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The National Geographic Magazine 



they come out into the roadway, and for 

 a while at least take possession in defi- 

 ance of man. 



I chanced to be an invited guest at the 

 residence of a prominent physician in 

 Buxton, a small hamlet situated a few 

 miles eastward of Georgetown, and had 

 there a rare opportunity of picking up 

 odd and striking facts pertaining to the 

 natural history of the region. On ap- 

 proaching my host's house, which was 

 the type of the regularly constructed 

 "summer-house" of the people of that 

 country, I noted nailed over the veranda 

 the large skin of the water "kamudi," 

 which I was told was the general name in 

 use for the water-boa, or anaconda. The 

 length of the specimen was twenty feet 

 seven inches. I naturally assumed that 

 it was a trophy extending back for a 

 number of years, and that the monster 

 had been killed in the backwoods of the 

 country; but, on inquiry, I was told that 

 the reptile had been killed in close prox- 

 imity to the house, and that only during 

 the past summer. 



On a first afternoon's walk we stum- 

 bled upon a specimen of the gray fox, and 

 likewise upon a crab-dog, which the 

 colored people were following and ston- 

 ing in the manner of the "coon"-hunt in 

 our own southern states. On the follow- 

 ing morning a gray fox, its feet closely 

 tied together, was deposited on the steps 

 of our house, awaiting a possible pur- 

 chaser. 



In the course of a side railroad excur- 

 sion, while waiting for a passing train, 

 I noted in the rear of the post-raised 

 station a single dark object, which for 

 a while baffied analysis, but soon resolved 

 itself into a large-sized manatee. It had 

 corne in from the ocean in one of the 

 drainage canals and was cropping the 

 herbage in the puddle that surrounded 

 the depot. 



In the course of a later journey up the 

 Essequibo River, close to the banks, we 

 passed a little troop of capybaras, per- 

 haps six or eight in number, which had 

 come out of the forest to take advantage 

 of a protecting sand-spit. A few minutes 



later a large black jaguar emerged from 

 the forest, and, wholly unmindful of our 

 presence, leisurely walked down the spit 

 in pursuit. We had a splendid oppor- 

 tunity of watching this singularly grace- 

 ful and lithe animal in a walk of some 

 150 to 200 yards. 



This is the kind of life that still pre- 

 sents itself to the naturalist. I am, per- 

 haps, a little more insistent on this point 

 than seems necessary, but it is for the 

 purpose of correcting the impression that 

 the wild life of the tropics is everywhere 

 becoming a thing of the past. From all 

 that I could learn in Guiana, I should say 

 that there was little change in this life 

 since the day of the publication of Water- 

 ton's inimitable "Wanderings of a Nat- 

 uralist." 



THE GREAT PRIMEVAL FOREST 



The great primeval forest, which is 

 perhaps represented on a more impressive 

 scale than anywhere else in South Amer- 

 ica, is the same that was described by the 

 brothers Schomburgk in 1848 and 1850. 

 We traveled up the middle course of the 

 Essequibo River for seventy miles with- 

 out finding a solitary clearing, not a 

 single break in all the forest, except 

 where tributary streams flowed into our 

 own. On both banks of this chocolate- 

 brown stream, at a distance of seventy 

 miles from its mouth, where the width of 

 the stream is still from one to two miles, 

 or four to five times the normal width of 

 the Mississippi River, the great curtain 

 of the primeval forest hangs virtually un- 

 touched by man. If I were asked to 

 state briefly the distinguishing character- 

 istics of this forest, I should find it diffi- 

 cult to frame a reply, or to give to it 

 proper perspective in a comparison with 

 the forest elsewhere. The great South 

 American primeval forest is impressive, 

 is imposing, but at the same time it is 

 forbidding. With the great walls of 

 vegetation rising to a height of 175 and 

 200 feet, with the crown of the forest 

 carried at this enormous height above the 

 spectator, and with innumerable creep- 

 ers and trailers binding the whole into an 



