Guyana -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Guyana
In the course of five days at New Amsterdam we achieved our object. We
found hoatzins, their nests, eggs, and young, and perpetuated in
photographs their wonderful habits handed down through all the ages
past, from the time when reptiles were the dominant beings, and birds
and mammals crept about, understudying their rôle to come, as yet
uncertain of themselves and their heritage. When we needed it the sun
broke through the rain and shone brightly; when our lenses were ready,
the baby hoatzins ran the gamut of their achievements. They crept on all
fours, they climbed with fingers and toes, they dived headlong, and swam
as skilfully as any Hesperornis of old. This was, and I think always
will be, to me, the most wonderful sight in the world. To see a tiny
living bird duplicate within a few minutes the processes which, evolved
slowly through uncounted years, have at last culminated in the world of
birds as we find it today--this is impressive beyond words. No poem, no
picture, no terrible danger, no sight of men killed or injured has ever
affected me as profoundly as this.
Thus the primary object of the trip was accomplished. But that is a poor
expedition indeed which does not yield another hundred per cent. in
oblique values, of things seen out of the corner of one's eyes.
If one is an official or an accredited visitor to Berbice, the Colony
House is placed at one's service. I am sure that it is quite the ugliest
of all colony houses, and surrounded by what I am equally sure is one of
the most beautiful of tropical gardens. If Berbice held no other
attraction it would be worth visiting to see this garden. The first
floor of Colony House is offices, the second is the Supreme Court, and
when I peeped in I saw there were three occupants--a great yellow cat
curled up in the judge's chair, and two huge toads solemnly regarding
each other from the witness-box and the aisle.
Three stories in Guiana constitute a skyscraper, and that night I slept
on a level with the palm fronds. It was a house of a thousand sounds.
During the day hosts of carpenters tore off uncountable shingles
devastated by white ants. Two antithetical black maids attended noisily
but skilfully to all my wants. At night, cats and frogs divided the
vocal watches, and a patient dog never tired of rolling the garbage-can
downstairs past the Supreme Court to the first floor. I thought of this
at first as some strange canine rite, a thing which Alice could have
explained with ease, or which to Seumas and to Slith would have appeared
reasonable and fitting. I used to wait for it before I went to sleep,
knowing that comparative silence would follow. I discovered later that
this intelligent dog had learned that, by nudging the can off the top
step, the cover would become dislodged at about the level of the Supreme
Court, and from there to the government offices he could spend a night
of gastronomic joy, gradually descending to the level of the entrance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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