A GOLD MINE IN THE WILDERNESS. 1 87 



find was indeed rare. The poor fellows at best make little 

 enough and it was pitiful to see the tiny packets of gold dust 

 which they brought to the company's store at the end of the 

 week to exchange for food or credit checks. The universal 

 Guianan name for this type of independent miner is "pork- 

 knocker," the explanation being that by knocking the rocks 

 to pieces, they find just enough gold to procure the pork upon 

 which they live. 



They are allowed to work on side streams near the large 

 mining operations, their total taking of gold being relatively 

 insignificant, while they sometimes locate valuable deposits 

 in the course of their wanderings. They are a jolly, happy- 

 go-lucky type, apparently careless of their luck and invari- 

 ably optimistic of the future. 



A naturalist would find it difficult to keep his attention 

 fixed on "Pan" or "Long Tom" in this narrow glade, for 

 great iridescent blue morpho butterflies are floating about 

 everywhere among the lights and shadows. From some tall 

 trees a continual shower of whirling objects are falling, some 

 white, others purple. Catching one we find it to be a narrow 

 petaled, live parted, star-like blossom (Petra>a arbor ea), 

 weighted by a slender stem. When thrown up into the air 

 they revolve like horizontal pin-wheels, falling slowly and 

 forming a most remarkable rain of color. Forcing our 

 way up the opposite slope and on through the underbrush 

 we come out on the corduroy road half a mile from the 

 mine. 



As a corduroy sapling turns and splashes the water under 

 foot, a cloud of orange and white butterflies arises and 

 scatters through the woods. Suddenly through the warm 

 damp stillness there rings out a piercing, three-syllabled cry, 

 which was to become for us the vocal spirit of the Guiana 

 wilderness. Day after day we heard it wherever the un- 

 broken primeval forest reigned, but never near the haunts of 



