l;30 A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS 



-of the mill-shed. On the very first day that distilling 

 •operations were started the catastrophe occurred : the 

 mill-shed was burnt down, involving the still in complete 

 ruin, the peon who was in charge of the place having 

 been rescued from cremation in the nick of time. The 

 poor devil tried to explain how he had been overcome by 

 the fumes of strong spirit and had fallen into a state of 

 dreamy unconsciousness with a lighted lamp, which had 

 caused the damage, beside him. Medina ably backed up 

 by the others very uncharitably decided that the brute, as 

 they called him, had got drunk, and they exiled him from 

 his beloved La Prision in the arbitrary manner displayed 

 by Augustus in dealing with the poet Ovid, whose 

 legacies of Metamorphoses in rhythm caused so many of 

 us to get into trouble in years gone by while rendering 

 financial service to Bohn's Classical Library. 



Besides being the owner of the mill and most of the 

 land under cultivation, Medina has the monopoly of trade 

 at La Prision. From time to time he sends a bongo or 

 two loaded with rice, papelones, or molasses to Puerto 

 Antonio Liccioni, receiving in return cheap cotton goods, 

 dried beef, salt, and such other necessaries as are indis- 

 pensable ; luxuries are rarely seen at these settlements. 

 These commodities he sells to the peons — who are all 

 indebted to him — at an enormous profit, and they repay 

 him by keeping up the cultivation and working at the 

 mill. It is customary all over Venezuela, except in the 

 larger towns, for the peons to sit at the same table as 

 their employer, a part of whose engagement is to feed 

 them while they are working for him. As a result of 

 this arrangement the food one sees on the patriarchal 

 dinner-tables of the land of revolutions is not of a kind 

 to tempt a jaded appetite. It is considered the height of 



