BRITISH GUIANA (1) 103 
be the principal factor in their survival, for no one will eat them 
on account of it; in fact one of the local names for the hoatzin is 
“stinking Anna.” If the bird had been considered a delicacy it 
would either have become extinct long ago or would have changed 
its habits. 
The front of the hoatzins’ cages I kept covered with cheese- 
cloth, so that the birds got plenty of light and air but at the same 
time could not see out. This is an important precaution as a 
newly caught bird under these conditions will make no attempt 
to escape and therefore will not exhaust itself. In the safety and 
quietness of these boxes my birds quickly regained their normal 
appetites and fed greedily on caladium leaves which I gathered 
daily. 
A few days later I left for Georgetown with my five hoatzins, 
three trumpeter birds, and a saki monkey. 
I had already arranged to do the rest of my collecting in the 
region of Bartica, in those days a small town of one hundred in- 
habitants, one street and one church. It is on a spit of land at the 
junction of the Essequibo and the Mazaruni rivers, about forty 
miles from the sea. The trip there in the river steamer was un- 
eventful except that the flat-bottomed craft designed for shallow 
rivers was out of its element in the roughish sea-waters between 
Georgetown and the mouth of the Essequibo. The Governor had 
given me permission to stay at the Penal Settlement opposite 
Bartica on the left bank of the Mazaruni near its confluence with 
the Essequibo. Here there was a comfortable and spacious rest- 
house for the use of Government officials visiting the district or 
on their way to or from the interior. There were no Europeans 
at the station at the time of my visit—the residents being a colored 
prison governor and his staff, a number of convicts serving long 
prison sentences, and a Negro and his wife who acted respectively 
as caretaker and cook for the rest-house. 
Here was a penal settlement without any sort of enclosure. The 
whole place was really a large farm made by clearing a patch of 
virgin forest, and was largely self-supporting. The best feature was 
a herd of cows which supplied milk and butter. The settlement 
was surrounded by natural barriers more effective than any bars; 
on the one side there was a very wide river, and on the other 
