SOUTH AMERICA. 
211 
for the cayman, but all to no purpose. I was now 
convinced that something was materially wrong. 
We ought to have been successful, considering our 
vigilance and attention, and that we had repeatedly 
seen the cayman. It was useless to tarry here any 
longer; moreover, the coloured man began to take 
airs, and fancied that I could not do without him. 
I never admit of this in any expedition where I am 
commander $ and so I convinced the man, to his 
sorrow, that I could do without him 5 for I paid 
him what I had agreed to give him, which amounted 
to eight dollars, and ordered him back in his own 
curial to Mrs. Peterson’s, on the hill at the first falls. 
I then asked the negro if there were any Indian 
settlements in the neighbourhood; he said he knew 
of one, a day and a half off. We went in quest of 
it, and about one o’clock the next day, the negro 
showed us the creek where it was. 
The entrance was so concealed by thick bushes 
that a stranger would have passed it without knowing 
it to be a creek. In going up it we found it dark, 
winding, and intricate beyond any creek that I had 
ever seen before. When Orpheus came back with 
his young wife from Styx, his path must have been 
similar to this, for Ovid says it was 
THIRD 
JOURNEY. 
Dis¬ 
charges 
the man 
of colour. 
Reaches 
a creek; 
and 
Indian 
settle¬ 
ment. 
“ Arduus, ohliquus, caligine densus opaca; ” 
and this creek was exactly so. 
When we had got about two-thirds up it, we met 
the Indians going a fishing. I saw, by the way 
their things were packed in the curial, that they did 
not intend to return for some davs. However, on 
