A NATURALIST’S EXPERIENCES IN BRITISH GUIANA 
865 
Photo by C. H. Higenmann 
PREPARING TO POISON A CREEK 
A small bar of palm leaves has been built across the mouth of the creek (see page 862) 
with thumb and forefinger made a circle, 
which left no doubt that he knew the 
fish. We caught none in the Potaro, 
where we saw them in great numbers, 
but we got them in abundance in the 
lower Demerara. Carnegiella, the gem 
of the entire collection, a near relative of 
Gasteropelicus, is less apt in its flight. 
Whole schools will leave the water and 
skeeter along the surface. 
After breakfast we rowed up through 
the 1,000-foot-deep gorge the Potaro has 
cut through the table-land. The edges 
of the gorge are carved in a variety of 
ways that give them the appearance of 
high mountains. The valley is quite 
broad, which would indicate great age 
for the gorge. 
The Indians shot a baboon on the way 
up to the next portage at Waratuk. We 
camped rather early in the day, above 
Waratuk, and during the night I had a 
particularly severe case of chills and 
fever. 
At 8 o'clock on the morning of Octo- 
ber 17 we had our first glimpse of the 
pride of Guiana, the Kaieteur, hidden in 
mist. We camped shortly afterwards at 
Tukeit, called by the Indians Tukui, or 
humming-bird, after the waterfall com- 
ing from the plateau opposite. Our 
hunters killed four peccaries across the 
river, and the young wild pork was a 
pleasant change from the canned meat 
At Tukeit there is another cataract in 
the Potaro, and above it several more 
towards the foot of the fall. 
We collected in the Potaro at Tukeit 
and the following morning started to 
ascend the plateau. The path leads back 
from the river for a time, crosses Shrimp 
Creek, and then ascends very steeply to 
