The civilised and cultivated portion of the colony of British Guiana consists of a narrow strip of sea-coast. Immediately behind this lies a broad expanse of swampy ground, then comes rising wooded land, and finally mountains and savannas which stretch westward, and are still in their primitive condition, inhabited by little-known Indian tribes and various species of wild animals. It is owing chiefly to the ‘Coolie Labour Question’ that public attention has been of late years at all directed to British Guiana; and as the colony is likely to become of increased importance, an opportunity of learning particulars about the hitherto mysterious territory which lies _behind_ the utilised strip of coast belonging to it, yet utterly unreckoned in the sum of civilisation, is one to be welcomed. This wild region is called vaguely ‘the Interior,’ and with the exception of a few settlements on the banks of the Lower Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo rivers, a traveller penetrating its recesses at the present time would behold the same condition of things there which existed in the days of Sir Walter Raleigh. Mr Barrington Brown visited and explored a considerable extent of this ‘Interior’ while he was engaged on the government geological survey of the West Indies. He accomplished his journeys by means of canoe-travelling; a method preferable to any other, as affording opportunities for close observation, for obtaining picturesque aspects, and in itself very agreeable.
His first voyage was up the Essequibo to the penal settlement of the colony, where his Indian boatmen refused to remain even for one night, such is their timid dread of the very notion of a prison. They would not hang their hammocks in the empty sheds, but crossed the river and camped in the forest, though one of them was suffering severely from fever. At the penal settlement boats were purchased, and a crew hired for the navigation of the Cuyuni, which afforded the Indians ample opportunities for exhibiting their skill. ‘They worked splendidly in the cataracts, swimming, diving, and wading in the strong currents from rock to rock, while leading out the tow-ropes and hauling the boats up.’ During the journey up this river the traveller encountered in many parts a succession of rapids and cataracts. The difficulties thus entailed, and the graphic account of how these difficulties were surmounted, afford some notion of the laboriousness of nearly every river voyage made by Mr Brown in the course of his explorations.