Mr. Nicholson promised to obtain some living Trumpeters for us and later kept his word by sending one to New York a few months after we left. There are gold diggings near here which were worked by the Dutch in 1625. In the earlier days of the English occupancy, gold smuggling was an every-day occurrence at Bartica, and Mr. Nicholson had to take extraordinary precautions to guard against it. He would scrape a line under the keel of a boat from stem to stern, by this means often discovering hidden bags of gold. Many a coopful of innocent looking fowls, brought down by the “pork-knockers,” were slain by the government inspectors and found to have their crops and gizzards filled with the precious yellow grain. Cartridges were a favorite means of smuggling, the powder being removed and replaced with gold. There is no longer any attempt at smuggling now as it does not pay. [Illustration: FIG. 109. GREAT ANTEATER. (Photo by Sanborn.)] Vampires (_Desmodus rufus_) are so abundant at Matope that every evening one of the servants collects the chair cushions on the veranda and packs them under an upturned chair. Otherwise, the dogs, bitten while sleeping on these cushions, would ruin them with their blood. We swung our hammocks on the veranda and kept one light burning, and although the bats squeaked shrilly throughout the night, none of us were bitten. Early next morning we packed up and set out, and in a few minutes a launch landed us at the foot of the falls. This portage was only about a hundred yards in length, bringing us to Perseverance Landing. Here were several tent-boats, most of them filled with “pork-knockers.” We stored our luggage in the one reserved for us and climbed into a tent ballyhoo with ten paddlers in addition to the bowman and steersman—all big, powerful, piratical looking blacks, except the steersman, who was an Indian. Now came the most exciting part of our trip, passing up the series of rapids which filled the whole bed of the river. It took us until noon to pass them. A smooth expanse of water would indicate depth sufficient to float a steamer. Then a bar of granite would appear, rising on shore into huge boulders and forming a series of foaming, tumbling waves across the river. In such a place there were numerous small islands and the width increased greatly, while the water everywhere was shallow, with channels ramifying here and there.