368 Timehri. 
tively narrow at this point, this feat is performed by paddling a little up 
river, then backing into the Wikki Creek (which joins the Berbice here), 
then forward again and quick turn to starboard. During the recent 
drought this had become a most difficult and exasperating manceuyre. 
The itinerary of the Monday—Wednesday steamer, it appeared, is 
this :—Leaving New Amsterdain at 7 a.m. on Monday it arrives under 
the most favourable conditions at Paradise after dark at 8 p.m. Leaves 
as soon as possible after dawn on ‘Tuesday. Goes no further than Mara 
on that day, and gets under way at 7 a.m. on Wednesday for New 
Amsterdam. So that the three- day voyager to Paradise is somewhat 
worse off than was Moses in respect of the Promised Land. Are we 
up-to-date? The scenery here, with its hills and the rolling Downs of 
Kumaka, its creeks and Itabos, is charming, and provoked the question 
—-why is a day wasted at Mara (to which nobody wants to go and every- 
body is glad to leave) and a delightful day in fairy land “denied to the 
jaded dwellers of the coast 7 The answer was, that the steamer picks up 
cattle all the long Tuesday, as she goes—the method being to drive the 
animals into the river, swim them to the steamer’s side where they are 
hauled on board, somehow ; and that the process is slow. A passenger 
steamer for cows irresistibly recalls Drayton's grave description of The 
Flood— 
“ And now the beasts are walking from the wood, 
“As well of ravine as that chew the cud, 
‘“The bull for his beloved mate doth low, 
“And to the Ark brings on the fair-eyed cow, 
The Flood! worse and worse! We are not up-to-date. But we 
are now embarked on our launch ; and vain questionings are left behind 
as we enter the Wikki Creek 8.35 a.m. 
A small green humming-bird inquisitively follows a short way. ~On 
the banks an occasional Bastard Cocoa tr ee, while numerous Mora trees 
relieve the green with the beauty of their young foliage—russet, 
chocolate, pink. The Mora Buequiya of the mid bush has a red trunk 
and three-seeded pod—flowers white in catkins—its wood is harder than 
that of the riverside variety. White Martins flit about the stream and a 
Caligo butterfly with bright blue splashes on its front wings lollops across 
our bow. 
10.10. Amuri Itabo. 20 miles up. Here are markedly high trees 
with fine foliage from which the sun's rays falling at their present angle 
conjure wonders of tint and chiaroscuro. 
10.05. Manarehbo. 
10.07. Other end of Amuri Itabo. 
10.10. Ororehbo. 
