of British Guiana the upper Essequebo draws its head-waters from the Akarai Mountains on the Brazilian frontier; the Mazaruni rises on Roraima in the west, and flows in countless windings through the dense forests of the rich diamond country; whilst to the northwest the Cuyuni, famous for its gold booms, comes in from Venezuela and forms the southern boundary of the NorthWest District. Beautiful and noble streams they are, but access to the heart of the colony is not to be won by their means without long toil and danger. Every year lives and goods are lost in their cruel rapids, and the Essequebo above Bartica is so dangerous that boat-captains have been forbidden by law to attempt to shoot its cataracts. All traffic has to be diverted at Rockstone and carried across to the Demerara by rail.

Higher up there are seventy miles of river beyond the King William IV. and the Manarowah Falls, which are said to have been completely unknown to man until, in 1870, Mr Barrington-Brown succeeded at great risk in getting past these barriers. In his wonderful book, 'Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana,' he gives a most interesting account of the tameness of animal life where man had never been, and he also tells of the amazement and terror of the Teruma aborigines when his party emerged from the forbidden region. These people, who had,

of course, never seen a white man, regarded approach from the west by the Cuyuwini river as the only possible access to their country, and believed that supernatural terrors as well as natural obstacles barred the Essequebo to humankind. But none of this was the country of our quest, whither the way led across the Essequebo's mouth. Truly it is a wicked and useless river, for even in its great estuary, twelve miles wide, the small Government steamers have to thread a passage by devious channels; and though all the navies of the world might ride at anchor off Bartica in its huge watersmeet with the Mazaruni and Cuyuni, the problem of how to get even the smallest ocean-going ship thither has yet to be solved.

From Parika, the Government ferry bore us across the salt yellow water with many a wide detour to avoid the shoals off several large islands, two of which grow rice and sugar. Then we entered the mouth of the Supenaam Creek on the western shore and disembarked. One day a road will run up the bank of the Supenaam, and then swing westwards along the hill ridges above the Cuyuni and so into Venezuela. Thus would the Blue Mountains be opened for development, and overland communication with the north-west be provided. Then the river Odyssey would be no longer needed. But these things are dreams, matters which lie on the knees of the gods, and the gods have not

Turning aside with a sigh from gazing up the Supenaam's black stream, we addressed ourselves to things as they are, and proceeded by car once more along a coastal road. From Supenaam stelling to Suddie, where there is a Government rest-house, is a pleasant drive of ten miles. Sometimes the rice-fields sweep up to the road on both sides, and the eye rejoices in the exquisite varieties of yellow-green paddy, while its indefinable scent comes in puffs upon the breeze; then a high avenue of mango-trees and coconut-palms, interspersed with bread-fruit and lime-trees, borders the way, in the shade of which are the adobe huts of coolies and russet-brown heaps of paddy dry on mats by the roadside. Bright gleams of growing rice shine at intervals through the trees, which tempt one to walk "aback" along the inviting little paths, atop of the bunds. Indeed, these Essequebo rice-lands are unusually picturesque. They lie between reefs of low sandhills clothed in forest, and I have walked there when it seemed as though every second tree were a "Longjohn" piled with blossoms like driven snow. My memory is haunted by the glory of those smiling fields lying in the arms of the forest, rich in every tint of green beauty bathed in the glorious sunshine of Guiana that gives a richer colour to the nature it blesses than the light of any

blue wood-smoke rises from little adobe walled sheds, thatched with silver-grey troolie palm, and almost hidden by banana-fans, picturesque, indeed, and adding just the perfect note of colour to the scene, but damper and more unsuitable for human habitation than can be imagined. Here the coolie loves to dwell amidst his rustling rice, working when and how he pleases, getting through his fits of malaria and ague lying on the mud floor of his domicile, and offering a steady and effective passive resistance to the efforts made on behalf of health and sanitation.

Behind the cultivated lands there is a big jungle-swamp, but if some one who knows leads you across by a safe path, you find yourself on the pleasant shores of the fascinating Acrabisce and Iturabisce Lakes, where a delightful holiday may be spent. Good fishing rewards very early risers, and all day long it is cool there and bathing is delightful. ing is delightful. Low sandhills rising at intervals along the shores bear occasional Indian huts, where among the prickly leaves of pine-apple plants, grey-green flushed with red, delightful little lizards, greygreen and ruby-red to match, run riot. Southward spreads the unbroken primeval forest, whilst north-westwards runs a chain of lakes, some of which are utilised by the coastal estates as water-conservancies.

At Suddie, the Government hospital, police-station, rest

house, and quarters for Government officers, stand close to the sea, whose murmur fills the place. It is a pleasant spot, where the breeze has undisputed sway. Close by is the Onderneeming reformative and industrial school with its lovely garden and well-kept acres of lime, coffee, and cocoa. The school operates a small lime factory, which provides a market for the limes of the coast peasantry. A pannier-laden donkey collects the fruit from the school's own trees, and cheerful little dusky misdemeanants unpack the fragrant loads. The bigger boys attend to the cattle, for Onderneeming boasts a fine dairy farm besides a stud of water-buffaloes, who glare at you like cross old ladies through the horns that curl around their eyes like spectacle-rims. They are the ugliest beasts in existence, I think, and their disapproval of strangers goes further than their looks, for they will gladly knock down and trample people who unwarily get to windward of them. I never gave them a chance myself, since years ago in China I fled from one with three naval officers accompanying my flight. The most humiliating thing about such an adventure is that one small child familiar with the brute can easily calm it down again from the frenzy into which the obnoxious odour of the European throws it.

We spent several days at Colony House, as the Suddie rest-house is called; then on 27th September 1921, shortly

before 5 o'clock in the morning, we packed ourselves and all our belongings into a motorcar and sped forth into a yet dark world, fresh with the cold dew of earliest day. The crescent of a waning moon dropped into the sea; stars blazed wonderfully overhead with Orion's glorious constellation shining in the zenith.

Gradually the countryside became visible in ghost-like palegrey outline, and the sky changed from its gold-studded depth to a dim blue dome flashing sparks of silver light. Human

forms, flitting white through the gloom, became distinct in sarong and turban, and then the full tide of day splashed on us suddenly, for dawn in the tropics is as brief as are the exquisite twilight moments of evening which pass in one cool soft sigh.

As soon as there was light the road became alive at once with donkey-carts, men, women, and children, cattle and poultry; and when our car halted because of a puncture, a friendly and curious crowd soon collected fore and aft. The sandflies collected too, but an amiable personage, adorned with golden ornaments, commanded certain small boys to "run fo' fire," green rushes were cut and caused to smoulder, so that soon a "smoke-fire fo' de missee" kept the spiteful black stinging specks away.

For many miles the Atlantic borders on the very road, and concrete walls and concretefaced dams protect the low

lying coast from the great ocean's "spill - over." One's lips are salt with the spray of the trade wind.

Sugar and rice form the chief cultivation here as on the rest of the coast, the former ever decreasing in acreage and giving place to the latter. Coconut-palms are everywhere, and there are wide pastures, also vast stretches of rush-covered swamp, whose splendid fertility cries aloud to become the ricelands of the future. After some twenty miles the road changes its course, and runs northwesterly instead of due north, so that between it and the sea is placed a briny, swampy jungle with an evil brackish smell, but haunted nevertheless by beautiful blue grey and snow-white cranes, as well as countless other birds. The road used to end suddenly five miles from the Pomeroon river, appalled before a great eta-palm swamp; but in 1914 an earthcauseway was thrown up and the road carried through on it to the Pomeroon bank. I well remember at Christmas, in 1914, attempting to drive through to the river. The car stuck fast, and we had to walk on to get help from the little riverside hamlet known as Charity. The attentions of buzzing black mosquitoes," as large as snipe," spurred lagging footsteps, and scarcely gave one's mind time to dwell on the legend that the engineer in charge of the construction had once fallen through his road into the quaking bog and been extricated

by his hair. But six years have made a great difference: the road has consolidated, the trenches have helped to drain the swamp, and rice is being grown on both sides. Here and there, where the land has not been cleared and the tide of dense swamp-forest closes upon the road, one gazes into the fearful tangle of vegetation, warped and woofed together by lianas and creeping plants of every description, and then realises what the work of clearing has been. The wonderful fertility of the virgin soil repays the labour, and good indeed it is to see the golden sheen of ripening rice, even though the jealous forest lowers close behind.

We reached Charity at 7 A.M., and found a busy market going on. There were several motorcars and a motor-bus there, also scores of corials and "bateaux" on the river, for, since the road was brought to Charity and the Pomeroon thus connected with the rest of the colony, land on the banks has been largely taken up and cleared, so that there is to-day continuous cultivation on both sides down to the sea.

We embarked in a Government launch, which had just been put on the river to carry on a newly-established service up and down the Pomeroon. Once in the week it goes out to sea, and then up the Moruka Creek to Acquero. We had come to avail ourselves of this opportunity, as Acquero is another stage in the journey to

the north-west. The little launch was very comfortable, and the service seemed highly popular, judging by the way she was constantly stopped by people pushing off to her in every kind of curious craft with parcels, letters, and passengers. Our "captain," who also discharged in his sole person the duties of sorter and postman, blew constantly loud and long upon a horn a deep and not unmusical note, and the frail boats popped out from the mangrove-screened banks. There is, of course, no road in the Pomeroon district, so that the river is the only highway. Hence the inhabitants learn to use their corials with a wonderful ease and dexterity. The smallest children handle these canoes with a skill that seems to come as easily to them as breathing, and it is a quaint sight to see a boatload of small woolly-heads, packed as tight as they can sit, paddling themselves off to school. Any white children would capsize instantly, for sitting in a corial so as to keep it afloat is no easy matter, especially when it has reached the dilapidated state in which one often sees them still induced to render service. More than one small black boy came off to us in a corial, the bows of which had been completely knocked away. Seated in the extreme stern, so that the open end should be raised in the air, the lad would paddle along gleefully with a letter for the launch-mail between his teeth.

The lower Pomeroon is a broad and stately stream. I believe its head - waters are lovely, where the black current has changed to a crystal clearness and big tree-ferns overhang the water. That country is, however, known only to very few, and I have never been fortunate enough to visit it. But the great wide waterway from Charity down to the sea filled me filled me with delight, whether it was mirroring heaven's own blue, or fleeced over by grey driving cloud, or spurting a million pearls as the heavy drops of a tropical shower struck the steel-coloured surface and wrapped the banks in mist-like veils of moving rain, giving ineffably tender lines to myriad pointed palm, bushy mangrove, and troolie hut alike.

All along the lower Pomeroon the mangrove fringe is about forty feet deep; in fact, it is through the agency of this astonishing tree that the foreshore has been reclaimed through the long centuries. It drops from its branches tenacious suckers with hungry black mouths, thirsting to feed on the tidal waters, and at low tide the trees are revealed standing on a maze-like pediment

of formidable suckerroots. Gradually, of course, sediment and drift accumulate between these roots and so soil is formed, while the mangrove flings out further suckers and advances seaward in its work of land-making. of land-making. Behind the mangrove-bush lies promising cultivation of ground provi