GLIMPSES OF THE GUIANA WILDERNESS. 



A. Hyatt Vebrill. 



Your Excellency, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



It is a great deal easier to show interesting pictures than to say 

 interesting things, and I have no doubt you would rather see my pictures 

 than to hear me talk, so I shall try to show as many slides as I can and 

 say just as little as possible. 



The only trouble has been to select the pictures, for there are so 

 many interesting and remarkable places and things to be seen in 

 this colony that it's a mighty difficult matter to pick out the most in- 

 teresting. Moreover, I have had but four days in which to select my 

 views, have the slides made and colour them, and hence I am limited in 

 the number I can use. 



Every part of the interior is so different from every other part that 

 in order to obtain an intelligent idea of the country, one must travel here, 

 there, and everywhere. So I shall give you glimpses of various places 

 and shall jump from spot to spot, regardless of time or distance. 



It may be just as well to begin near home and I will start with the 

 most important river, from a commercial viewpoint, — the Demerara. 

 My first view is a typical scene on the Demerara River, a timber raft 

 floating past Christianburg with its saw-mill in the distance. The only 

 motive power of this craft is the tide, the long sweeps being used merely 

 to guide the raft, and by this slow and tedious method the lumber is 

 floated down to the coast from the distant forests of the hinterland. 



The next slide 6hows a man felling a greenheart tree. Note the 

 staging built about the tree eo the chopper may work above the out- 

 jutting, buttress-like roots. As yet the timber resources of British 

 Guiana are scarcely touched, and there are vast forests full of valuable 

 trees which are now worthless, owing to the difficulties of transportation, 

 and which would prove a source of great wealth if railways were in 

 operation. 



Another picture shows one of my camps in such a section. From 

 my hammock in this camp I counted 55 greenheart trees, every one of 

 which would have squared to 18 inches or larger. 



This next picture is not a parody of "Washington crossing the 

 Delaware, - ' but shows the people of Mallali going to church. For some 

 unknown reason the church is on the opposite shore of the river from the 

 settlement and the devout Mallalians risk a ducking every time they 

 attend services. It looks as if these people had solved the problem of 

 getting a quart into a pint, even if their pint is a punt. 



