246 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



ruins, a single street of miserable houses filled with blacks 

 and coolies. 



We were invited to spend the night at the house of an 

 Englishman, Mr. Withers, enjoying again the unfailing 

 hospitality of the wilderness. In a launch we proceeded 

 three miles up the Mazaruni, and climbing a steep hill, 

 denuded of its forest, we turned and revelled in the magnifi- 

 cent view. A small, heavily-wooded island in the foreground 

 broke the surface of the shining waters, and beyond, the two 

 mighty rivers rolled ceaselessly, joining their floods with 

 hardly a ripple. Directly across, on the opposite shore of 

 the Mazaruni, the picturesque white buildings of the penal 

 colony could be seen, looking more like the hotels and cottages 

 of some watering place than like prisons. If one must be 

 imprisoned for life there are few places one would prefer 

 to this! 



An American company had obtained a concession of some 

 seven thousand acres for the purpose of raising sisel hemp, 

 and Mr. Withers was in charge of this important under- 

 taking. His home, on the crest of the hill, overlooked the 

 surrounding rolling country, six hundred acres of which had 

 already been cleared during the preceding nine months and 

 planted in the valuable fibre plant. Here again we found a 

 most ingenious system of catch crops, peanuts, castor beans 

 and corn, surrounding but not interfering with the slower 

 growing sisel. Their success was yet to be proven. 



A careful study of the effect on animal and plant life of 

 this clearing away of the forest would yield much of interest. 

 Many sloths with young were caught when the trees were 

 being felled, and Goldbirds, Woodhewers, Parrots end other 

 forest birds had now retired some distance from the clearing. 

 The antlers of two deer shot here were simple spikes. Insects 

 of all kinds had greatly increased, and caterpillars of strange 

 shapes and colors were legion in number and doing their 



