18 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



are ceaselessly deflected westwards, so as to flow parallel with the ocean stream 

 itself. The alluvial tracts of peninsular formation are thus extended to great 

 distances between the coast streams and the sea, until some weak poinr here aûd 

 there suddenly yields to the action of some fierce storm or of an exceptionally 

 high inundation. 



In this way has been formed the whole coast system of Dutch Guiana, with 

 its perfectly distinct double shore-line, that may be traced all the way from the 

 Corentyne to the IMaroni. These tracts of oceanic origin are still more clearly 

 indicated in that district of British Guiana which lies immediately to the east of 

 the Orinoco delta, and the possession of which is contested by Venezuela. Here 

 the Pomerun river, which reaches the sea at Cape Nassau, the Waini (Guainia), 

 the Barima, and the Amacuru all intersect so many strips of the seaboard that 

 have been built up by the deposition of sedimentary matter in the shallow waters 

 beyond the primitive continental contour -line. 



Palgrave, a careful observer of the hydrographie system of Dutch Guiana, 

 describes the rivers of that region as its true highways, " traced right and left with 

 matchless profusion by Nature herself. Broad and deep, tidal too for miles up 

 thsir course, but with scarcely any variation in the fulness of their mighty flow, 

 summer or winter, rainy season or dry, so constant is the water supply from its 

 common origin, the equatorial mountain chain. They give easy access to the 

 innermost recesses of the vast regions beyond, east, west, and south ; and where 

 their tortuous windings and multiplied side canals fail to reach, Batavian industry 

 and skill have made good the want by canals, straighter in course, and often 

 hardly inferior in navigable capacity to the mother rivers themselves. On the 

 skeleton plain, so to speak, of this mighty system of water coihmunication, the 

 entire cultivation of the interior has been naturall}'' adjusted ; and the estates of 

 Surinam are ranged one after another along the margin of rivers and canals, just 

 as farms might be along highways and byeways in Germany or Hungary. Sub- 

 servient to the waterways, narrow land-paths follow the river or trench, by which 

 not every estate alone, but every sub-division of an estate, every acre almost is 

 defined and bordered, while the smaller dykes and canals are again crossed by 

 wooden bridges, maintained in careful repair ; but paths and bridges alike are of 

 a width and solidity adapted to footmen only, or at best to horsemen. The 

 proper carriage road is the river or canal."* 



The JMaroni, Awa, and Oyapok. 



The Maroni, the Marowijn of the Dutch, takes the foremost position amongst 

 tlie secondary watercourses of the Guianas between the Orinoco and the Amazons. 

 Its ramifying headstreams cover a space of nearly 200 miles, on the northern 

 slope of the Tumuc-Humac Mountains, between the Corentyne and Oyapok basins 

 west and east. At present the larger portion of this drainage area belongs to 

 Holland, the whole of the tract lying between the two main branches of the Awa 

 (Lawa) and the Tapanahoni having been attributed to Dut(.;h Guiana by the 



* Dutch Guiana, p. 71-2. 



