“ao 
a 
“ A TRAMP WITH REDSKINS.” 263 
Each set of Redmen—not only each tribe but each set of 
families of one tribe—keeps very much to its own small 
distri€&t. Some of the men, and fewer of the women, on 
rare occasions wander down to one of the main rivers of 
the country at the point nearest to their homes, whcre 
they probably keep a large canoe or two, and thence, 
trusting themselves to the stream, find their way to the 
sea and to the habitations of whitemen. But they rarely 
wander across the savannah into parts inhabited by other 
Redmen not allied to them in blood. It is so compara- 
tively recently that the many small tribes of Guiana 
lived in a state of passive hostility, the one to the other, 
which state became active whenever a meeting occurred, 
that, though this state of hostility has almost ceased to 
blaze, I have been invited by the members of one settle- 
ment to lend the weight of the one or two fowling pieces 
which I had with me to an attack which it would then be 
worth their while to make against a not distant settlement 
of Redfolk of another tribe. It is, therefore, not un- 
common that Redmen, consenting to accompany white 
travellers on considerable walking journeys, have to find 
their way through a country quite unknown to them. 
The instin€& with which under such circumstances the 
guides find the way is quite wonderful. No European 
courier called upon to break into ground fresh to him, and 
having provided himself with the completest apparatus 
of maps and guide books, could follow the right road in 
more unerring fashion. Doubtless the place of guide- 
books is largely supplied to the Redmen by the long 
conversations with which they while away all but a very 
few hours of the equinoétial night, which conversation 
chiefly consists in the recount by each in turn not only of 
LL 2 
