22 
WANDERINGS IN 
FIRST 
JOURNEY 
The Esse- 
quibo. 
Sinkerman’s lie finds a little creek on the western 
bank of the Demerara. After proceeding about a 
couple of hundred yards up it, he leaves it, and pur¬ 
sues a west-north-west direction by land for the 
Essequibo. The path is good, though somewhat 
rugged with the roots of trees, and here and there 
obstructed by fallen ones; it extends more over level 
ground than otherwise. There are a few steep 
ascents and descents in it, with a little brook running 
at the bottom of them; but they are easily passed 
over, and the fallen trees serve for a bridge. 
You may reach the Essequibo with ease in a day 
and a half; and so matted and interwoven are the 
tops of the trees above you, that the sun is not felt 
once all the way, saving where the space which a 
newly fallen tree occupied lets in his rays upon you. 
The forest contains an abundance of wild hogs, lobbas, 
acouries, powisses, maams, maroudis, and waracabas, 
for your nourishment, and there are plenty of leaves to 
cover a shed, whenever you are inclined to sleep. 
The soil has three-fourths of sand in it, till you 
come within half an hour’s walk of the Essequibo, 
where you find a red gravel and rocks. In this retired 
and solitary tract, nature’s garb, to all appearance, 
has not been injured by fire, nor her productions 
broken in upon by the exterminating hand of man. 
Here the finest green-heart grows, and wallaba, 
purple-heart, siloabali, sawari, buletre, tauronira, and 
mora, are met with in vast abundance, far and near, 
towering up in majestic grandeur, straight as pillars, 
sixty or seventy feet high, without a knot or branch. 
