On the Upper Berbice River. 335 



camps, where they were cutting a path to the Coren- 

 tyne under the impression that they were above the 

 Christmas catara6ls — the tedious Savannah rapids having 

 being mistaken for that set. Another expedition which 

 had not reached so high as this point, had in the mean- 

 time gone down, spreading the tale of having prospered 

 the country for gold up to the Christmas catara6ts — a 

 mistake due to their ignorance of the description which 

 had been given of this set. 



The higher we ascended, the more numerous became 

 the rapids — the river winding very considerably, much 

 broken up with rocks and small tree-clad islands, and 

 the banks much raised and covered with a magnificent 

 forest growth of mora, greenheart, crab-wood, wallaba, 

 arrisouroo, marciballi, dalli etc. Here and there a few 

 tall manicoles were to be seen, but up to this point 

 palms had been few and far between by the river-side, 

 though, within the forest, tooroo and cokeritiballi were 

 to be met with, often in great numbers. On the slopes 

 of the hill, where the Monday evening's camp was made, 

 at the foot of a small but loud-roaring catara6t, the 

 plants grew in great abundance, and gave a welcome 

 shelter, in the form of a rude benab, from the heavy rain 

 which fell soon after, accompanied by frequent lightning 

 and thunder. 



It was at this place, which presented the appearance 

 of being the site of an old camping ground — possibly 

 used by SCHOMBURGK and Barrington Brown — that 

 we caught the only snake met with on the trip. The 

 specimen was of small size, being about 18 inches 

 in length, of a dull green colour, spotted along the back 

 with purple. It was a perfeftly harmless species and 



