344 TiMEHRI. 



of the course — the latter traveller making the observa- 

 tion that " From the foot of Itabru upwards, the 

 Berbice river is, par excellence, the home of the 

 cayman." This was, to say the least of it, a keen 

 disappointment to me, since I had felt secure, whatever 

 else might fail me, in being able to bring back a dozen 

 skins or so, of these huge reptiles. Curiously enough, 

 since my return to town, I have been informed by one 

 of the gold-prospe£lors that they too met with the 

 cayman, apparently some of the largest of their kind, 

 just above the Christmas catara6ls, 



Finding this upper distri6l so unsatisfa6lory for col- 

 lefting purposes, I determined on the 19th to return to 

 the lower parts, where the open savannahs and the larger 

 creeks might afford more opportunities ; but almost from 

 the start, I was incapacitated for work by fever, which, 

 as time passed, became more and more severe. On the 

 2ist, when just in view of Parish Peak, I determined to see 

 what we might procure from the high hill; and we 

 accordingly struck out by the compass for the mural 

 precipices, where there is a bare escarpment of the pink 

 and mottled sandstone and conglomerate layers, with an 

 immense talus of boulders at the base composed of these 

 same rocks — the quartz pebbles of the conglomerate 

 being nearly all rounded and smooth. After a few hours' 

 walking we reached the base, where the mountain rose 

 suddenly, and so precipitously that tracks had to be 

 sought where the roots and stems of the small trees, 

 growing on the face, gave a means of planting one's feet 

 and pulling oneself up. Beyond the magnificence of the 

 view from North to South over the expanse of green 

 forest to the horizon, broken in the distance by a few 



