We were glad to find that the most difficult privilege to obtain is a permit to collect birds, and the very stringent laws in this respect are an honor to the Governor and his colonial officials.[C] Thanks to the absence of the plume and general millinery hunter, the game hog and the wholesale collector, birds are abundant and tame. We were in the colony just two months and shot only about one hundred specimens, all of which were secured because of some special interest. We brought home some two hundred and eighty live birds which are now housed in the New York Zoölogical Park. Once off the single wharf-lined, business street of Georgetown, one is instantly struck by the beauty of the place. Green trees, flowering vines and shrubs are everywhere, half hiding the ugly, tropical architecture. The streets are all wide, some with gravel walks down the centre, shaded with the graceful saman trees; others with central trenches filled with the beautiful _Victoria regia_—here a native. Two species of big Tyrant Flycatchers [101], [103] are the English Sparrows of the city and White-breasted Robins,[128] Palm [144] and Silver-beak[146] Tanagers perch on the limbs of trees at one’s very window. Although we are anxious to start on our first expedition into the “bush,” as the primeval forests of the interior are called, yet a week passes very pleasantly in the city itself. The street life is a passing pageant, full of interest and of the charm of novelty for the Northerner. Carriages roll past in which sit very correctly dressed and typical English women; still others are filled with creoles, some to all appearances perfectly white, others in which the infusion of negro blood is very apparent. Many of the creole women have a certain languid beauty and a good deal of grace and self-possession. The passing of the liveried carriage of the Governor causes a ripple of excitement. It is five o’clock, the fashionable hour for driving, and all these equipages are bound for the sea-wall, where the occupants sit and listen to an excellent band, enjoy the sea breeze and chat with their neighbors about the all-important happenings of the social set of Georgetown; while the pale-faced children dig in the sand or run shrieking with glee from an incoming wave, just as do their rosy contemporaries of the North. Another picture is the coolie in his loose, white garments and turban and his sinewy, bare, brown legs. He gazes at you as calmly and as unmoved as though you were not. Even the lowest coolie bears about him this unconscious dignity of an ancient race and a civilization that was old when we were but beginning. [Illustration: FIG. 59. COOLIE WOMAN AND NEGRESS.]