From Rio the Hercule called in succession at Guiana, Martinique and Guadaloupe.  The low shores of Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps, the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red ibises!  Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne River, and the pretty town standing on its banks—­the wooden houses all separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety.  Flowers of every hue, set among huge calabash trees, gigantic palms of every kind, such as the traveller’s palm with its immense fan-shaped leaves, bread-fruit trees, and many more, charm the eye with a wealth of colour which must be seen before it can be realized.  Though the Cayenne River may be charming, the other arms of the Guiana delta, great rivers, hedged in by thick dark forest walls, are far gloomier to the sight.  But those magnificent forests, peopled with creatures of all sorts, and especially with an infinite number of birds, of the most varied and dazzling plumage, have the irresistible attraction that hangs about life in the wilds.

I went up several of these rivers, such as the Aprouague and the Mana River, and visited the carbets, or villages, of several Indian tribes, the Norags, and the Galibis, which last were still quite savage at the time of which I write, armed with bows and arrows, and obtaining a light by rubbing two bits of stick together—­a thing I actually saw them do.  Men and women alike were red-skinned, tartar-eyed, their smooth hair dyed with “rocou,” a sort of madder, and with a small strip of cotton passed between the legs as their only garment.  The women were particularly frightful.  Almost all of them had huge stomachs, which they held up with their hands just like a monkey’s pouch, and all wore a kind of tight bracelet above and below their knees and ankles, which caused the intervening parts to swell, and gave their legs the appearance of skewers with Dutch cheeses on them.  Apart from the savages, the general impression of Guiana remaining with me is that of a great hot-house, in which everything was as improbably huge as in one of Gustave Dore’s illustrations—­where I came across apricots as big as my head, and caimans ten yards long.  As regards the inhabitants, I recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a plume that was a dream!