this was in the Boviander section, where the natives come down from “’Bove yonder.” Just before nightfall we reached the foot of the first falls and landed to make camp for the night.
Before the big boat touched land Lewis and I had leaped ashore to stretch our legs. The blacks jumped out into the shoal water and swung the boat into place and made it fast. Jimmy began taking ashore our shelters. Suddenly he began a frantic search and in despair cried: