92 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



i 



Coryntin. When you liaye passed this river, tliere is a 

 good public road to ISTew Amsterdam, the capital of 

 Berbice. 



On viewing 'New Amsterdam, it will 

 sterdam ^^^^diately strike you that something or 



other has intervened to prevent its arriving 

 at that state of w^ealth and consequence for which its 

 original plan shows it was once intended. What has 

 caused this stop in its progress to the rank of a fine and 

 populous city, remains for those to find out who are 

 interested in it ; certain it is, that N"ew Amsterdam has 

 been languid for some years, and now the tide of com- 

 merce seems ebbing fast from the shores of Berbice. 

 ^ Gay and blooming is the sister colony of 



Demerara. Perhaps, kind reader, thou hast 

 not forgot that it was from Stabroek, the capital of 

 Demerara, that the adventurer set out, some years ago, 

 to reach the Portuguese frontier fort, and collect the 

 wourali poison. It was not intended, when this second 

 sally was planned in England, to have visited Stabroek 

 again by the route here described. The plan was, to 

 have ascended the Amazons from Para, and got into the 

 Rio ]^egro, and from thence to have returned towards 

 the source of the Essequibo, in order to examine the 

 crystal mountains, and look once more for Lake Parima, 

 or the White Sea; but on arriving at Cayenne, the 

 current was running with such amazing rapidity to 

 leeward, that a Portuguese sloop, which had been 

 beating up towards Para for four weeks, was then only 

 half-way. Einding, therefore, that a beat to the Amazons 

 would be long, tedious, and even uncertain, and aware 

 that the season for procuring birds with fine plumage 

 had already set in, I left Cayenne in an American ship 



