A River Monster Hooks our Boathand. 293 
the glorious Petrea macrostachya Benth., lent them a peculiar and lovely 
charm. 
832. Among our coloured boatliands from the Essequibo was a mute 
— a passionate fisherman. A T o sooner had we pitched camp to-day upon 
a large sandbank than, as was his daily custom, lie took up his line and 
made his way in one of the boats to a small sandbank lying off the 
opposite shore. Everybody was already soundly asleep when they were 
suddenly awakened by a really extraordinary but at the same time 
terribly startling sound, which at first no one really knew what to make 
head or tail of, until one of the people shouted, “It must be the dumb 
man!” Armed with cutlasses and guns we immediately jumped into the 
boat to render him assistance, for the trembling tones only too distinctly 
betrayed that it was required. On landing where lie was, we noticed, so 
far as the darkness in the distance allowed, that the poor angler was 
being dragged here and there, though always in the direction of the 
water, by some invisible power, which he was striving to resist with all 
his might, and uttering those horrible inarticulate sounds all the while. 
We soon stood beside him but could not see what it was that jerked and 
pulled him to and fro till we at last noticed that lie had wound his 
fishing-line five or six times round his wrist and that some huge creature 
must be dragging on the hook. This turned out to lie an immense Sudii 
gigas which, after yielding to temptation and swallowing the bait, had 
pulled upon the line so forcibly that the poor fellow’s strength had been 
too weak to unwind the line or to haul in the brute. A few minutes later 
and the exhausted fisher would have lieen unable to resist the creature’s 
strength any longer. Amidst lots of laughter everybody now grabbed at 
the line and the monster soon lay on the sandbank: it weighed over 200 
pounds. Our mute, into whose wrist the line had cut, now endeavoured 
by means of the most ridiculous gesticulations to explain how the thing 
happened as well as his deep anxiety and distress. Prior to the unfor- 
tunate accident he had already caught a number of Phra otocephalus 
hicolor from three to four feet long and from 30 to 40 pounds in weight 
— the largest that I had hitherto seen. Although it was late in the night 
the catch was nevertheless cut up after our return to camp where many 
a still smouldering fire burst afresh into flame, and many a pot was 
filled and its contents devoured. I prepared the monster’s head for the 
Anatomical Museum. During the course of this late supper Sororeng 
told us of a similar adventure that had happened to him on mv brother's 
previous journey above one of the falls of the Barima. It chanced that 
he also was fishing there late one evening in a small corial and had 
hardly thrown out the hook than it was seized by a powerful Lau-lau 
which, as I have already remarked, reach a length of from ten to twelve 
feet and a weight of 200 pounds. Sororeng had tied the line on to the 
craft, but it got entangled through the fish moving about in all direc- 
tions, and having nothing with which to cut it away qitickly, he at last 
had to exert every effort to control his boat. The strength of the fish, 
together with the current, were far too much for him : the corial was 
getting closer and closer to the top of the fall, when his loud cries for 
assistance likewise awakened the sleeping rescuers who also reached] him 
