Just before sunset the wharf at Mount Everard began to show signs of life. All day it had been deserted, a few small flat-bottomed boats, which we came later to know by the native name of ballyhoos, being moored idly against the dock; but now as the day drew to a close, groups of Indians and negroes gathered. We hung over the railing of our boat and watched them as lazily and as curiously as they watched us. Then the quiet air was rent with a medley of grunts and squeals and brays, the cries and shouts of human beings rising above all the other sounds, as a large party of men appeared escorting one scrawny cow, one lean but energetic hog, and finally one donkey, in whose being was concentrated all the stubbornness to which his race is heir. The problem was to load these beasts into one of the waiting ballyhoos. The ballyhoo was small, the current was moving it to and fro, and the cow and the donkey and the hog were not minded to go a-voyaging. As the negro always talks to his beast of burden as though it were his intellectual and social equal, so in this case the men approached the animals with all manner of reasonable argument, explaining where they were going and the importance of an early start and appealing to all that was noble and estimable, emphasizing everything with a choice selection of expletives combined with physical force. Finally after pushing and prodding the ill-fated cow they succeeded in half shoving, half throwing it into the boat. After many struggles the loudly indignant hog followed. When at last the donkey had been safely embarked we wondered if that little craft would ever reach its destination, with so heavy and protesting a load: when to our surprise the big black, who had been most vociferous and active in the recent mêlée, wiped his dripping forehead and stood calling “Possengers! Possengers! all aboad”! with as grand an air as though he were the chief steward on a great ocean liner. The “possengers” proved to be half a dozen buxom negresses, who with many a coy glance and feminine shriek of terror allowed the big black proprietor to help them from the dock to the boat, now rocking violently beneath the restless feet of the animals. Finally the ballyhoo moved slowly up stream, bound for a distant mine in the far interior, and another boat laden with bananas followed. An Indian paddled swiftly past in his wood-skin. Then darkness fell as suddenly as the dropping of a stage curtain; and we turned away from the river drama back to our life on board the “Mazaruni.” While awaiting the dinner bell we slung our hammocks along the deck, that through the meal we might know that they were swinging gently in the velvet night air, all ready for our comfortably tired selves.