14 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



whose banks, according to Sir Walter Kalegh, were 

 peopled with a strange race of headless beings. What 

 with the number of men and boats, and the quantity of 

 cargo we carried, our small steamer was as loaded as she 

 possibly could be, and we had but little room for moving 

 about. Our pilot kept close either to one bank or the 

 other, so as to avoid the full force of the current, and this 

 allowed Bichard and myself to lay wagers on our respec- 

 tive merits as marksmen by shooting at the alligators or 

 wild ducks on the sandbanks. At about one o'clock in 

 the morning of the third day after our departure from 

 Ciudad-Bolivar, we reached the mouth of the Caura. As 

 it was a very dark night we did not enter the river until 

 daybreak. At three in the afternoon we arrived at the 

 landing-place of the village of Maripa, where the steamer 

 was moored for the rest of the day so that we might visit 

 some ricefields in which Eichard was interested and at 

 the same time replenish our stock of firewood. On the 

 following morning we steamed up to Suapure, where we 

 remained until October 10, Eichard being engaged in- 

 specting the tonca-bean forests and making arrangements 

 with the people of the place for collecting the beans. 

 Four days after we got to La Prision, which I made my 

 headquarters during our stay of eight months on the 

 Caura, and it was from this settlement as a base that I 

 explored Turagua, the most important of the mountain 

 masses existing in this region. This trip was undertaken 

 with the definite idea of obtaining rare and valuable 

 orchids, the mountain having appeared to me a likely 

 spot for such plants. It was not until March, however, 

 that I was able to carry out my project, the weather 

 having been so rainy up to that time that the streams in the 

 forest were impassable. On the 8th (March) the Indians 



