THROUGH THE COASTAL WILDERNESS. 21/ 



Amidships was piled our luggage and we distributed our- 

 selves over and around the clothing bags and larder jjoxes. 

 Mr. and Mrs. Wilshire and we two composed the list of 

 passengers, and the unceasing pleasure of those five days 

 was a good test of mutual congeniality and adaptability to 

 "bush-travel," 



The stroke adopted by our Indians was a peculiar one, which 

 we were to hear all day and often throughout the night, for 

 these men of the wilderness, short and stocky in build, 

 seemed tireless, and hour after hour they would keep hard at 

 work, sometimes for as much as thirty-six hours at a stretch, 

 with only a brief nap or two. 



The Indian paddle rhythm set by little Pedro, the younger 

 boy in the bow, accentuated every other stroke, the tempo of 

 the strokes becoming more and more rapid, until, when further 

 speed was impossible, one stroke was suddenly omitted, and 

 the gap thus formed marked the new slow tempo, which in 

 turn, in the course of fifteen to twenty strokes of the paddle, 

 would work up to a climax and the former rhythm begin 

 again. All kept perfect time, the new change not being 

 inaugurated on any exact stroke, but the others seeming to 

 know instinctively when it would come. AA'hether they \\-ere 

 eating, talking or looking behind them it was the same, all 

 changed as one man. 



Two or three hours after starting, we made a landing in 

 order that the Indians could cook their breakfast, invariably 

 composed of a combination of pork, dried fish, rice and 

 cassava. This menu was varied only when one or more of 

 the ingredients happened not to be procurable. Sometimes 

 for many days the Guiana Indians worked hard upon notliing 

 but cassava. The jungle was thick about the little clearing 

 which they made for a fire, and word passed rapidly along 

 the lines of parasol ants that manna was available in the 

 form of rice and bread crumbs. A few minutes after a bit 



