India Rubber and Gutta Percha. 55 
in bloom, and, being a pale scarlet, it is seen a long dis- 
tance. The fruit is oval and the size of a pullet's 
egg, with angular ridges. The Indians regard it as 
highly poisonous. As a forest tree the Simavaba 
amara was likewise common. 
When we reached the village, the women were busily 
engaged burning pottery, which they were finishing 
that evening to carry to town next day. They come the 
whole distance in their ordinary river-canoes, creeping, 
we were told, slowly along shore until they reach the 
coast, to avoid the risk of getting swamped. When 
living on the Corentyne river last year, we saw two or 
three families of Caribs who had recently gone there to 
live, having travelled the whole distance from the Esse- 
quibo river, nearly the entire seaboard of the colony, in 
their canoes with their goods, suggesting a faint idea of 
the courage displayed in remote days in the navigation of 
the savage races. From the station on the Mazaruni, 
the journey to town and back occupies a week or more ; 
that they should prefer to come by bateaux though 
the Penal Settlement steamer calls twice a week within 
a few miles of their home, and almost within sight of it, 
is one good instance, among many, of the little value 
these people put on time and labour and how little they 
appreciate the convenience of civilization. One of the five 
or six benabs which constitute the dwellings of the settle- 
ment was readily given for our use, and as evidence of 
possession we at once slung our hammocks in it. After 
I had emptied my vasculum of the gatherings of the after- 
noon and laid the specimens in to press, I found time to 
look around, and was not a little disgusted to discover 
