ESTABLISHMENT OF STATION 29 



cable, while the steamer trip to Georgetown occupied only 

 seven hours. Yet no one passed us, save an occasional 

 government official, or a dug-out of negro gold-diggers 

 or diamond seekers, or the wood-skin of an Indian. 

 Throughout all the months our Indian hunter found an 

 abundance of meat for the table within a mile or two of the 

 house, and I was one day charged by a jaguar only a few 

 hundred yards away. I shall reserve for other articles an 

 account of the more common creatures which surrounded us ; 

 but these few facts emphasize the extremes of life at Kala- 

 coon. The shortest walk often furnished material for days 

 of research. For longer expeditions we had launches at our 

 disposal, for ascending the rivers to ^the rapids and falls, 

 while Mr. Wither's Ford car climbed the most impossible 

 hills and found its way along trails which otherwise were 

 traversed only by naked Akawai and Carib Indian hunters. 



For those who think of the tropics as a place of con- 

 stant danger and disease, I may say that mosquitoes and 

 flies, malaria and other fevers were absent. A cool breeze 

 blew most of the day, the temperature varying from 68 to 

 93 degrees. At night a heavy blanket was a necessity. A 

 few poisonous snakes were found, but only after prolonged 

 searching. A lantern, turned low, kept away the vampires, 

 and while bete rouge were annoying, they were easily guard- 

 ed against. Under such conditions it was possible to work 

 hard day after day, month after month, and remain un- 

 poi soned, unbitten and in good health. 



The one terrible disadvantage, the one thing which no 

 planning, or finance or forethought could alter was the piti- 

 fully inadequate ability of each of our human brains tp cope 

 properly with a tithe of the specimens which accumulated, or 

 to understand and translate into logical explanation more 

 than the merest fraction of the mass of strange facts and 

 phenomena which filled our minds and note-books. 



