He is appointed by Government to give in his report to the protector of the Indians of what is going on amongst them and to prevent suspicious people from passing up the river.
When the Indians assemble here, the stranger may have an opportunity of seeing the aborigines dancing to the sound of their country music and painted in their native style. They will shoot their arrows for him with an unerring aim and send the poisoned dart, from the blow-pipe, true to its destination: and here he may often view all the different shades, from the red savage to the white man; and from the white man to the sootiest son of Africa.
Beyond this post there are no more habitations of white men or free people of colour.
In a country so extensively covered with wood as this is, having every advantage that a tropical sun and the richest mould, in many places, can give to vegetation, it is natural to look for trees of very large dimensions. But it is rare to meet with them above six yards in circumference. If larger have ever existed they have fallen a sacrifice either to the axe or to fire.
If, however, they disappoint you in size, they make ample amends in height. Heedless, and bankrupt in all curiosity, must he be who can journey on without stopping to take a view of the towering mora. Its topmost branch, when naked with age or dried by accident, is the favourite resort of the toucan. Many a time has this singular bird felt the shot faintly strike him from the gun of the fowler beneath, and owed his life to the distance betwixt them.
The trees which form these far-extending wilds are as useful as they are ornamental. It would take a volume of itself to describe them.
The green-heart, famous for its hardness and durability; the hackea for its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met with in the forest betwixt the plantations and the rock Saba.
Beyond this rock the country has been little explored, but it is very probable that these, and a vast collection of other kinds, and possibly many new species, are scattered up and down, in all directions, through the swamps and hills and savannas of ci-devant Dutch Guiana.
On viewing the stately trees around him, the naturalist will observe many of them bearing leaves and blossoms and fruit not their own.
The wild fig-tree, as large as a common English apple-tree, often rears itself from one of the thick branches at the top of the mora, and when its fruit is ripe, to it the birds resort for nourishment. It was to an undigested seed passing through the body of the bird which had perched on the mora that the fig-tree first owed its elevated station there. The sap of the mora raised it into full bearing, but now, in its turn, it is doomed to contribute a portion of its own sap and juices towards the growth of different species of vines, the seeds of which also the birds deposited on its branches. These soon vegetate, and bear fruit in great quantities; so what with their usurpation of the resources of the fig-tree, and the fig- tree of the mora, the mora, unable to support a charge which nature never intended it should, languishes and dies under its burden; and then the fig- tree, and its usurping progeny of vines, receiving no more succour from their late foster-parent, droop and perish in their turn.
A vine called the bush-rope by the wood-cutters, on account of its use in hauling out the heaviest timber, has a singular appearance in the forests of Demerara. Sometimes you see it nearly as thick as a man's body, twisted like a corkscrew round the tallest trees and rearing its head high above their tops. At other times three or four of them, like strands in a cable, join tree and tree and branch and branch together. Others, descending from on high, take root as soon as their extremity touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays supporting the mainmast of a line-of-battle ship; while others, sending out parallel, oblique, horizontal and perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you in mind of what travellers call a matted forest. Oftentimes a tree, above a hundred feet high, uprooted by the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall by these amazing cables of nature, and hence it is that you account for the phenomenon of seeing trees not only vegetating, but sending forth vigorous shoots, though far from their perpendicular, and their trunks inclined to every degree from the meridian to the horizon.
Their heads remain firmly supported by the bush-rope; many of their roots soon refix themselves in the earth, and frequently a strong shoot will sprout out perpendicularly from near the root of the reclined trunk, and in time become a fine tree. No grass grows under the trees and few weeds, except in the swamps.
The high grounds are pretty clear of underwood, and with a cutlass to sever the small bush-ropes it is not difficult walking among the trees.
The soil, chiefly formed by the fallen leaves and decayed trees, is very rich and fertile in the valleys. On the hills it is little better than sand. The rains seem to have carried away and swept into the valleys every particle which Nature intended to have formed a mould.
Four-footed animals are scarce considering how very thinly these forests are inhabited by men.
Several species of the animal commonly called tiger, though in reality it approaches nearer to the leopard, are found here, and two of their diminutives, named tiger-cats. The tapir, the lobba and deer afford excellent food, and chiefly frequent the swamps and low ground near the sides of the river and creeks.
In stating that four-footed animals are scarce, the peccari must be excepted. Three or four hundred of them herd together and traverse the wilds in all directions in quest of roots and fallen seeds. The Indians mostly shoot them with poisoned arrows. When wounded they run about one hundred and fifty paces; they then drop, and make wholesome food.
The red monkey, erroneously called the baboon, is heard oftener than it is seen, while the common brown monkey, the bisa, and sacawinki rove from tree to tree, and amuse the stranger as he journeys on.
A species of the polecat, and another of the fox, are destructive to the Indian's poultry, while the opossum, the guana and salempenta afford him a delicious morsel.
The small ant-bear, and the large one, remarkable for his long, broad, bushy tail, are sometimes seen on the tops of the wood-ants' nests; the armadillos bore in the sand-hills, like rabbits in a warren; and the porcupine is now and then discovered in the trees over your head.
This, too, is the native country of the sloth. His looks, his gestures and his cries all conspire to entreat you to take pity on him. These are the only weapons of defence which Nature hath given him. While other animals assemble in herds, or in pairs range through these boundless wilds, the sloth is solitary and almost stationary; he cannot escape from you. It is said his piteous moans make the tiger relent and turn out of the way. Do not then level your gun at him or pierce him with a poisoned arrow--he has never hurt one living creature. A few leaves, and those of the commonest and coarsest kind, are all he asks for his support. On comparing him with other animals you would say that you could perceive deficiency, deformity and superabundance in his composition. He has no cutting-teeth, and though four stomachs, he still wants the long intestines of ruminating animals. He has only one inferior aperture, as in birds. He has no soles to his feet nor has he the power of moving his toes separately. His hair is flat, and puts you in mind of grass withered by the wintry blast. His legs are too short; they appear deformed by the manner in which they are joined to the body, and when he is on the ground, they seem as if only calculated to be of use in climbing trees. He has forty-six ribs, while the elephant has only forty, and his claws are disproportionably long. Were you to mark down, upon a graduated scale, the different claims to superiority amongst the four-footed animals, this poor ill-formed creature's claim would be the last upon the lowest degree.
Demerara yields to no country in the world in her wonderful and beautiful productions of the feathered race. Here the finest precious stones are far surpassed by the vivid tints which adorn the birds. The naturalist may exclaim that Nature has not known where to stop in forming new species and painting her requisite shades. Almost every one of those singular and elegant birds