THE POMEROON TRAIL 67 



eventually recovered. His injuries did not af- 

 fect his speech, but, coolie-like, he would give 

 little information as to his assailant. 



And now the majesty of the law was about 

 to inquire into this matter of Ram's party, and 

 to sift to the uttermost the mystery which con- 

 cerned the cooked cock-fowl and the rum, and 

 the possibilities for evil which accrued to the 

 sinister club and the bit of rock. I was invited 

 to go, with my friends the Lawyer and the 

 Judge, and our route lay from Georgetown 

 westward, athwart two mighty Guiana rivers. 



My mission to British Guiana was to find 

 some suitable place to establish a Tropical Re- 

 search Station, where three of us, a Wasp Man, 

 an Embryo Man, and a Bird Man, all Ameri- 

 cans, all enthusiastic, might learn at first-hand 

 of the ways and lives of the wilderness creatures. 

 After seven years of travel and bird-study in 

 far distant countries, I had turned again to 

 Guiana, the memory of whose jungles had never 

 left me. In New York I had persuaded the 

 powers of the Zoological Society that here lay 

 a new, a worthy field of endeavor, hidden 

 among the maze of water-trails, deep in the 

 heart of the forests. For these were forests 



