GUIANA: THE WILD AND WONDERFUL. 
Introductory to a Series of Lectures. 
By James Ropway. 
“ Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold, 
Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars, 
Stands on her tip-toes at faire England looking, 
Kissing her hand, bowing her mighty breast, 
And every sign of all submission making, 
To be her sister—” 
Such was the language used by the poet Chapman when he wanted 
to glorify the exploits of Sir Walter Ralegh and his ‘* Discovery of the 
large, rich and beautiful empire of Guiana.” No doubt Ralegh believed 
in the myth of El Dorado, the gilded King, and the golden city of Manoa, 
as so many others did, who thought it the richest place in the world and, 
in very many cases, lost their lives in the search. It was a mysterious 
and wonderful country, where lived ‘ anthropophagi and men whose 
heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” amazons, mermaids and dragons. 
Even the name Demerara was changed to De Mirara on some maps as if 
it meant the wonderful. 
Where nothing was known everything could be imagined. No doubt 
the early voyagers asked questions and got answers, but these were 
necessarily vague, for even when, as in the case of Leonard, the Indian 
from the Oyapok who lived with Ralegh for several years in the Tower,* 
the interpreter knew some Enoelish, he could hardly be expected to 
understand such questions as were commonly asked. Here were English- 
men who did not yet appreciate the idea that America was not the India 
of Marco Polo and Mandeville—they expected to find monsters and 
were encouraged in these expectations. To go a little farther and state 
that these wonderful monsters and cities of gold had actually been seen 
was only a step. The artists of that day drew their pictures from such 
reports, aided by their own imagination ; hence we get such views as are 
here figured. The cannibal was a reality, but the amazon, headless men 
and mermaids have never been found. 
The real Guiana was however quite as interesting as the ideal. The 
powerful Carib with his weapons of wood and stone preserved the country 
from Spanish raids in search of gold, slaves or cassava bread. To this 
early period belongs the story of the origin of the name of Essequebo, 
River of Fire Stones. Long, long ago, said my Indian friend, Spaniards 
came into the rivers of the North West, hunting for slaves, with powerful 
*In the Chelsea Parish Register, according to Lyson, was a baptismal entry ‘* Charles; 
a boy, by estimacon, 10 or 12 years olde, brought by Sir Walter Rawlie from Guiana, 
baptised 13° Februarii, 1597-8,” 
