HISTORICAL BARTICA 35 



of horrors when you step forth to make an intimate acquaint- 

 ance within the beauties so lavishly displayed on every side. 

 The bete rouge abiiost drives you to distraction, the wood- 

 tick torments you horribly, the snakes frighten you out of 

 your life, the bat will hardly allow you to sleep for dread 

 of being drained of yoin* life-blood, and the chigoe threatens 

 you with a prospect of amputation. Such are some of the 

 delights of a life in the wilds of Guiana. Let no timid man 

 attempt it." 



With missionaries who could believe and write such ab- 

 surdities it is hardly remarkable that im Thurn, visiting 

 Bartica in 1878, writes that Bartica Grove, once a floiu'ish- 

 ing mission station, is now reduced to a few wooden huts, 

 used as stores, a church recently half restored from a most 

 ruinous condition, a few small living houses and some timber 

 sheds. These latter, he adds, are picturesque buildings, con- 

 sisting of a few upright posts supporting roofs of withered 

 palm leaves. Under their eaves colonies of gigantic green 

 spiders, as large as thrushes' eggs, watch their webs, undis- 

 turbed from year's end to year's end. The whole sleepy, 

 beautiful village lies under the shade of an avenue of large 

 mango trees. From this avenue the view riverward is of an 

 enormous stretch of water ; the view landward is of a tangled 

 shrubbery of flowering bushes, from which rise groups of 

 graceful palms, and is bounded in the distance by the edge 

 of the forest. The ditches and paths in the village are choked 

 by great masses of maidenhair ferns and silver-backed 

 gymnograms. 



A few years after the decadence of the mission station 

 came a second El Dorado, when the discovery of gold and 

 diamonds up the Mazaruni and Cuyuni rivers brought hosts 

 of blacks and bovianders. The only changes which the suc- 

 ceeding two score years have wrought in im Thurn's de- 

 scription of Bartica, are an increase in small houses to ac- 

 commodate the several hundred inhabitants, and unlovely 

 telegraph, police and post offices, besides a stelling for the 



