Guyana -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Guyana
This was on Monday, but Ram Narine was to have yet another day of grace,
by a twist in the nexus of circumstance which envelops all of us. The
Lawyer's orderly had failed to notify his cabman that the Georgetown
steamer left at six-fifty instead of seven. So when we finally left the
stelling, with a host of twittering martins about us, it was with
sorrowful faces. Not only were the master's wig and gown missing,
besides other articles less necessary from a legal point of view, but
the ham for luncheon was lacking. The higher law of compensation now
became active, and the day of postponement gave me the sight of the
Pomeroon Trail. This delay solved the matter of the wig and gown, and
the ham was replaced by a curry equal to a Calcutta cook's best. This
was served in the Colony House at Suddy Village, where one ate and slept
in full enjoyment of the cool tradewind which blew in from the clear
stretch of the Atlantic. And here one sat and read or listened to the
droning of the witnesses in the petty cases held by the local magistrate
in the courtroom below stairs.
I chose to do none of these things, but walked to the sandy beach and
along it in the direction of the distant Spanish Main. It was a barren
beach, judged by the salvage of most beaches; few shells, little
seaweed, and the white sand alternating with stretches of brown mud. I
walked until I came to a promontory and, amid splashing muddy waves,
climbed out and perched where I ever love to be--on the outermost
isolated pile of an old wharf. Scores of years must have passed since
it was in use, and I tried to imagine what things had come and gone over
it. Those were the days of the great Dutch sugar-plantations, when
plantations were like small kingdoms, with crowds of slaves, and when
the rich amber crystals resembled gold-dust in more than appearance.
What bales of wondrous Dutch lace and furniture and goodies were
unloaded from the old high-pooped sailing ships, and what frills and
flounces fluttered in this same tradewind, what time the master's
daughter set forth upon her first visit to the Netherlands! Now, a few
rotted piles and rows of precise, flat Dutch bricks along the foreshore
were all that was left of such memories. Inland, the wattled huts of the
negroes had outlasted the great manor-houses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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