CHAPTER I
THE DEMERARA RIVER

British Guiana, as first seen from the shoal-water near the Demerara lightship, is a mournful and monotonous picture. Mud flats, fringed with courida and mangrove, stretch endlessly along the shore. Never a hill is to be seen. The coastal flats are four feet below the level of high spring tides, and the Atlantic slops over the sea dams in yellow waves of muddy water. The wide expanses of rich sugar-fields and smiling rice lands begin about a mile from the seaside and stretch “aback” to the “wet savannahs,” by means of which they are irrigated. These wet savannahs are vast natural swamps converted artificially into shallow lakes by “stopping off” their seaward outlets. South of them spreads “the bush,” that great primeval forest so hostile to man, but sheltering in its mysterious recesses a million varieties of insects, a multitude of beasts and reptiles, and a wealth of bird life unequalled, perhaps, in any other part of the world.

Little, however, does the average colonist or the chance visitor to British Guiana see of the wonder and beauty of South America. The forest builds an impenetrable barrier, keeping him a close prisoner upon seaside mud flats, which are in the main a dreary waste of uncultivated land. Lack of labour renders it impossible for more than a small fraction even of the coastal fringe to be made to yield its increase. A land the size of England, Scotland, and Wales combined; a population equal to that of Hertfordshire, and a cultivated area less than one-fifth the size of Kent; a land for the greater part unknown and unsurveyed, whose only roads extend along the seaboard and for a few miles up the banks of its main rivers—such is British Guiana, ever since the close of the Napoleonic Wars a possession of the British Crown, the only one in South America, and rich in unexplored possibilities.

But the colonists of British Guiana have never made any serious attempt to investigate the interior of their heritage. Their revenue has always been spent upon coastal development; and a conviction exists that the interior is not only a death-trap, but also a wilderness of useless jungle and sandy deserts. Many attempts were made to dissuade me from venturing into it with my husband, and I was assured that I was risking my health—nay, my life. But the call of the wild was too strong, and I shall always be glad that I decided to go; for the fact that a woman has traversed these forests and the highland prairies beyond during many strenuous weeks and came back with health and vigour renewed may perhaps dispel the legends accumulated about the horrors of “the bush,” and induce people to investigate for themselves the charms and opportunities of this neglected land, or at least to travel with us in spirit into those great expanses of sleeping Nature which await the day of man’s occupation. British Guiana lies, like the princess of the fairy-tale, in an enchanted sleep. One day, surely, the fairy prince will come, mounted upon an iron horse, and bid her awake!

Two long years my husband and I lived continuously in Georgetown, at the mouth of the Demerara River. Then, exhausted in mind and body by the enervating atmosphere and dismal monotony of a tropical coast, near the equator and below sea-level, we decided to spend a brief holiday in exploring a part of the Colony’s interior hitherto blank upon the map, hoping to find there some of that strength which cometh from the hills. A journey up cataract-barred rivers and through primeval forests by Indian trails was in itself an attractive prospect; but we had a still more potent lure. On the 21st March, 1914, my husband had spent a day at the Kaietuk Fall, and had gazed from the brink of the great chasm into which the Potaro River there plunges, up its dreamy reaches towards the forest-clad ridges that stand above the Arnik creek and away to the towering, cliff-faced mass of Mount Kowatipu. It was then that he resolved to visit some day the wonders which Nature might hold in the forests and savannahs farther to the west and the south-west, and perhaps even to make his way to that famous Mount Roraima, of which the residents in British Guiana hear so much and see so little. Then, in October, 1915, he made the acquaintance of Mr. J. C. Menzies, whose occupation as a diamond and gold prospector had carried him into distant parts of our Colony’s interior. Mr. Menzies’ account of prairie tablelands at high altitudes, to be reached by travelling a few days beyond Kaietuk, and affording a view of Mount Roraima, where the boundaries of British Guiana, Brazil, and Venezuela meet, and whence streams flow to the Amazon, Orinoco, and Essequebo, determined us to attempt the journey across those tablelands to that mountain of mystery. During the previous seven years Mr. Menzies had frequently traversed the little-known and unsurveyed part of the Colony that lies between the Potaro River and our frontier with Brazil, and he had been greatly struck by the opportunities for cattle-ranching afforded on its highland savannahs. He had, moreover, bought and driven cattle from Brazil over the Ireng River into British territory, where they wander freely under the nominal guardianship of a tribe of Makusi Indians. He was therefore well qualified to make the preliminary arrangements for the expedition which we had in mind, and he very kindly agreed to place his experience unreservedly at our disposal and to accompany us. His knowledge of our proposed route did not extend beyond the Colony’s boundaries; but he felt sure that an Indian guide could be found in one of the villages near the Ireng, who would be able to lead us on to the goal of our hopes, Mount Roraima.

We started on the 20th December, 1915, our first stage being by steamer from Georgetown to Wismar, a small settlement sixty miles up the Demerara River. The journey takes eight hours, and the scenery is not interesting. For the most part the land on both sides is absolutely flat and screened from the traveller by a dense fringe of jungle growth. Not that the river-banks are entirely unoccupied; tenements and farms are dotted along each bank for miles after the tall chimneys of the sugar factories are left behind. Indeed, between Georgetown and Wismar there remains hardly an acre of Crown land by the river-side, and the titles of some estates date back to the year 1746, when the Dutch still ruled in Demerara. But a former Governor of the Colony decreed that a belt, several yards wide, should be reserved along the faÇade of all riverine grants, so that his successors might be free, if so disposed, to make roads or build wharfs on the river-bank. This untenanted strip of land was, of course, rapidly overgrown with jungle, and the dense mokka-mokka which grows at the water’s edge makes a forbidding-looking fringe to the Demerara’s yellow tide. This plant, a member of the arum family, is said to offer an excellent paper-making material. It grows sometimes just above the surface of the water, and sometimes reaches a height of thirty feet or so, forming a happy sanctuary for birds of many kinds. Their nests among the broad leaves, that clothe the thick stems rising straight out of the water, are secure from snakes and such-like enemies. Once I saw a tiny humming-bird, a veritable jewel of colour, seated on her minute nest, regarding us trustfully as we paddled by. This was not, indeed, on the banks of the Demerara, but during an expedition to one of the wet-savannah conservancies already mentioned. She sat on her airy throne, perched in the fork of a low mokka-mokka stem, a few feet above the wind-swayed rushes and broad lily leaves which cover the wide expanses on each side of the water-paths, kept clear for boats. As we sat in our low corial, her background was blue sky, and a prettier sight can scarcely be imagined.

The Demerara River has several large creeks, navigable by corials or even motor-boats for many miles, but their mouths, screened by mokka-mokka plant, are mostly impossible to distinguish from the deck of a river steamer. The only one of these streams I have explored is the Kamuni creek, which my husband and I once visited in order to see the now almost deserted Chinese settlement of Hopetown. Strange that such lonely jungle should ever have had attractions for Chinese settlers! Everywhere broods the heavy silence of the tropical “bush,” broken now and then by the whir of a beetle or the cry of a bird swooping across the creek; nor does this forest afford any variations of colour save in the intense green of the overarching foliage, reflected leaf for leaf in the still, black water. Now and then some glorious orchid decorates a decaying tree-trunk, or the blossoms of some brilliant flowering creeper, fallen from the distant tree-tops, float down the stream. Here and there a splendid blue butterfly flits into the sunshine, and an occasional splash betrays an alligator subsiding into a dark pool.

The Hopetown Settlement, which was once a flourishing village engaged chiefly in charcoal-burning, now consists only of a few hovels, thatched with troolie palm, and of some ill-kept rice-fields, the one redeeming feature being a nice wooden church. When we went in, there were flowers on the altar, and a pair of Cantonese vases, which must wonder how they got there. An aged Chinese catechist conducted the service, and a priest visits the place at rare intervals.

The people, I remember, welcomed us gladly, and were delighted to hear a few words in Cantonese spoken by my husband. The whole village accompanied us as we walked along the dam, which serves it both as a main road and as a safeguard against inundation. We visited the “cultivation,” but there was nothing satisfactory to be seen. A few miserable plantains, a few poor cacao-bushes, untended and uncared for, was all we could observe. A paddy-field, to which we were led, was merely a rough clearing in the bush, the trees having been cut down, but the stumps left standing, and no attempt was made to irrigate or drain. There had been no manuring, nor, indeed, was there any sign of tillage. The sight was a sad one to eyes accustomed to the smiling, carefully tended rice-fields of China, with their neatly dammed divisions for conserving water, fields from which the laborious Cantonese, by unceasing toil, reap their annual reward of two rice harvests and one crop of “dry cultivation.” The Hopetown settlers told us that they could only raise a rice crop from a given area once in five years; but with care the land could, of course, be made productive. The settlement possessed no animals; not even the pig, so universal in China, was to be seen. In fact, the people evidently lacked energy to make an effort to improve their condition. Most young Chinese, desirous of better things, have doubtless discovered that by going to Georgetown they can with thrift, industry, and the business instincts of their race, find more promising openings for making a livelihood, in trade or otherwise, than Hopetown offers. Hence only the aged, the feeble, or the indolent, remain in the settlement; and Hopetown no longer answers to its name, for little hope of its future is now left.

The Chinese, however, came late in the story of the Demerara. Only Caribs lived there in 1598, when the river was first made known to Europe by the report of two Dutch ships that had cruised along the coast of Guiana, but had not traded in the “Demirara,” because they were pressed for time, and because the Caribs informed them that “not much was to be found there,” and also, perhaps, chiefly “because their provisions were growing scant.” In those days, maybe, there was a numerous Carib population hereabouts; but the inhabitants are now a curious medley, almost amphibious, for once the sugar estates are passed the river is their only road, and the smallest child navigates his corial. The census of 1911 records that only 8,101 people were in that year inhabiting the Demerara. Of these, 2,983 were blacks; 1,756 were East Indians; 1,741 were of mixed race; 124 were Chinese; 178 were Portuguese; and 48 were Europeans other than Portuguese. Only 1,229—say 15 per cent. of the whole—were aborigines. There is the history of British Guiana in a nutshell! A ceaseless struggle to people from overseas an empty land! The Portuguese came from Madeira. The blacks are descended from negro slaves brought here from Africa by the Dutch West India Company. No black slaves were ever brought to Demerara under British rule; for the slave trade was abolished by Parliament in 1807, and this Colony did not become definitely British until seven years later. The East Indians have all been introduced as indentured labourers under a system of immigration which began in 1845 and ended in 1917. They hail chiefly from Bengal and Madras. The Chinese also came here under indenture, as the result of a scheme of immigration, from Hong-Kong, Canton, and Amoy, which lasted from 1853 intermittently until 1874, and was then discontinued.

On the whole, the Lower Demerara is distinctly monotonous and void of interest, but shortly below Wismar there are hints of better things. The river, which at Georgetown is a mile wide, narrows considerably; the banks rise on either side, crowned by big forest-trees, telling of their mighty brethren in the far interior, and greenheart logs lie steeping in the river, waiting to be shipped. They cannot be drifted downstream in the usual fashion, as greenheart is heavier than water and does not float.

Moreover, the river-water, previously an opaque yellow from the influx of the tides that wash seas of mud along the British Guiana coasts, now changes to the beautiful black “bush-water,” which, coming from the forest depths, is darkly stained by vegetable matter held in suspension. Sometimes it has a reddish tinge, and then again turns amber-coloured, especially over sandy shallows. It makes a wonderful mirror for sky, cloud, and tree, reflected in its sleeping depths; and it is quite safe and pleasant to drink, when boiled.

The township of Wismar on the Demerara River is the terminal point of the small piece of railway built in 1896 by Sprostons Limited to cross the divide, here less than nineteen miles wide, between the Demerara and Essequebo Rivers. Close to the railway-station, alongside which is a steamer wharf, cluster the police-station, post office, magistracy, and a few shops. The train is a little toy affair, very dirty; the engine burns wood fuel, and the sparks which fly from its funnel give as fine a display of fireworks after nightfall as one could wish to see. They are, however, somewhat dangerous. A case in point was the occasion when Princess Marie-Louise travelled over the line in 1914. The train had been specially decorated in her honour; but it had not proceeded more than half a mile from Wismar before the sparks set all the decorations on fire, and a halt was necessary in order to divest the passenger-coaches of all combustible embellishments.

Crossing the divide by motor-trolley is quite an agreeable experience, especially in the cool of the evening, and the line is seen to better advantage. The scenery, however, is disappointing. On the Essequebo side of the water-parting, Sprostons have considerable timber-cutting grants, to which they run branch lines. But near the main line all big trees have long ago been cut down, and some years ago a terrible forest fire swept down the divide, leaving behind it a desolation of stark and charred tree-trunks, unlovely to look at. The soil is a white sand, dazzling in the equatorial sunlight.

Just above Wismar the Demerara Bauxite Company has begun mining operations, and it is very interesting to visit the Company’s settlements at Fair’s Rust and Akyma. Fair’s Rust is a mile above Wismar and can be reached by ocean-going steamers, but the principal bauxite mines, or rather quarries, are twelve miles farther up, where the low hills consist of almost solid pink-coloured ore, once the overburden has been removed. The Company pays great attention to the health of its employÉs: good houses are built; bush is cleared away, and drainage and sanitation carefully contrived.

A very pleasant way of accomplishing the journey to Wismar is to travel as a guest of the Company in one of its comfortable motor-boats, starting from Georgetown at about tea-time and following the silvery pathway of the river, aglow in the setting sun; to anchor in the starlight and sleep in the grateful coolness and velvet silence of the river night; to get under way again in the dawn, and to reach the settlement at Akyma before the full heat of the day. Especially is this delightful when such a journey is but the first stage on towards all the glories of mountain and river which lie awaiting those who venture to explore the wonders of an unknown land.