sions, coffee, and coconuts. The houses generally stand on cleared spaces on the banks where a lane has been cut in the mangrove. Many of these are just rough troolie huts, but an increasing number are nicely built wooden houses, from whose airy verandahs the popular colonial portrait of the Prince of Wales smiles down upon passing boats. The grantholder's name is usually stuck on a post emerging from the water, and one Rodrigues, I remember, proclaims his calling by a representation of a large pair of scissors with the legend, tailor and fashionable cutter.' There has been much prosperity in the district as a result of war prices, and it is unfortunate that the coconut estates, most of which are newly planted, are just reaching maturity when the market is so poor.

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However, we saw the Government steamer which comes fortnightly up the river from Georgetown for freight busily loading coconuts and timber for railway sleepers, and her captain reported her as doing extremely well, despite the times.

About noon, having been helped by a falling tide, we reached the sea. The Pomeroon does not widen appreciably at its mouth, but meets the ocean's embrace in its own serene and dignified manner. We put on our mackintoshes and prepared for all eventualities, as the five miles along the coast to the mouth of the

Moruka can be very rough and squally. The captain's green parrot, who had been wandering freely about the launch, appeared to think that great responsibility devolved upon him, and assumed an intent expression in imitation of our bronze-faced East Indian steersman. Fortunately our little vessel had an easy passage. She dashed the spray from her bows and bravely faced the surge of the shallow tossing sea.

The land curved away westwards, a thin crescent of brilliant green encircling the yellow water, a couple of scarlet ibis in flight shone like drops of blood, and an occasional swiftly passing cloud made inklike shadows.

My husband had previously made this passage in a "bateau," which threatened to get swamped every moment. It had been necessary to hug the land so that he might be able, if the boat did disappear from under him, to perch like a secretary-bird upon the mangrove roots, though in that case the next step to take would have required prolonged consideration. However, no such risk is run with the launch service, and we soon gained the mouth of the Moruka, so screened by mangrove as to be almost invisible to seaward, and we thus entered upon our fifth waterway.

The Moruka is a narrow winding stream with a charm all its own. The mangroves form only a narrow fringe about its mouth, and once you

are well inside this barrier you seem to have entered a new world. The forest on either hand rises tall and green, lit here and there by some brighthued orchid, butterfly, or bird, and the air is exquisitely fragrant after the salt sea-breeze. On this particular occasion a grey white blossom of rich sweetness seemed everywhere, scenting the very water, as fallen petals floated down on the slow black stream. Sunshine and shadow made the reflected water world appear even more beautiful than the world above. The blue of the tropical sky gleamed yet brighter beneath us than above our heads, and a deep silent peace brooded around.

The land hereabouts is largely swamp with numerous islands" in it, composed of red ironstone or sand, and inhabited by Warrau Indians, who centre round the two mission-stations at Waramuri and Santa Rosa. The firstnamed is an Anglican mission perched upon some sandhills. There is no resident priest, but a visiting clergyman comes to officiate in the quaint church, and there is a school presided over by a negro schoolmistress. It was not school-time when we arrived, and numbers of cheerful little, nude, bronze persons were frolicking about over the stream in corials, whisking their minute paddles about as if they were part of themselves. The children seemed, indeed, the chief inhabitants of the place; the elders appeared nearly all

VOL. CCXII.-NO. MCCLXXXI.

away. The The "captain" of the village, a dear old man named Coxall, had gone with a gang of men to effect the yearly cleaning of the itabo or channel between the Moruka and the creeks flowing Waini-wards. We were paddled by a pair of children up a water-lane fringed with rushes and lilies to a landing at the foot of the sandhills. There is a shop close by kept by a Chinaman from Canton, who enjoyed a chat in his native language with my husband, to the intense interest of the childish crowd at our heels. This Chinaman also controls the export trade of the place, which I gathered to be hammocks, cassareep, which is a sauce made from the cassava - plant, and big round parcels of cassava-bread tied up very neatly in palmleaves. The Waramuri "houses," which are merely open sheds roofed with trooliepalm, cluster under the shade of coconuts along the hillridge, and looked to be cool refuges from the glare of the white sand. Above the village is a mound whence we obtained a view over a sea of forest. This mound is said to be the burial-place of the dead after a battle between Warrau and Carib in vague far-off days.

Ten miles from Waramuri is the Government station of Acquero. We reached this place at 3 P.M. after so many sudden windings and turns of the creek, as it grew ever narrower, that we wondered whether our poor little small launch would tie

A 2

of

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We pulled back to Acquero in the dusk, while bats skimmed over the dim waterway and the plash of our paddles alone broke the still sweetness night's gracious coming. we landed, although a tender glow still lingered in the west, the palm fronds stood in clearcut outline against the stars. Few things have a greater variety of charm than the marvellous fan of a coconut leaf. Each frond bears a myriad spikes tapering to infinite fineness, and whether they sparkle in the sun or flash back the moonlight, whether tossed this way and that in endless twinkling play of differing angles or motionless in gleaming dawn or azure noonday, they take one's heart with their beauty. As the stems grow tall and lanky, they lose much of their grace, but a big tropic moon rising behind a group of young palms, or a delicate crescent resplendent in earth-shine caught among the pin-like tips, are pictures not easily forgotten.

Next morning at 6 A.M., when Orion's morning greeting had already paled into invisibility, we pushed off in the tent-boat with the Commissioner. It was a still and wonderful morning: a golden tide of light slowly overflowed the world; the sky shone in purest deepest blue, with a dado, as it were, all round the horizon of magnificent pink - flushed, gold-tinted, cumulus clouds. The great sweep of razorgrass rustled golden; the air

stirred by gentle breezes seemed alive with light, and dewdrops gleamed on the lily leaves. All around us stretched the wide "wet savannah," dotted with islands, some merely clumps of bushes powdered with scented blossom, others, an acre or two in extent, bearing big forest trees. These larger islands are all inhabited by Indians, and have water-paths cut to them from the main stream. There were a good many Indians about, seated motionless in their corials fishing, or skimming along the water in their own swift and noiseless fashion. We passed Coxall, the Waramuri "captain," and his men standing up to their waists in water, clearing away weeds and lily plants. These lilies open only at night, so that unless you travel by moonlight, you only see jealously-closed green buds among the beautiful floating leaves.

The Moruka Creek rises in the "wet savannahs within a mile of Acquero, and there is little to mark the point where you leave it to enter the itabo, or, again, where you emerge from the itabo, to follow the beginnings of the Bara-bara. The same meandering path of shallow bronze water winds through an endless stretch of razor-grass and lilies. In dry weather, only corials can navigate the itabo, but we had enough water to be under no anxiety as to the passage of our tent-boat. Such a boat is a most comfortable vehicle of travel, for it is possible to

stretch out at full length on the long cushioned seats and be well protected from the sun by the tent roof; the splash of the paddles is restful music after the explosive progress of a launch, and one soon passes into a dreamy state of fusion with the silent nature around.

About 10 A.M. we found ourselves unmistakably in the Barabara, which is a much smaller creek than the Moruka, and we slipped from the open savannah back again into forest. Trees entirely overarched the little stream, but the banks were still swampy, so that we had to breakfast in the boat. The meal was most skilfully prepared by a small Indian boy, Adolphus by name. Mr King first made the acquaintance of Adolphus when he and another young Indian were brought before him, as magistrate, on a charge of having disturbed the peace by fighting. The other lad whined loudly; but Adolphus stood up to the charge so openly and manfully that Mr King conceived a liking for him, and took him into his household. As the Commissioner's life is largely spent in boats, he had trained Adolphus to be a most handy little travelling servant. Indians, moreover, love travelling and all that appertains thereto, and the boat-hands assisted Adolphus in looking after our comfort whenever possible. Most handily they would place on a paddle and float down to him, as he cooked astern, the teapots, cups, and such-like

implements from the store in baskets amidships. Unfortunately, the day always comes, and generally sooner rather than later, when the Indian vanishes back into his forest life, and is no more seen by those who have lavished an infinity of pains on his education.

After a short halt we continued down the Bara-bara, meeting no one, though in one place we saw a corial moored to a tree, in the fork of which was a rough platform with a hammock swung above it. The owner had disappeared into the jungle, but he had not left his possessions entirely unattended, for as we passed, we detected a tiny brown child standing on the platform with his little naked person pressed motionless against the tree-trunk and his eyes fast closed lest we should catch sight of him.

The swampy jungle on both sides of our creek can hardly have afforded his father a happy hunting-ground. Indeed, it

looked looked most most forbidding. Among the low trees there were plentiful pimpler-palms, bearing clusters of bright scarlet berries, but whose stems bristled with formidable black thornsnay, daggers rather than thorns, as cruel as any ever imagined by fairy tale to bar the path to an enchanted princess. The day was now advancing and the sun rapidly ascending. Wherever the creek side trees caught the light, they shone like the silver forest of legend, while the shadow loomed almost