240 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



course, it will make way for a successor in its turn. So 

 it is with the Indian of Guiana ; he is now laid low in the 

 dust ; he has left no record behind him, either on parch- 

 ment, or on a stone, or in earthenware, to say what he has 

 done. Perhaps the place where his buried ruins lie was 

 unhealthy, and the survivors have left it long ago, and 

 gone far away into the wilds. All that you can say is, 

 the trees wliere I stand appear lower and smaller than the 

 rest, and from this I conjecture, that some Indians may 

 have had a settlement here formerly. Were I by chance 

 to meet the son of the father who moulders here, he could 

 tell me that his father was famous for slaying tigers and 

 serpents and caymen, and noted in the chase of the tapir 

 and wild boar, but that he remembers little or nothing of 

 his grandfather. 



They are very jealous of their liberty, and much at- 

 tached to their own mode of living. Though those in the 

 neighbourhood of the European settlements have constant 

 communication with the whites, they have no inclination 

 to become civilized. Some Indians who have accompanied 

 white men to Europe, on returning to their own land, have 

 thrown off their clothes, and gone back into the forests. 



In George-town, the capital of Demerara, there is a large 

 shed, open on all sides, built for them by order of govern- 

 ment. Hither the Indians come with monkies, parrots, 

 bows and arrows, and pegalls. They sell these to the 

 white men for money, and too often purchase rum wdth it, 

 to which they are wonderfully addicted. 



Government allows them annual presents in order to 

 have their services, when the colony deems it necessary to 

 scour the forests in quest of runaway negroes. Formerly 

 these expeditions were headed by Charles Edmonstone, 

 Esq., now of Cardross Park, near Dumbarton. This brave 

 colonist never returned from the woods without beimr 



