374 



The National Geographic Magazine 



rhoto from Mrs Harriet Chalmers Ada 



Indians in a "Dugout," near the Moutli of the Orinoco 



tlie mouths of the Orinoco and the Ama- 

 zon is a part of that great forest which 

 in magnitude and the exuberance of its 

 vegetal forms finds no equal on the sur- 

 face of the earth. It is through this wil- 

 derness that large and turbulent waters, 

 brown of color and almost unknown ex- 

 cept to the geographer, discharge their 

 volume in masses as great as those of 

 the main rivers of Europe — the Rhine, 

 the Danube, the Volga. It is in this 

 region, too, that patches of lofty plateau, 

 seven and eight thousand feet or more 

 in elevation, speak in eloquent language 

 of changes in relief which the slow pro- 

 cesses of denudation and land-movement 

 have brought about. 



There are three Guianas, namely, 

 Dutch Guiana, French Guiana, and Brit- 

 ish Guiana. Their characteristics are so 

 fundamentally alike that I will ask you 

 to bear with me if in my general descrip- 



tion, as well as in my characterization of 

 impressions, I refer to British Guiana 

 alone. 



Almost the only change that one 

 notices today in the interior of British 

 Guiana, compared to what the country 

 was fifty or seventj'-five years ago, is 

 that a certain amount of navigation has- 

 been imposed upon some of its major 

 streams. Small steam craft, offering as- 

 much comfort as one ordinarily wants, 

 and admirably adapted to surveying the 

 landscape, navigate the lower waters for 

 a distance of 60 to 100 miles of the Esse- 

 quibo, Demerara, Berbice, and Corentyn ;. 

 and beyond, where rapids break the con- 

 tinuity of the first reaches of smooth 

 water, their service is continued by minor 

 craft, some of them of an almost shiftless 

 character, which lure the traveler or pros- 

 pector for an almost equal distance far- 

 ther. In the entire resrion that is desig- 



