238 TlMEHRI. 
sink into the background, or perhaps take to the dusty 
roadside or barren down. 
If this annual fight goes on under the comparatively 
dull skies of temperate countries, how much more intense 
it must be in the tropics. Here the sun shines every 
day in the year and even in showery weather pours 
down his rays almost immediately after a downpour to 
which the heaviest thunderstorm of Europe is a mere 
nothing. Some drops rise up into a mist over the savan- 
nah, but the greater portion of the rainfall has penetrated 
the mat of vegetation and goes to build up the jungle of 
sedges, grasses and flowering plants which covers the 
swamp. Here is no footing for man or beast, nor does 
the mower interfere, but nature is left to herself, save once 
now and again during a drought when accidentally or 
purposely the then dry grasses are fired. 
Behind the narrow fringe of cultivated land on the 
coast of British Guiana, a number of such swamps ex- 
tend from the back-dams of the estates to where on the 
rising ground the forest begins. To the casual observer 
they are great meadows, with hardly a shrub or flower to 
break the expanse of green sedges. They are com- 
monly called wet savannahs to distinguish them from 
the more dry grassy plains to which the name of savan- 
nah properly belongs. Whether wet or dry, these ex- 
panses are always very uneven. To walk on them is 
most distressing even when they are dry, as the sedges 
grow in tufts which rise two or three feet above the 
narrow channels between. 
If they are difficult to traverse when dry, how much 
more so when wet. Unless the water is very high indeed 
even the Indian's canoe can hardly make way over the 
