1 84 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



One day at the bungalow wc found a group of Indian 

 children gathered about the door of the modern bathroom 

 which Mr. Wilshire had had fitted up. It was all a great 

 puzzle to the little dwellers in the forest. To amuse them 

 we took them in and turned on and off the shower bath, try- 

 ing to explain what it was, but all to no purpose. To them 

 a bath meant "me wash skin in river''; while the shower- 

 bath was merely an interesting scientific phenomenon — the 

 mysterious white beings were making rain at their own will! 



We were disappointed at not getting more photographs of 

 the Indians. Their prejudice against being photographed 

 is a deep-rooted superstition. They feel that it gives you a 

 superhuman power over them. Indians often ran like deer 

 through the woods when we pointed the camera at them 

 and it was only by passing around candy to those who came 

 to the bungalow and so diverting their attention from the 

 dreaded camera, that we secured any pictures at all. 



Wc encountered but one poisonous serpent, and that one 

 by proxy. A big bushmaster or couanacouchi, all but dead, 

 was brought to the house one day by an Indian who had 

 speared it. It had been found coiled up on the forest leaves 

 and was so like them in color that the Indian had nearly 

 trod upon it. Although we searched thoroughly we could 

 never find a second specimen. 



A DAY IN THE JUNGLE NEAR HOORIE. 



The region about Hoorie consists chiefly of small but 

 steep hills, some isolated with a few hundred yards of flat 

 land about them, others close together and separated by 

 deep, narrow valleys with running water at the bottom. All 

 drain into Hoorie Creek which from the mine clearing runs 

 in a fairly straight direction through flat, marshy land to the 

 Barama River up which we had come. The whole country 

 is, of course, completely covered with a thick forest, of good- 



