48 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



lation of states, but quinine has made habitable some of the finest 

 regions of the earth. By its aid the European is enabled to with- 

 stand, for a time at least, the fevers of the tropics, and it has almost 

 deprived ague of its terrors. It was the hope of finding another 

 such blessing for mankind that led Waterton so far into the solitudes 

 of Guiana. He thought it likely that the wourali poison might prove 

 a specific for hydrophobia and tetanus. Frightful spasm is the 

 prominent symptom of those awful maladies; complete quiescence is 

 the effect of the administration of wourali. It seemed probable that 

 this material, hitherto a means of death, might save life where medi- 

 cal art was still powerless. But the mode of preparing wourali was 

 unknown to Europeans, and such specimens of it as the Indians 

 brought down to the colony were always dilute and often effete. It 

 was only far in the interior that the pure poison could be obtained, 

 and its ingredients learned. With these purposes Waterton started 

 on his tedious and dangerous expedition. A desire to do good, a 

 true love of science, spurred him on, and religion sustained him 

 through all hardships and perils. 



The route which Waterton took is related in his " Wanderings." 

 His extreme point was Fort Saint Joachim, on the Rio Branco, 

 which flows into the Rio Negro, a branch of the Amazons. The 

 course of his journey may briefly be described by saying that he went 

 in the line of the river Demerara, and returned in that of the river 

 Essequibo. How very little was known of the country is shown by 

 the fact that there is no good map of it of earlier date than the 

 beginning of the second quarter of this century. Several had been 

 published by Dutch map-makers before that time : they contain the 

 names of some of the chief rivers and of a few places on the sea 

 board, but inland there is a blank, only broken by a Lake Parima, 

 varying in size according to the fancy of the engraver, with some- 

 times the city of El Dorado on its banks. No map, whether Dutch 

 or English, gives any exact information for more than a few miles 

 up the Demerara and Essequibo rivers. The Indians alone knew 

 the paths of the forest. Waterton's description of his track, told 

 without any pretence, is so clear and so accurate, that Sir Robert 

 Schomburgk, who afterwards took the same journey, declared that 

 he was entirely guided by Waterton's directions. Schomburgk was 



