Gums, Resins, 



492 



[December, 1911. 



is really new and so full of opportunities 

 that one wonders at the way the world 

 has passed it by. The coolies who are 

 brought in as labourers on the large 

 estate are good workers and very tract- 

 able and polite. The stranger passing 

 through the coolie quarters of George- 

 town is quite likely to be greeted with : 

 "Salaam Papa"— not a claim of blood 

 relationship, but just their deferential 

 way of saying " good day." 



Their women are slender, black eyed, 

 well-mannered and gorgeously dressed. 

 For example, one wore a scarlet hat, 

 pale pink waist, deep pink belt, white 

 skirt, green scarf, brown stockings, 

 black shoes. A " real lady," dressed just 

 like the European as she firmly believed. 

 The other labourers are native and West 

 Indian negroes, and they area uniformly 

 capable, willing lot of men. 



Like Northern Brazil, British Guiana 

 has the jaguar, the tapir and the 

 manatee, it has the great bird eating 

 spiders, its big rivers swarm with fish, 

 its forests with game, its jungles with 

 snakes, great and small. It also has 

 strange creatures of its own. It was on 

 a Guiana river that one night I heard a 

 " sea devil " crash down on the surface 

 of the water, and thereafter listened to 

 tales of its enormous size, of its habit 

 of enwrapping divers in its great side 

 fins and feeding on them as they 

 drowned. Then there is the Hoatzin, 

 earth's only known link between bird 

 and reptile— a bird whose young are 

 hatched out four-footed, but who turn 

 into bipeds, their forelegs shedding 

 claws and sprouting feathers as they 

 mature. There are the gold fields, the 

 diamond fields, and the great unexplored 

 reaches of forest and savannah that 

 are full of fascination— a paradise for 

 hunter, botanist, naturalist and yes 

 health seeker. There has been no yellow 

 fever since 1881, and then it was brought 

 in from another country. There is 

 malaria, but one need not acquire it, if 

 careful, and this I would affirm even 

 to the distinguished lecturer, who 

 addressing a New York audience on 

 Brazil and the Guianas. summarized the 

 latter country thus: "Along here we 

 pass the country known as British 

 Guiana, which has a climate so hot and 

 deadly, that no white man can live 

 there." As I pen these lines in New 

 York the thermometer stands at 104 

 degs, Fahr., with hundreds of deaths 

 and prostrations. Personally I yearn 

 for the safe warmth, the cool nights and 

 the gentle healthful climate of Guiana. 



Speaking of snakes there are many in 

 the Guianas, and most of the planters 

 can show the visitor some very sizable 



skins. I could not, however, learn of 

 any white man who had perished from 

 snake bite. The Government keeps a 

 careful record of all deaths, even of 

 the negroes who go far into the in- 

 terior to labour at the gold diggings. 

 In looking over the records for a number 

 of years, 1 found but one case of death 

 by snake bite. Curiously enough the 

 most frequent cause of death among 

 those men seemed to be " accidental 

 drowning," 



To even see a snake one usually has to 

 hunt for it. It is easy to find snake 

 stories, however, and those told by the 

 whites are only a bit less imaginative 

 than those of the blacks. A friend 

 of mine, Wilfred Joubert, who has 

 done the Guianas as thoroughly as 

 any one, lay in his hammock in the bush 

 one night and listened to the following 

 story which is typical. The teller was 

 a big-eyed Guiana negro. His audience 

 a breathless, believing crowd of his own 

 colour. 



" Yo know Massa Johnson, we a go 

 ride one uiarnin top he horse en he tenk 

 he go Berbice, but he see one big ting 

 across he path dat he no ken go. He 

 look en he look and he see a one big 

 snake ! A true, a snake belly a so big 

 a horse no can leap em, and he sit on 

 he horse all day till 4 o'clock an a snake 

 no pass yet so den he turn back and he 

 get he people for come and look, but 

 when we get back a snake a gone." 



Those who believe that any tree 

 flourishes best in its own home, or at 

 least in a country that has the same 

 sort of climate and soil should approve 

 of British Guiana for the Hevea brasi- 

 li/msis. It is Northern Brazil over again. 

 Humid, tropical, witn a long and short 

 wet season with a coastal soil really 

 brought down by the Amazon with 

 fauna and flora almost identical, it it 

 is not the home of the Para rubber tree, 

 it certainly is next door it. 



It was fully sixteen years ago that the 

 first seeds of Hevea brasiliensis were 

 brought into British Guiana, and later 

 plants from the first lot of seeds were 

 sent to different parts of the Colony, The 

 result is that there are a few old trees 

 in existence there. About six years ago 

 the Botanic Gardens in Georgetown 

 began in earnest to import seeds, and up 

 to the present time have raised and sold 

 to planters nearly 200,000 plants of this 

 species. 



In addition to this very important 

 distribution, laud has been cleared and 

 planted at the Government Experiment 

 Stations at Christianburg, Bonasika, 

 Onderneemig, Pomeroon and Iasororo. 



