“ A TRAMP WITH REDSKINS,” | 237 
for the present purpose, It is sufficient to say that, by 
way of the great Essequibo river and the lower part.of 
the tributary Rupununi, it led through the dense tropical 
forest, some two hundred miles or so in width, which 
everywhere within the limits of British Guiana lies 
between the mangrove fringe of the coast and the high 
treeless lands of the interior ; that it then brought me to 
a point on that high land—locally called savannah— 
which is a little more than three degrees north of the 
equator; that from there, after some weeks’ walking 
across the savannah, chiefly in a northerly direétion, it 
brought me out on to the Potaro river, another tributary 
of the Essequibo, but much nearer the sea than is the 
Rupununi; and that it then took me down the Potaro, 
back to the Essequibo, and so once more back to the 
coast region and civilization. It is with the walking part 
of this journey, across the savannah, that I propose to 
deal. ee 
Our boat journey, of three weeks’ duration, through 
the forest region had not been fortunate. For one reason, 
the party itself was not fortunately constituted. It 
included, in addition to a friend newly arrived from 
England and to my own customary following of Red- 
skins from the coast, of a party of about a dozen 
black policemen under a European Inspector. Now my 
own Redskins, most of whom had been with me for years, 
and had grown as accustomed to my ways as I to theirs, 
had during this journey found themselves subje€ted to 
circumstances entirely new and trying to them, in 
coming so far through a country so different to that in 
which they had been born and bred; but, good and 
plucky fellows as they are, they had met this trial fairly 
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