SOUTH AMERICA. 
29 
rivers, and break that long-extended sameness which first 
is seen m the JDemerara. - 
Proceeding: onwards, you g;etto the falls and rapids. Fails and 
_ . . / .. rapids. 
In the rainy season they are very tedious to pass, 
and often stop your course. In the dry season, by 
stepping from rock to rock, the Indians soon manage 
to get a canoe over them. But when the river is 
swollen, as it was in May, 1812 , it is then a difficult 
task, and often a dangerous one too. At that time 
many of the islands were overflowed, the rocks 
covered, and the lower branches of the trees in the 
water. Sometimes the Indians were obliged to take 
every thing out of the canoe, cut a passage through 
the branches, which hung over into the river, and 
then drag up the canoe by main force. 
At one place, the falls form an oblique line quite 
across the river, impassable to the ascending canoe, 
and you are forced to have it dragged four or five 
hundred yards by land. 
It will take you five days, from the Indian habi¬ 
tation, on the point of the island, to where these falls 
and rapids terminate. 
There are no huts in the way. You must bring 
your own cassava bread along with you, hunt in the 
forest for your meat, and make the night’s shelter 
for yourself. 
Here is a noble range of hills, all covered with the Hills, 
finest trees, rising majestically one above the other, 
on the western bank, and presenting as rich a scene 
as ever the eye would wish to look on. Nothing in 
vegetable nature can be conceived more charming, 
grand, and luxuriant. 
