The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest
wourali poison and to reach the inland frontier-fort of Portuguese Guiana.

It would be a tedious journey for him who wishes to travel through these
wilds to set out from Stabroek on foot. The sun would exhaust him in his
attempts to wade through the swamps, and the mosquitos at night would
deprive him of every hour of sleep.

The road for horses runs parallel to the river, but it extends a very
little way, and even ends before the cultivation of the plantations ceases.

The only mode then that remains is to proceed by water; and when you come
to the high-lands, you may make your way through the forest on foot or
continue your route on the river.

After passing the third island in the River Demerara there are few
plantations to be seen, and those not joining on to one another, but
separated by large tracts of wood.

The Loo is the last where the sugar-cane is growing. The greater part of
its negroes have just been ordered to another estate, and ere a few months
shall have elapsed all signs of cultivation will be lost in underwood.

Higher up stand the sugar-works of Amelia's Waard, solitary and abandoned;
and after passing these there is not a ruin to inform the traveller that
either coffee or sugar have ever been cultivated.

From Amelia's Waard an unbroken range of forest covers each bank of the
river, saving here and there where a hut discovers itself, inhabited by
free people of colour, with a rood or two of bared ground about it; or