THE ESSIQUIBO. 607 



were overlaid with beaten plates of gold." Schombergh, 

 who visited the lake, agrees with the German philosopher. 

 Another traveller, Hillhouse, in 1830 ascended the Masaruni, 

 which Hows from the northern side of the mountains of 

 Roraima, among which the lake is situated; and believes that 

 its romantic valley was once the bed of a large lake twelve 

 miles in width, and upwards of one hundred miles in length, 

 — which long ago burst its barriers and gave rise to the fable 

 still preserved among the Indians, and, till within almost 

 the present century, believed in by the colonists themselves. 



RIVERS:— THE ESSEQUIRO. 



Let us take a glance over some of the rivers of the land. 



The Essequibo, called by the Indians the "younger brother 

 of the Orinoco," first claims attention. The mouth has rather 

 the appearance of a vast lake than a river, its shores bordered 

 by thick groves of that tree of curious structure, the man- 

 grove, whose roots or seeds, borne on the ocean wave, strike 

 wherever they can find a muddy soil, throughout every part 

 of the tropics. Rising upwards on (lie foots, which it shoots 

 downwards as it grows, the base of its stem is often six or 

 eight feet from the ground — the stem itself seldom more than 

 a foot in diameter, and from fifteen to twenty feet in height. 

 Its thick stiff ribs, about eight inches long and nine inches 

 wide, are of a dark sombre hue. This broad estuary, extending 

 inland for thirty miles or more, with numerous picturesque 

 islands covered by tropical vegetation rising out of it, is joined 

 by the united streams of the Masaruni and Cuyuni, its own 

 and their romantic waterfalls making a continuous navigation 

 up them impossible. Yet, notwithstanding its impediments, 

 these rivers afford the only means of communication, except 



379) 42 



