CHAPTER III. 
Landing — Georgetown — Historical Retrospect . 
62. Just as the firing of cannon had signalled the onset of night, 
a similar one notified the breaking of day; the Reveille 
sounded through the yet silent city streets and recalled 
to life fresh energies and renewed activities. Innumerable 
boats, laden with produce from the estates, were rowing with 
and against the stream from the west bank and from farms 
situate further inland, towards the capital, to supply it for the coming 
day with Plantains (the fruit of Musa paradisiaca Linn.), Maize, Veg- 
etables, Oranges, Poultry and Eisli : others were engaged in capturing 
the denizens of the deep, to return with them in due season. In the 
midst of this engaging tumult there gaily sounded the strange chirp 
and twitter of the larger and smaller birds that were searching the 
thickly leaved trees of the bank for spoil, or fiving to greet the opening 
dawn, while the anchorage was being gradually filled with noisy and 
squalling negro women who were waiting to buy the cargoes of the in- 
coming boats. 
63. Our impatience would no longer be curbed and so, full of mis- 
chief and delighted with the glorious morn, we jumped into the boat that 
was to convey us to shore. It was only with difficulty that we managed 
to force our way through the noisy crowd of black, brown, half-naked 
huckster-folk of Georgetown collected there, who looked upon us with as 
much surprise and curiosity as we regarded them. To our great sat- 
isfaction, the wide street we followed ran direct to the Lighthouse Tower, 
which straight away prompted us to take a view of the city from its 
top. After climbing the 140 steps leading to the gallery, a won- 
derful panorama unexpectedly came into view. Dumb with surprise and 
delight, the eye swept over the heaving and billowy seas as far as the 
distant horizon where Earth and Heaven met: light fishing-boats pitched 
and tossed upon the ruffled waves, to disappear a moment later, while 
a ponderous coaster would skim its way through them. Below, there 
glared at me the thick forest of masts and flying flags. Spreading itself be- 
fore my delighted gaze was the city with its nice wooden gaudily-paint- 
ed houses, its overtopping churches and Public Buildings, its thousands 
upon thousands of slender palms, its broad busy streets, and its many 
canals that 'ran through it like so many veins: it was enclosed by more 
or less distant sugar estates with many a smoking chimney striving 
after heaven, the characteristic, as it were, of modern progress. Far 
away to the Westward I noticed the darkly-fringed shores of the Esse- 
quibo, while the Demerara rolling past beneath us ran like a silver 
band through the smiling plain, and waltzed its waters into the greedy 
ocean. 
64. The peaceful and romantic valleys, mountains and plains of our 1 
native land do not possess the infinite charm and delightful matutinal 
fragrance of the tropics: — the wanton vegetation, the vigorous fresh 
green amidst a dense dark foliage, the generally prevalent marked con- 
trast of conformation in the world of plants, the tropical climate, the 
