120 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
sunlight seemed dusk, and the dawn but as night, 
yet clung to her little plant, whose glory was 
that it was of no use whatsoever, but in months 
to come would be yellow, and would smell. 
Farther down river, in the small hamlets of 
the bovianders—the people of mixed blood—the 
practical was still necessity, but almost every 
thatched and wattled hut had its swinging orchid 
branch, and perhaps a hideous painted tub with 
picketed rim, in which grew a golden splash of 
croton. This ostentatious floweritis might fur- 
nish a theme for a wholly new phase of the sub- 
ject—for in almost every respect these people 
are less worthy human beings—physically, men- 
tally and morally—than the Indians. But one 
cannot shift literary overalls for philosophical 
paragraphs in mid-article, so let us take the lit- 
tle river steamer down stream for forty miles 
to the coast of British Guiana, and there see what 
Nature herself does in the way of gardens. We 
drive twenty miles or more before we reach 
Georgetown, and the sides of the road are lined 
for most of the distance with huts and hovels of 
East Indian coolies and native Guiana negroes. 
Some are made of boxes, others of bark, more 
of thatch or rough-hewn boards and barrel staves, 
