As we lay and listened to the strange rhythm of the paddles, and watched the brown current swash past the side of the boat, we thought of all the exciting scenes this river and this coast had witnessed:—the ill-fated search for El Dorado by Sir Walter Raleigh; then the capture and recapture of the colony no less than three times by Dutch and British. Later came a period of great prosperity when hundreds of sugar plantations yielded great profits to their owners and the social life was as gay as that of our old Virginia. Then followed the ruin of the sugar industry, bands of run-away slaves taking to the wilderness; and now to-day, the chimneys of the old mills are often the only marks of former civilization which the jungle has not obliterated. We skirted the mangroves for hours and saw nothing but an endless succession of those weird stilted plants, while scores of four-eyed fish skipped and slithered over the mud, or dashed across our bow, attracted by the glow of our lantern. In the electric light they looked pale and ghostly against the black mud. At midnight we passed a light which showed the location of Marlborough Police Station. Two hours later we heard weird music from a tom-tom and a four-toned fife or flute. Crude as it was, it had a wild melody and the syncopated, or “rag,” time was perfect. We could see the hut near the water and hear the shouts of the dancers as we passed down the centre of the river. We were hailed by a canoe of half-drunken negroes who put off and wished to accompany us up the river. Marciano gave a low command and one of the Indians muffled the lantern; then all swung together in a new rhythm—the full-speed paddle-rhythm of the Caribs—and we fairly flew through the water. After every five minutes spurt our crew rested for a few seconds to locate our unwelcome pursuers. At first they cursed us and paddled furiously, but their tipsy efforts were no match for our lithe red-men and the negroes soon dropped out of sight and hearing. There was no moon but throughout all the night whenever we awoke, the southern cross gleamed brilliantly down at us, and almost in the zenith Orion stood ever poised in his gigantic stride. As usual frogs and toads furnished most of the nocturnal music, and we spent an hour or more in classifying the various utterances. Among them was the Telegraph Toad who spoke in a regular make-and-break Morse code, sending his wireless messages to his mate. Another, heard more rarely, was what we called the Wing-beat Frog. This species gave out a muffled throbbing roar like the hurried wing-beats of a Swan in full flight. It would last for five seconds, to be answered instantly by another across the river. From the wonderland of the narrow Biara, we had come out upon the boundless expanse of the ocean, passing thence to this splendid river a half mile across. But we had far from finished the experiences and variety of this ever-to-be remembered trip.