4-62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the whole plantation has become a swamp, these heaps form little 

 islands amid the ooze, and, in a very dry season, when the savan- 

 na has been burned, they stand up like the mounds of the Caribs, 

 to which they are somewhat analogous. 



To understand this analogy, we must go back to some past 

 age long before the discovery of America. The original coast 

 line of British Guiana is now some twenty miles inland ; but ages 

 ago, no doubt, the present sand-reefs were washed by the ocean. 

 The great rivers brought down sand, mud, and vegetable matter 

 in solution, as they do to-day. These suspended and dissolved 

 substances were deposited in the shape of sandbanks and shoals 

 and became little islands. To these the cannibals retired from all 

 enemies, and enjoyed their horrible feasts in seclusion and with- 

 out fear, in the way so well described by Defoe. 



Under mounds of sand, covered with forest trees, the remains 

 of the Carib's feast can still be found and recognized. These 

 mounds are most common in the northwestern district of British 

 Guiana the Canihalor Terra of the early voyagers and the Cari- 

 hana of Raleigh. Some are situated several miles from the pres- 

 ent coast line, and were probably occupied for many years, as the 

 heaps of shells, bits of pottery, stone weapons, and, most horrible 

 of all, human bones broken for the marrow, must have taken a 

 long time to accumulate. Now they are hidden in the virgin 

 forest, and only by accident have a few been discovered. Nature 

 has triumphed, and the Carib is virtually extinct. 



In one respect the savage leaves a morfe lasting record of his 

 former presence than the white man. The steel knife or axe 

 crumbles away under the influence of heat and moisture, and 

 even the great iron sugar pan throws oil thick flakes of oxide 

 until it falls into dust. But the stone axe of the Indian is as 

 lasting as the rock itself, and might be safely said to be an im- 

 perishable record. Gold-diggers not infrequently come upon 

 them at depths of six or eight feet in our river bottoms, and 

 they are found in canal excavations as well as in the cannibal 

 mounds. In Guiana they are not necessarily ancient, as they 

 were in use everywhere up to three centuries ago, and are still 

 utilized in shaping pottery. Even a century ago it would not 

 have been hard to find some of them put to their proper use 

 i. e., to scrape away the charred portions of wood in excavating 

 a canoe. 



Besides the mounds and stone implements, the educated eye 

 sees other evidences of the Indian's presence at some former time. 

 The Arawak in the past, as in the present, generally made his 

 settlement on a sand reef, and hardly a creek is without indica- 

 tions of his former presence. A stranger is so bewildered with 

 the great tangle of vegetation, and the variety of form and color 



