CIIAPTKU II 



HISTORICAI, BARTICA 



Today we find Georgetown with sixty-odd thousand 

 people, with trams and raih'oads and motor ears; with doz- 

 ens of sugar plantations scattered along the coastland, em- 

 ploying thousands of coolie and negro laborers. Two score 

 miles of river travel up the Essequibo bring us, as I have 

 said, to Kalacoon House near Bartica, from which we see 

 only jungle, save for the small Penal Settlement, a bunga- 

 low or two at Katabo Point, the Hills rubber plantation and 

 an old Dutch arch-way on a little island. But this ruined 

 arch of bricks is reminiscent of very different times. 



When Georgetown was unknown, when the coast of 

 British Guiana was only one great swamp and marsh in- 

 habited by cannibal Caribs, then this arch-way echoed to the 

 clank of old-fashioned muskets and the boom of flare- 

 mouthed cannon. Commanding the junction of three great 

 rivers, the Dutch chose this tiny island, built a fort on it 

 and named it Kj^k-over-al, and like Kalacoon House today, 

 it literally "looked over all." It is said that the Dutch wlien 

 they first came, found traces of still earlier Spanish occupa- 

 tion of this islet. If true, this M^as clear evidence of the visit 

 ; )f Raleigh or some of his lieutenants in their search for the 

 mysterious El Dorado. The succeeding history of this re- 

 gion is not strictly germain to the purpose of this volume, 

 but a few notes on the vicissitudes of man's occupation are 

 well worthy of record. 



The fort on the island was built by the Dutch over 

 three hundred years ago, in 1613, but during the succeed- 

 ing few years we know little of what happened, except that 

 fifty-five years later all this region was desolate, whether 

 due to the attacks of Indians we shall never know. In 1670 



