A WILDERNESS LABORATORY 141 



That was when a Russian chauffeur whom I had 

 taken on trial found a cowboy saddle in my attic 

 and seriously and proudly showed me in great 

 detail, with the saddle strapped to the banisters, 

 how with his long Cossack training he could 

 stand on his neck when going at full speed! 

 But Sam, like many another servant of the past, 

 was to prove a treasure. 



We had come from New York with a very 

 distinct idea of what we wanted to do, but no 

 idea at all of just how or where we should 

 begin. On kindly but conflicting advice and 

 suggestion, we had searched hither and thither 

 over the coastlands of British Guiana. Every- 

 where we found drawbacks. We wanted to be 

 near primeval jungle, we wished to be free 

 of mosquitoes and other disturbers of long- 

 continued observation. We desired the seem- 

 ingly impossible combination of isolation and 

 facility of communication with the outside world. 



In a driving, tropical rainstorm I ascended 

 the Essequibo to Bartica, and from the hills, as 

 the sun broke through gray clouds, my friend 

 the rubber planter pointed over two jungle-clad 

 ranges to a great house, a house with many pil- 

 lars, a house with roof of pale .pink like a giant 



