286 TIMEHRI. 
trustworthy owing to the difficulty of surveying over 
a bottomless morass.* Mr. RUSSELL however, was 
not a man to be daunted by difficulties ; day after day and 
night after night he toiled through swamps, tramped over 
sand reefs, cleaned out forgotten creeks, taking his own 
levels and making his own observations, careless of food 
or shelter, until at last he had solved the problem and 
taught us how alone the water could be procured in 
sufficient quantities to place the estates and Georgetown 
beyond the reach of a water famine. Instead of draining 
in any degree into the Demerara River, the whole of the 
rain water which falls in the area bounded as described 
drains into the Atlantic by way of the Mahaica Creek. 
Along its whole course the Madiwini Creek is bounded 
on the north by a sand reef so that no tributaries join it 
on that side, and all the small streams such as the 
Hoorabea, the Badawina, and the Kykutikarra all trend 
northwards and swell the waters of the Madoonie 
and Lama, both tributaries of the Mahaica. Having 
personally ascertained these faéts, Mr. RUSSELL saw at 
once that the only way to force the water to the East 
Bank and Georgetown was by damming up the Lama 
and Madoonie Creeks and conneéting the stop-offs by 
wing dams with the back dams of the estates on the one 
side and the high sand reefs of the Madiwini on the 
other. This magnificent scheme, which was partially 
carried out during his lifetime, has been continued since 
his death with such success that a few years may see its 
* There was an attempt made to obtain water from the Madiwini 
Creek and Baron Siccama was instructed to take levels. Whilst traver- 
sing the swamps one of his theodolites disappeared in the pegass, where 
it lies to this day, and was nearly followed by the Baron and his staff, 
