IN THE GUIANA FOREST. 
95 
IN THE GUIANA FOREST.* 
Mr. Rodway is a keen observer and a picturesque writer. His book is 
consequently both realistic and readable, which cannot always be said of scientific 
works. Even the unscientific will find it fascinating, and abounding in information 
lucidly and attractively conveyed. The luxuriant tropical world Mr. Rodway has 
taken upon himself to describe is magically brought before the eye of the reader, 
who feels himself translated to its midst and conducted by a very well-informed 
and intelligent guide through its tangled brakes and vast savannas. The volume, 
moreover, is splendidly turned out, and contains some fine illustrations. The 
book requires only to be read to be admired ; even without IMr. Grant Allen’s 
preface it was sure, on its own merits, to be recognised as an important contribu- 
tion to the natural history of the tropics. Mr. Rodway is never obscure. His 
language is always so simple and forcible, that his opinions and descriptions can 
be at once comprehended. He is also systematic. His scientifically-trained 
mind invariably presents its ideas and impressions in their proper sequence, so 
that the reader’s memory is aided and the drift of all arguments understood. 
The forest is the first subject treated. We are transported immediately into 
the sombre gloom of the great Guiana forest. We feel the impressiveness of the 
almost unbroken silence ; notice the harmony of colour that exists between the 
foliage and the insects, birds, and animals, that have their haunts therein ; and 
see before our eyes the eternal life-struggle of plant and animal life. Our ordered 
gardens at home can give us no idea of the fierceness of the battle ever raging 
in nature. It is only where the hand of man has not curbed her that she can be 
observed in all her wildness and reality. Mr. Rodway, as has been said, makes 
us see and feel all this. His pages disclose to us as much as we can possibly 
know about a Guiana Forest without a visit to that country. 
The chapter on the man of the forest gives us a great deal of information about 
the South American savage. He has accommodated himself admirably to his 
surroundings, and is as much a part of the whole as the jaguar. For food he 
fishes or hunts. Like the wild animals he retires before the white man. He 
cannot adapt himself to a new environment, and, where he is prevented from 
migrating, becomes extinct. 
The Indian baby early begins to crawl. He is taken down to the creek and 
encouraged to move his limbs about until able to swim, vvhich he frequently 
begins to do before he can walk. He is stimulated to use his feet by the appli- 
cation of virulent hucu ants, which his father “ lets bite the little crawler until he 
strives with might and main to get away.” He is from his youngest days trained 
up to be a huntsman. He gets no education, and plays hardly any children’s 
games. There is little gossip in the Indians’ settlements, especially among the 
women, but, as Mr. Rodway remarks, “ The Indian female differs in many other 
respects from her civilised sister than in holding her tongue.” It is her husband 
who wears ornaments, and paints and decorates himself ; it is she who carries 
the goods and chattels of the household when a journey is made. It would be an 
indignity for the husband to carry anything but weapons. 
The Guiana savage has little mental development ; but he is simple and gentle, 
and, unlike the North American Indian, “ unspoilt as yet by alcoholic civilisa- 
tion,” as Mr. Grant Allen puts it. But he is bound to become extinct. In recent 
years he has steadily declined. Many settlements where once the traveller found 
a hearty welcome are now deserted and blotted out, “ not even,” to use the 
picturesque description of Mr. Rodway, “not even a parrot remaining to speak 
the language of the lost tribe.” 
The other chapters are equally entertaining. We learn all about the habits of 
the cavies, the tapirs, the hogs, the ant bears, the labbas, and the countless others. 
No country in the whole world exhibits so many different forms of animal life 
as South America. It is at night that the silence of the forest is most broken. A 
* In the Guiana Forest: Studies of Nature in relation to the Struggle for 
Life, by James Rodway, F.L.S., with Introduction by Grant Allen. (London; 
Fisher Unwin, 1894. 7s. fid.) 
