vi A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



river, and only reached one of the poor Httle settlements 

 scattered along its banks after a journey of twenty-six 

 days, during which six men out of a party of fourteen 

 succumbed to the hardships endured. Life amid these 

 forests, in the innermost recesses of which strange 

 creatures have their abode ; where vegetation grows in 

 rank, masterful luxuriance ; where indefinable, mysterious 

 influences seem ever to be at work — seem, indeed, an 

 essential accompaniment of the hot, dank vapours which 

 rise from the rotting undergrowths ; life amidst these 

 surroundings takes on curious aspects. It is not sur- 

 prising that the few Indians who inhabit the sparsely 

 populated country through which the Caura flows should 

 be imbued with a nameless dread of the evil spirits 

 and terrible demons that dwell among the mountains 

 and manifest their presence in the thunder and light- 

 ning of the tropical storms that rage with such resistless 

 violence. 



The particular region which Mr. Andre visited in 1900 

 is doubly interesting as the scene of the adventures 

 and sufferings of the ill-fated party of emigrants from 

 England who were induced by an unscrupulous adven- 

 turess to try their fortunes in this remote part of Vene- 

 zuela. The enterprise was a hopeless failure, and the 

 story of the dogged struggle of the emigrants against the 

 dangers from man and beast which confronted them, and 

 the other difficulties of their situation, is as thrilling and 

 of as absorbing interest as any production of the imagina- 

 tion. There still lives at Ciudad-Bolivar the son of a 

 leading member of this tragic enterprise, who tells how 

 his father had more than once to go alone a distance of a 

 mile or more with two pails of water, carrying a revolver 

 between his teeth with which to defend himself on the 



