ITIN"i:ilAKY. XI H 



another large parUlle such as he had lost, spares heing always carried. 

 We all seemed more excited thiiu he by the incident. And then we 

 were all looking at Ritchie and his men, and some of us cheered, for 

 they had not only saved the man, but therasolves also, from a 

 terrible death, though we had not at first realised what the full 

 catastrophe might easih' have been; and we had been spared witnessing 

 such an event while utterly inialtle to rendei- any help. I had wondered 

 that no one (luring the riui had gone forward to help the man in ; but 

 tiiey knew this would have been suicidal, as, without a bowman in such 

 a dangerous fall, every mail's paddle was required, the only hope for 

 the safety of the boat itself, apart from the man's life, lying in the 

 extra speed they could give it, and thus enable the captain to hold it 

 on a course as far out as possible from the irregular rocky curve. 

 Luckily there was no sudden turn to take as there was at Tupaco, as 

 then nothing could have saved them without the bowman, who, with 

 his long paddle, would heave the head of the boat round, away from 

 the rocks and the boiling cauldron of waters, as the captain swings 

 round from the stern. The very rapid paddling by the men amid these 

 rusliing water's is always a surprise, and seems unnecessary to a novice, 

 l)ut there may be submerged rocks, cross-currents, whirlpools, and 

 sudden turns in the channel, and speed beyond that of the waters is 

 the great security for the steei'age ; and for this the captain always 

 calls at the head of a fall '" Headway ! '"' or " Give-way ! " while the men 

 pull themselves together for the effort. It may seem tame to write 

 about, it is a very different thing to go through the experience. 



All along the river in these falls and above, the country is covered 

 Avith primeval forests, filled with magnificent timber, hard woods, 

 furniture woods, and others, adapted for all sorts of purposes, 

 awaiting their appliciition to general industry when the colony has been 

 developed. Here and there some trees stood out as huge giants, while 

 others were striking with their yellow or red flowers, or their young 

 foliage of shades of the same tints, having from a distance the same 

 fh)ral effect. As our object was Roraima we were not making ijenpial 

 collections of either plants or animals, but at one breakfast camp some 

 specimens of I[enrlqueziaJenina7ii, then unknown to us, were gathei-erl, 

 after much climbing in surrounding trees to get at the flowers. It was 

 altogether goi'geous amid the general green. Very brilliant, too, were 

 many of the creepers, in great masses occasionally, one especially 

 very much like the golden Allaraanda, if not identical ; and equally 

 striking were many of the bromeliads and orchids and other small 

 epiphytes. 



Animal life was very varied. Monkeys and bats were the commonest 

 mammals met with — the former chiefly represented by the red liow ler 

 {.V)/cetes), more fiefjuently heard than seen ; and now and then a sloth 

 was to be detected hanging among the clindiing plants, high up. i^lood- 

 sucking bats wore frequent pests — colony-doctors, tlie men call tliiin. 



Jiirds were plentiful ; and, indoccl, the Mazaruni district \b a very fine 

 field for collectors, as shown by the work of Whitely and the brothei-s 

 Cozier — oneof whom was our taxidermist, — who contributed very largely 

 to the McConnell collection. Macaws and parrots, bill-birds, woodpeckoi-s, 

 hawk.s, kingfishers, herons, ibises, trogons, jacaniars, barbcts, swallows, 



