A Pitiful Picture. 
191 
a doctor and several attendants are in the service of the institution.* 
Plantation Caledonia that Mr. King had fixed for the night’s camp 
showed up on the easteru shore immediately opposite the Aikoni mouth. 
We made our way there into the mile-long lined trench bordered with 
coconut palm, which led to the residential quarters and betrayed unniis- 
takeable Dutch origin. The coffee fields shaded by the mighty 
Erythrina Gorallodendron Linn, extended on both sides of the 
trench. The want of labourers was also apparent here, for the greater 
portion of the previously carefully cultivated estate was already over- 
grown with weed, the coffee bushes covered with vines, and the intervals 
filled with a real chaos of thorny Mimosae. The plantains which only 
with their crowns still overtopped the wanton growth, offered a similarly 
mournful aspect. How many drops of sweat must it have cost to bring 
this beautiful estate under cultivation originally! How much labour 
must have been spent on the extensive canals and trenches! And now 
the whole was but one thick tangle of Mimosa and Cordia. 
63G. The manager, a friend of Mr. King, welcomed us with the 
hospitality for which Guiana colonists are celebrated, but the mosquitoes 
on the contrary, received us with corresponding hostility, which they 
expressed during the night in equally sanguinary greed. Thanking God 
with all our hearts for break of day, we only breathed freely again Avhen 
daylight poured into our quarters. At breakfast the manager mentioned 
amongst other things the case of a Negro girl on his estate suffering from 
a disease which I had heard something of in Georgetown, but had never 
had the opportunity of seeing. Our obliging host told me he was ready 
to take me to her. On stepping into the miserable room, I ought rather 
to say pitiful stable, a naked human form as emaciated as a skeleton 
rose from off a sack of straw spread in the corner, stared at us with hollow 
deeply-sunken eyes, and then stretched out her bony arms entreating 
us for help. An icy shudder ran through me and had I not been- re- 
strained by the respect due to our host, would have run away at first 
sight of her. The whole living skeleton was only covered by skin with 
many a broad fold in it, through which each rib, each bone, each knuckle, 
could be seen: it was the most horrible representative of a human figure 
I had ever seen, even elephantiasis and the yaws never having seemed so 
awful. With dry husky voice and a pathetic whine she asked for medi- 
cine: but help had come too late. To cool her temperature at least, for 
the unfortunate creature was burning with inward fever, 1 brought her 
the last of my stock of lemonade powder. The woeful picture of her 
sufferings impressed itself on my memory for long, and it was many days 
before it disappeared from my mind.f 
* The present Leper Asvlum is situated at Mahaica, on the East Coast of Demerara. The 
Hospital here mentioned on the Waca-pau Creek is, I think, the old “ Yaws” Hospital. (F.G-.R.) 
f This description is of some interest, for it is a very accurate picture of an acute 
Pulmonary Tuberculosis, though he mentions no cough. I know of no other disease whose 
physical signs fit so well into the picture, though it is supposed, and the author himself 
affirms, that indigenous Tuberculosis was then unknown in the Colony. The emaciation, the 
dry husky voice, the sunken eyes and the inward fever all seem typical of the condition. It 
is a pity that we are not given the name by which the disease was known, or some more 
definitely localized symptoms. (E.Cf.R. ) 
