DUTCH GUIANA.
CHAPTER III.
THE RIVER.
"The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round."
With a subdued silvery gleam, the surest promise in these latitudes of a clear day to follow, the sun peeped through the network of the forest that here does duty for horizon on every side, when our party mustered under the neat wooden pavilion of the landing-place between the parade-ground and the river,—I might have not less correctly said the highway. For the true highways of this land are its rivers, traced right and left with matchless profusion by nature herself, and more commodious could scarce be found anywhere. Broad and deep, tidal, too, for miles up their course, but with scarcely any variation in the fulness of their mighty flow summer or winter, rainy season or dry, so constant is the water-supply from its common origin, the equatorial mountain-chain, they give easy access to the innermost recesses of the vast regions beyond, east, west, and south; and where their tortuous windings and multiplied side canals fail to reach, Batavian industry and skill have made good the want by canals, straighter in course, and often hardly inferior in navigable capacity to the mother-rivers themselves. On the skeleton plan, so to speak of this mighty system of water communication, the entire cultivation of the inland has been naturally adjusted; and the estates of Surinam are ranged one after another along the margins of rivers and canals, just as farms might be along highways and byways in Germany or Hungary. Subservient to the water ways, narrow land paths follow the river or trench by which not every estate alone, but its every subdivision of an estate, every acre almost is defined and bordered, while the smaller dykes and canals are again crossed by wooden bridges, maintained in careful repair, but paths and bridges alike are of a width and solidity adapted to footmen only, or at best horsemen; the proper carriage road is the river or canal.
In a climate like that of Surinam, bodily exertion is a thing to be economized as much as possible; and accordingly everybody keeps his carriage, I mean his boat. That of the wealthy estate-owner, of the vicarious "attorney" (not a professional one, I may as well remark for the benefit of those unused to West-Indian nomenclatures, but the holder of a power of attorney, on the proprietor's behalf), of the merchant, of the higher official, and generally of every one belonging to this or the other of what are conveniently called the "upper classes," is a comfortable barge, painted white for coolness' sake, and propelled by oars varying in number from four to eight.
A fresh-painted, well-kept eight-oar, with a cabin of the kind just described, but of the very largest dimensions, the sides, ceiling, hangings, cushions, all white, with a dash of gilding here and there; eight rowers dressed in loose white suits, with broad red sashes round their waists, and on their heads blue caps to complete the triple colours of the national flag, make a pretty show on the sunlit river; and the governor's barge might, for picturesque appearance, match the caique of a Stamboul dignitary, besides being as much superior to the eastern conveyance in comfort, as inferior in speed. The white painted six-oar, four-oar, or even two-oar barges too, that abound for ordinary voyaging, though of course smaller in their dimensions and less gay in their accessories, are pleasant objects to look at, and may bring to mind the gondolas of Venetian waters; with this difference, that whereas the Adriatic crews are white, or what should be white, and the boats black, here the colours are, and not disadvantageously for pictorial effect, exactly reversed.
So much for the "genteeler sort." Larger yet and more Solidly built, are the great lighter-like barges, whether open or partly covered, that convey down stream from the river-side estate casks of sugar or molasses, barrels of rum, sacks of cocoa, heaped-up yams, plantains, sweet potatoes, cocoa-nuts, cassava, and the hundred other well-known but too little-cultivated products of this teeming land. Alongside of these may be often seen the floating cottages of the so-called "bush negroes," well thatched and snug; each occupying half or more of a wide flat-bottomed boat, where two stalwart blacks in genuine African garb, that is, next to no garb (vid. the woodcuts in Winwood Reade's amusing narratives, passim), paddle rather than row; and any number of black ladies, hardly more encumbered by their costumes than their lords, with an appropriate complement of ebony children, these last in no costume at all, look
