hundred miles. Conjecture was of no avail, and all conversation next
morning on the subject was as useless and unsatisfactory as the dead
silence which succeeded to the noise.

He who wishes to reach the Macoushi country had better send his canoe over-
land from Sinkerman's to the Essequibo.

There is a pretty good path, and meeting a creek about three-quarters of
the way, it eases the labour, and twelve Indians will arrive with it in the
Essequibo in four days.

The traveller need not attend his canoe; there is a shorter and a better
way. Half an hour below Sinkerman's he 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 pursues 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