CHAPTER III
THE POTARO DISTRICT
Tumatumari is a formidable cataract with rocky islands amidst its swirling rush of waters. The name is said to mean “as hot as pepper.” All river traffic, whether upstream or downstream, is stopped by this obstacle, and a portage between the lower and the upper landing must be made over about half a mile of good cart-road. On the right bank stands a nice wooden bungalow, belonging to Sprostons, built on a bluff overlooking the river. There are also several other houses, including a land office, a police-station and a post office, in this little outpost; and many “bucks,” as the aborigines are called in local parlance, live in the neighbourhood. From a point just above the cataract Sprostons run a launch service for another ten miles upstream past Garraway’s Landing to a place known as Potaro Landing, and there all public service ends. Potaro Landing is the northern terminus of a cart-road, about twenty-three miles long, running between the Potaro and Konawaruk Rivers and serving the Minnehaha Gold Mining Company’s settlement. It runs as a sort of Nile through a desert of dense forest.
Great is the energy of the white man! In lands where all Nature cries to him, “Be still; do not exert yourself; keep a dry skin!” and where she relentlessly obliterates with importunate veils of quick-springing jungle all traces of his efforts, if ever he suspends them, he nevertheless pursues his way, dragging his machinery, and defying the mosquito! But in British Guiana he is hopelessly handicapped by want of labour. What can he do, if he cannot command the hands effectually to conquer the wilderness, to roll back the jungle, to plant and tend and reap?
The road up from the river-side at Potaro Landing is wide, but excessively bad. It begins by climbing up a hill of loose sand, in which the heated wayfarer toils along ankle-deep, save where a very rough corduroy of timber changes the form of his penance. Even the fortunate occupant of a dogcart is little better off, for the jarring to one’s spine as the wheels jolt from log to log is almost more than body and bones can endure. After the first seven miles the road-surface changes and becomes ironstone gravel, good enough to permit motor traffic, provided one does not set too much store by the springs of the car. From the road there are interesting glimpses of the black cliffs of Eagle Mountain and another range of grim precipices, frowning like prison walls on either hand. The valley, thus shut in, is intensely hot. The soil is fertile, and limes especially thrive, though all cultivation is precarious, when established on an oasis, amid the jungle, and thus woefully exposed to the depredations of birds and cushie ants. These ants frequently clear a patch of cultivation in a single night of every blade of greenstuff.
When, in 1917, we visited the hospitable manager of the Minnehaha Company at his house, situated near the tenth milestone of the road, there was a big dredge at work washing gold in Mahdia creek at “Nine Miles,” and another was in process of being shifted from “Fifteen Miles” to a point lower down the Minnehaha creek, near the twentieth mile-post. The Company also maintains a comfortable and picturesque bungalow at “Eighteen Miles.” Near the fifteenth mile you cross the divide between the Potaro and Konawaruk Rivers, and the road then runs along the banks of the Minnehaha creek. This once was a picturesque stream, but the washing for gold has discoloured it and altered its course. A track branches off from “Fifteen Miles” and runs up into the Eagle Mountain, where quartz-mining operations had just been begun when war broke out and work was unavoidably suspended.
The administrative headquarters of the district are at the eleventh mile, where the Government maintains a court-house, a police-station, and a dispensary. Several shops are dotted at intervals along the road, and more than one church. Nor must I omit to mention the “Potaro Library,” an imposing-looking shed consisting of side-posts, a roof, and a floor, and proclaiming its title in large letters, but (apart from the total absence of all books) a somewhat strange building to enjoy the title of “library.” I understand it is frequently used for dancing. The shopkeepers of the Potaro Road and, I believe, in all the Colony’s gold districts are Chinese. I shut my eyes and imagined the difference that would be wrought in that desolate scene if a million or so of their almond-eyed brethren could be transported hither. How would the wilderness blossom as a rose, air and light enter, where reigns mosquito-breeding jungle, and the fertile land smile with all that maketh glad the heart of man! Now, if you bump over the excruciating corduroy and the large stones embedded in the road, and especially if light is fading and darkness gathering, the melancholy of the long, dreary, winding way, with its scattered settlements and struggling clearings, penetrates your very bones and gives you a sensation of physical disquiet.
I have, nevertheless, very pleasant recollections of the Potaro District and of the cheery hospitality of the Company’s manager and his three or four white assistants, chiefly New Zealanders. Their pluck, good spirits, and eagerness in their work made a vivid impression on my mind, as did the interesting process of gold-washing, which we observed on Mahdia creek. The dredge-buckets bring up quantities of yellow mud from the bed of the stream, and this mud is washed by water along a sort of wide gutter with gratings across the bottom. The gold-bearing matter, being heavier than the rest, gravitates down through the gratings on to coconut matting sprinkled with quicksilver. This process is called “washing up.” When it has continued for a considerable time, the coconut mattings are carefully washed and beaten, and all that comes out, including the quicksilver, which has charged itself with the gold particles, is again washed through a box by a jet of water. The box has three layers of plush in it, and the water is strained through these layers. The residue is very fine black dust, from which the gold-bearing quicksilver is carefully separated and carried off to be smelted. This process is called “streaming down.”
From the manager’s bungalow at the tenth mile a very pleasant alternative route back to Tumatumari, avoiding the launch trip, is to ride over the seventeen miles of Tiger creek trail. This trail was opened as a bridle track for the accommodation of the “pork-knockers,” who washed Tiger creek for gold, at one time very profitably, though the “placers” are now worked out. A branch line, also made up as a bridle track, goes off from this trail to St. Mary’s, on the Konawaruk River, where the British Guiana Gold Mining Company have dredges at work. The ride is delightful, if one be mounted on a sure-footed mule. The forest trees are veritable giants, and their deep shadow prevents the suffocating undergrowth from springing up. The line, when we rode over it, was clean, and all bridges were in good repair. It is absolutely cool even at midday in the exquisite shade, and we enjoyed charming little views, where the path wound pleasantly up and down small hills. At times it runs beside the deep pools of beautiful Tiger creek and its picturesque slides of amber water and creamy foam. Being mounted, we had the pleasure, rare to travellers in the bush, of looking about us instead of being obliged to watch our feet carefully all the time, or pay the penalty by a stumble. Thus I caught sight of an ant-bear, and we observed that remarkable animal, with its enormous tail and long snout, ambling along on the hill-side below us for quite fifty yards. It appears that ant-bears are bold creatures and fear nothing, as everything else takes care to give them a wide berth. Though they only eat ants, they have a way of rising on their hind legs, gripping an adversary with their inturned front claws, and then tearing him open with their hinder ones. Big ant-bears have been known to do this to men.
When the time comes to improve communications in this part of the Colony, the Potaro River will doubtless be bridged at Garraway’s Landing, where it is only 300 feet wide. Then a line will be cut to join the Potaro-Konawaruk Road at “Two Miles”; and from this second mile-post another road will branch off to rejoin the river and climb to Kaietuk and the highland country beyond, up the wonderful Potaro Gorge.
To-day a trail leads away into the forest westwards from “Two Miles,” where a rough sign-board proudly points the way “To Kaieteur.”[1] Gladly does the wayfarer step into the restful shade after the glare of white sand on the cart-road, and grateful indeed is the cool springiness of the leaf-strewn forest floor. After five miles along this trail, where from time to time the roar of unseen cataracts breaks the silence, the path emerges on Potaro bank once more, at a place known as Kangaruma. Here, on a low hill immediately above the river, is a small clearing with a wooden rest-house, belonging to Sprostons, a couple of Indian troolie-sheds, and some provision-fields.
It is on account of the long series of rapids below Kangaruma that the portage of seven miles from Potaro Landing has to be made, and the river’s big loop to the north is also thus circumvented.
When travelling up the Potaro Gorge we have always sent our stores on ahead of us to Kangaruma, and arranged for our Indian carriers, or droghers, to await us there. Then from this spot one fairly “pulls out on the Long Trail, the trail that is always new.”
