850 
mate is a great relief from the extremes 
of our Northern States. 
On a beautiful Monday in August I 
started from Georgetown on a small 
steamer up the Demerara River. Beside 
my kit and provisions I took witn me a 
negro boy to cook and in my pocket let- 
ters of introduction to Sproston’s agents 
along the first part of the way. 
The Demerara flows through a low flat 
country of alluvial mud, so that the tide ~ 
can be felt 80 miles from the mouth. At 
Georgetown it is so shallow that the 
steamers entering the port literally plow 
through the mud and at full speed barely — 
crawl to their wharves. Forty years ago 
a vessel was wrecked off the coast of 
Guiana, and the mud has built around it 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
Photo by Leonard Kennedy 
LOOKING ACROSS POTARO RIVER AT THE BRINK OF KAIETEUR FALLS: THE RIVER IS 
3269 FEET WIDE AT THE BRINK 
until today it is an inhabited island cov- 
ered with tall palms. Just outside of 
Georgetown the river steamer passes the 
big sugar estates established long ago by 
grants from the Crown, shheyeeane 
worked by coolies brought over from 
India, but they seem to have passed their 
age of prosperity, and the tall brick 
chimneys on many of them have been left 
to crumble. Further on the country grew 
wilder and we passed between shores 
thickly covered by the jungle. To be 
sure, this jungle is not true to the pic- 
tures in the children’s geography, in 
which birds, monkeys, lions, and a rhi- 
noceros or two peacefully pose in a group 
for the artist, but the Guiana jungle is, 
nevertheless, the real thing. 
