My First Indian Settlement. 
87 
Grinum the beautiful wlifte and sweet-scented flowers of which, when 
the flood set in, were strewn over the surface of the water in the loveliest 
manner possible. 
301. The more we widened our distance from the coast, the rarer be- 
came the specific coastal vegetation. The Avicennia, Rhizophora , and 
the Conocarpus had long disappeared when, just above five miles above 
the exit of the Mora into the Barima, we reached the mouth of the muddy 
and yellow Aruka : we followed this up to the entrance of its little tribu- 
tary stream, the Cumaka, on the banks of which lay the War ran Indian 
settlement of the same name, the temporary object of our journey. We 
found its mouth, as later on its whole course, to be so overgrown with 
the rankest vegetation, that only a person who had previously satisfied 
himself of the fact would ever have thought of looking for a village here. 
It was for this reason that Mr. King had all his work cut out to dispel my 
persistently recurring doubt in connection with the ever increasing ob- 
stacles to our onward progress. Innumerable trees, fallen across the 
stream, the clearing up of which often detained us for hours at a time, 
made a passage for our larger corial continually most tiresome, while 
smaller boats could wind their way th'rough without difficulty. Hardly 
a faint ray of light pierced the dense firmly-interlaced boughs and 
branches, and no wonder then that a sombre darkness and the deepest 
silence should reign here even at brightest noon. The calm was only now 
and again disturbed by the flight of the Aleedo superciliosa Linn, and t. 
hieoJor L. Gm. that were everywhere lurking foi prey. As soon as a fish 
showed itself on the surface of the water, they rushed upon it with the 
rapidity of lightning, and seized it in their long beaks. It was only rarely 
that they missed their mark, which as often as not they had to abandon on 
account of its size being many a time beyond their strength. Upon the 
trees that had tilted over the stream grew the most lovely orchids, par- 
ticularly Ma.rUlarla and the small delicate Rodriguesia while, like fairy- 
like misty figures, Acrnauta Nestor flew slowly over the water in zig-zag 
flight, and Acrnauta Leihis , Anchises and Aeneas fluttered along the 
brush-wood of f lie banks. 
302. My wish to be able to pace (he first Indian settlement at last 
seemed on (lie way to fulfilment when, exhausted and tired, we reached 
an open spot where several canoes were to be seen: it was the landing- 
place for the Cumaka residents whom I notified of our arrival by having 
several shots fired. After waiting a long while and no one being seen or 
heard we climbed (he hillock, that rose directly from the bank to a height 
of about 50 feet, and on the summit of which the village, consisting of 
several houses, stretched in front of me, but I searched around in vain 
for a single living soul. All was silent, all deserted : it was only Nature, 
ever busy, who rested not nor idled. As already stated Cumaka is sit- 
uated on the top of a small hilly range which at the same time is regard 
ed as the first rising ground inwards from the coast whence it extends far 
away into the westward. The soil consists mainly of a hardened clay, 
mixed plentifully with portions of ochre, upon which rests a quantity 
of clayey brown iron-stone and large blocks of mica-schist. The abun- 
dance of “stone-marrow”* that is at the same time bound up with it indi- 
lhe range of hills on which Cumaka stood is composed of Epidiorite and Hornblende-schist, 
i . weathers into a dark red Latente with masses of concretionary ironstone and sometimes Bauxite 
Inis latter may be wliat Schomburgk calls “Steinmark ” i.e., Stone-marrow.’’ (E.E.W.) 
