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SAILING UP THE ESSEQUIBO.

(Concluded from page 360.)

A family of Indians was seen crossing the river in their log canoe, and disappearing under the bushes on the opposite side; my companion and myself paddled after them, and we landed under some locust trees, and found an Indian settlement.  The logies were sheds, open all round, and covered with the leaves of the trooly-palm, some of them twenty-four feet long; and suspended from the bamboo timbers of the roof were hammocks of net-work, in which the men were lazily swinging.  One or two of those who were awake were fashioning arrow-heads out of hard wood.  The men and children were entirely naked, with the exception of the blue lap or cloth for the loins; the women in their blue petticoat and braided hair were scraping the root of the cassava tree into a trough of bark; it was then put into a long press of matting, which expresses the poisonous juice; the dry farina is finally baked on an iron plate.  The old women were weaving the square coeoo or lap of beads, which they sometimes wear without a petticoat; also armlets and ankle ornaments of beads.  Some were fabricating earthen pots, and all the females seemed actively employed.  They offered us a red liquor, called caseeree, prepared from the sweet potato; also piwarry, the intoxicating beverage made by chewing the cassava, and allowing it to ferment.  At their piwarry feasts the Indians prepare a small canoe full of this liquor, beside which the entertainers and their guests roll together drunk for two or three days.  Their helpmates look after them, and keep them from being suffocated with the sand getting into their mouths:  but piwarry is a harmless liquor, that is to say, it does not produce the disease and baneful effects of spirits, for after a sleep the Indians rise fresh and well, and only occasionally indulge in a debauch of this kind.  Fish, which the men had shot with their arrows, and birds, were brought out of the canoe, and barbacoted or smoke-dried on a grating of bamboos over a fire; and we followed an old man with a cutlass to their small fields of cassava, cleared by girdling and burning a part of the forest behind the logies.  These Indians were of the Arrawak nation; we afterwards saw Caribs, Accaways, &c.

The rivers and creeks, and the whole of the interior of British Guiana at a distance from the sea, are unknown and unexplored.  October and November are the driest months in the year, and the best for expeditions into the interior.  I was unable to go as far up the river as I wished, from the great freshes; the rain fell every day, yet I penetrated in all directions as far as I could, and I trust to be able, at some more favourable season, to return to that interesting country.