104 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



Here, a little after midnight on the first of May, was 

 heard a most strange and unaccountable noise ; it seemed 

 as though several regiments were engaged, and musketry 

 firing with great rapidity. The Indians, terrified beyond 

 description, left their hammocks, and crowded all together, 

 like sheep at the approach of the wolf. There were no 

 soldiers within three or four hundred miles. Conjecture 

 was of no avail, and all conversation next morning on the 

 subject was as useless and unsatisfactory as the dead silence 

 which succeeded to the noise. 



He who wishes to reach the Macoushi country had 

 better send his canoe over land from Sinkerman's to the 

 Essequibo. 



There is a pretty good path, and meeting a creek about 

 three-quarters of the way, it eases the labour, and twelve 

 Indians will arrive with it in the Essequibo in four days, 



The traveller need not attend his canoe ; there is a 

 shorter and a better way. Half an hour below Sinker- 

 man's he finds a little creek on the western bank of the 

 Demerara. After proceeding about a couple of hundred 

 yards up it, he leaves it, and pursues a west-north-west 

 direction by land for the Essequibo. The path is good, 

 though somewhat rugged with the roots of trees, and here 

 and there obstructed by fallen ones ; it extends more over 

 level ground than otherwise. There are a few steep ascents 

 and descents in it, with a little brook running at the 

 bottom of them ; but they are easily passed over, and the 

 fallen trees serve for a bridge. 



You may reach the Essequibo with ease in a day and a 

 half; and so matted and interwoven are the tops of the 

 trees above you, that the sun is not felt once all the way, 

 saving where the space which a newly-fallen tree occupied 

 lets in his rays upon you. The forest contains an abun- 

 dance of Wild Hogs, Labbas, Acouries, Powisses, Maams, 



