ITINERARY. XV 



must have shot more than fifteen peccaries, some far in, which they could 

 not bring. We did not get them all, though some of the men went back 

 along the tracks. A camp had already been made for the night, and 

 all hands became busy cleaning the meat and preparing it for the 

 " babracot," which is a framewoi-k of green wood with four uprights, 

 on which the meat is partly smoked and roasted, the process being 

 repeated day by day to keep the flesh, until it is thoroughly dried and 

 preserved. The camp was lively that night, and grandly illuminated 

 by the number of fires under the different babracots required for the 

 large quantity of meat ; and groups of men squatted round with bits of 

 flesh being roasted on long sticks. 



Unfortunately, when an abundance of fresh meat is obtained, it is 

 quite impossible to prevent the Indians over-eating. While a big meal 

 is being cooked, bit after bit of partly roasted flesh is consumed ; and 

 above all is the delight of the later feast on the tit-bits, the liver, 

 kidneys, heart, mesenteries, etc., all cut up and packed into the cleaned 

 maw, which is then roasted on the babracot. It is seldom left, however, 

 to be thoroughly cooked, being largely eaten before morning : and then 

 it is no wonder that diarrhtea is the order of the day, with heavy calls 

 on the Epsom salts and the medicine-box. One rather elderly mi^n, 

 Adam, was so ill that it was weeks before he was quite strong again. 

 Whenever I accosted him, it was his usual lament : " Ehnehbeh oore " 

 (I am ill), though at the very first it had been " Assamanta oore " (I 

 am going to die). Luckily, Ritchie was able to control the consumption 

 of the dried meat, which was looked upon as ours, and it lasted a 

 few days. 



After leaving the Turisi Falls, the surrounding country rises a good 

 deal ; and down the long stretch south, to the Teboco Falls, views are 

 had of a lofty mountain, shaped like a sugar-loaf, and a high plateau 

 behind, apparently part of the sandstone range in the neighbourhood 

 of the Upper Kuribrong and Potaro rivers. From the long stretch 

 noBth, after rounding Teboco, as well as along the smooth water above, 

 frequent views are obtained of elevated land, either in front or behind, 

 of- which the most striking are the Sororieng Mountains, or the 

 Swallows' Nest, on the left bank, far back. The Merume Mountains, in 

 which the creek of that name rises, are an extensive series of ranges 

 on the right bank up to the Kurubung Mountains, forming the north- 

 eas'tern outlier of the great sandstone formation, within the course of 

 the Mazaruni. Across this great range there is a trail from the creek 

 to Roraima, which was travelled by Barrington Brown on his geological 

 survey of the colony, and from his description it must surely be very 

 formidable, some high vertical escarpments having to be tackled by 

 means of bush-rope ladders. We were bound further up the river, 

 where the range was neither so broad nor so lofty ; but parts of it 

 proved to be quite formidable enough. 



After entering the Kurubung creek, we reached its branch, the 

 Seroun creek, whence the overland journey started, in just under three 

 weeks from Bartika. We had not, of course, been travelling all the 

 time. Especially during the heavy work in the falls, it is necessary to 

 rest the men on Sundays, which is, besides, the recognised day for 

 washing clothes, overhauling the stores, and cleaning out the boats, 



