J. Delacoui—Notes of a Bird-lover in Tropical America 179

Demerara


After spending a week at Surinam, I again boarded the horrible little

coasting steamer, with the same unwelcome style of coloured passengers

and the same inconveniences, and disembarked the next day at Nickerie,

crossing the vast estuary of the river Corentyn in a launch, and landing

at Springland in British Guiana. Dunlins (?) were flying over the river

on their spring migration.


A pretty canal, covered with rose-coloured Lotus flowers, welcomed

us, and a Ford car took us to Georgetown (Demerara) along the excellent

coastal road, passing New Amsterdam and crossing the river Berbice,

a haunt of a colony of Hoatzins. These extraordinary birds are much

less abundant there than on the Apure in Venezuela. The coast for

a distance of about 150 miles along the road is worn away, and is now

a flat country, semi-inundated, intersected with canals, where innumer¬

able cattle are reared, and rice is also cultivated. The huts of the

Hindoos succeed one another uninterruptedly, miserable and sordid

on their piles over the water. Tens of thousands of Bengal coolies

live along the road. The monotonous country, bordered by the

horribly muddy sea, is unvaried except for the cocoanut plantations,

the brilliant scarlet sprays of the flowers of the beautiful “ Flamboyant ”

trees, the rose-coloured lotus and the huge Victoria Regia which covers

the waters of the canals, and above all the numerous Blue Herons and

Egrets which move about amongst the cattle and on the beach. George¬

town, with its 60,000 inhabitants—Hindoos, Negroes, people of mixed

blood and Europeans, all noisily employed in their various businesses—

offers little interest to the naturalist except in its museum of Natural

History, where one finds good local collections. Certain live birds are

offered for sale in the market, but at exorbitant prices. One is gratified

to find that the fauna is effectively protected in the colony.


The Botanical Garden of Georgetown


Buytenzorg and Peradenya are, respectively, the pride of Java and

Ceylon, and have the reputation of being the finest botanical gardens in

the world ; yet the splendour of that of Georgetown alone is well worth

the voyage to Demerara. Nowhere in the world can one see a finer

assembly of tropical aquatic life than on these lagoons and canals.



