SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 



43 



appears to be very difficult to grow in an Orchid-house, it is a most 

 successful garden Orchid in the colony. Masses of it may be 

 seen in the older gardens in Georgetown ; and in one case in 

 which one of these masses was sold for removal it was found to 

 be too big for the cart which was sent to fetch it, and had to be 

 divided. 



The other Orchid which is to be seen in the same kind of 

 place is Diacrium {Epidendrum) bicomutum, which clings to the 

 more exposed boughs, and seems to enjoy the blaze of the sun 

 and the full exposure to the salt-laden wind. 



For many miles from the sea the broad rivers are edged by 

 mangroves of large size, the otherwise bare trunks of which are 

 in places almost clothed by the free-flowering masses of 

 Epidendmm frag vans with its honey-like scent. Nearer to the 

 water's edge great masses of the pretty little Lanium micro- 

 phyllum enjoy the shade of the overhanging boughs, and are 

 sometimes bathed in the rising tide. Brassia and Catasetums 

 are common. In places there are colonies of Coryanthcs 

 maculata, the roots of each matted together by ants into a round 

 black mass. Two Jfipidendrums (E. imatopkyllum and E. 

 Schomburgkii) occur in the same places, and with much the same 

 habits. 



From the large main rivers one can penetrate into the dense 

 forest which covers nearly the w T hole country by following up the 

 course of one of the innumerable creeks. 



To English ears a creek is a backwater, generally, I think, an 

 arm of the sea ; but in the originally Dutch colonies of Guiana 

 the word means a stream or rivulet, or even a fair-sized river, 

 provided it is not one of the main rivers of the colony. Here, 

 however, we shall have to do with one of the innumerable small 

 creeks or rivulets draining that great primeval forest which, 

 except in the few places touched by the hand of man, stretches 

 with hardly a break from where the crowded mangrove trees are 

 lifted on their stilt-like roots over the mud-laden brackish water 

 to the highlands of the interior. 



From some forest swamp, often at a great distance from the 

 main river, the water of such a creek gathers itself almost imper- 

 ceptibly into a definite channel, down the intricate loops and 

 coils and turns of which it creeps, generally in deep shade, and 

 deepens for many miles, till (even its mouth almost hidden in 



