xxxiv 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



the cultivated parts of Demerara, — a country 

 once the pride of Holland, ere we broke in 

 upon it during the revolutionary war with 

 France, and changed the face of all that she 

 had done before us. Our raising immense taxes, 

 and the profligate expenditure of them, did 

 neither suit the means nor the notions of these 

 frugal colonists; whilst our overbearing de- 

 meanour as conquerors soon gave them to under- 

 stand that it was time for them to go elsewhere. 

 In 1824, when I last visited the wilds of Guiana, 

 scarcely a Dutchman could be seen either in 

 Demerara or in Essequibo. Numbers of my 

 former foreign friends had sunk into the grave ; 

 and numbers had gone to join their brethren 

 in Surinam, the last remaining colony of Hol- 

 land, on the terra firma of South America. 



The stork, whose shape and habits at once 

 announce him to be a lover of swamps and 

 quagmires, is carefully protected in Holland. 

 The natives know his value ; and so good an 

 understanding exists betwixt themselves and 

 this bird, that he appears in the heart of their 

 towns without the slightest symptoms of fear ; 

 and he builds his huge nest upon the flat of their 



