Читать книгу Through British Guiana to the summit of Roraima онлайн

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We started on the 20th December, 1915, our first stage being by steamer from Georgetown to Wismar, a small settlement sixty miles up the Demerara River. The journey takes eight hours, and the scenery is not interesting. For the most part the land on both sides is absolutely flat and screened from the traveller by a dense fringe of jungle growth. Not that the river-banks are entirely unoccupied; tenements and farms are dotted along each bank for miles after the tall chimneys of the sugar factories are left behind. Indeed, between Georgetown and Wismar there remains hardly an acre of Crown land by the river-side, and the titles of some estates date back to the year 1746, when the Dutch still ruled in Demerara. But a former Governor of the Colony decreed that a belt, several yards wide, should be reserved along the façade of all riverine grants, so that his successors might be free, if so disposed, to make roads or build wharfs on the river-bank. This untenanted strip of land was, of course, rapidly overgrown with jungle, and the dense mokka-mokka which grows at the water’s edge makes a forbidding-looking fringe to the Demerara’s yellow tide. This plant, a member of the arum family, is said to offer an excellent paper-making material. It grows sometimes just above the surface of the water, and sometimes reaches a height of thirty feet or so, forming a happy sanctuary for birds of many kinds. Their nests among the broad leaves, that clothe the thick stems rising straight out of the water, are secure from snakes and such-like enemies. Once I saw a tiny humming-bird, a veritable jewel of colour, seated on her minute nest, regarding us trustfully as we paddled by. This was not, indeed, on the banks of the Demerara, but during an expedition to one of the wet-savannah conservancies already mentioned. She sat on her airy throne, perched in the fork of a low mokka-mokka stem, a few feet above the wind-swayed rushes and broad lily leaves which cover the wide expanses on each side of the water-paths, kept clear for boats. As we sat in our low corial, her background was blue sky, and a prettier sight can scarcely be imagined.