The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Finding that a beat to the Amazons would be long and tedious, and aware that the season for procuring birds in fine plumage had already set in, I left Cayenne for Paramaribo, went through the interior to Coryntin, stopped a few days in New Amsterdam, and proceeded to Demerara.

Though least in size, the glittering mantle of the humming-bird entitles it to the first place in the list of the birds of the New World. See it darting through the air almost as quick as thought. Now it is within a yard of your face, and then is in an instant gone. Now it flutters from flower to flower. Now it is a ruby, now a topaz, now an emerald, now all burnished gold.

Cayenne and Demerara produce the same humming-birds. On entering the forests the blue and green, the smallest brown, no bigger than the humble bee, with two long feathers in the tail, and the little forked-tail purple-throated humming-birds glitter before you in ever-changing attitudes.

There are three species of toucans in Dememara, and three diminutives, which may be called toucanets. The singular form of these birds makes a lasting impression on the memory. Every species of this family of enormous bill lays its eggs in the hollow trees. You will be at a loss to know for what ends nature has overloaded the head of this bird with such an enormous bill. It is impossible to conjecture.

You would not be long in the forests of Demerara without noticing the woodpeckers. The sound which the largest kind makes in hammering against the bark of the tree is so loud that you would never suppose it to proceed from the efforts of a bird. You would take it to be the woodman, with his axe, striking a sturdy blow, oft repeated. There are fourteen species here, all beautiful, and the greater part of them have their heads ornamented with a fine crest, movable at pleasure.

In the rivers, and different creeks, you number six species of the kingfisher. They make their nest in a hole in the sand on the side of the bank. Wherever there is a wild fig-tree ripe, a numerous species of birds, called Tangara, is sure to be on it. There are 18 beautiful species here. Their plumage is very rich and diversified; some of them boast six different colours.

Parrots and paroquets are very numerous here, and of many different kinds. The hia-hia parrot, called in England the parrot of the sun, is very remarkable. He can erect at pleasure a fine radiated circle of tartan feathers quite around the back of his head from jaw to jaw. Superior in size and beauty to every parrot of South America, the ara will force you to take your eyes from the rest of animated nature and gaze at him. His commanding strength, the flaming scarlet of his body, the lovely variety of red, yellow, blue, and green in his wings, the extraordinary length of his blue and scarlet tail, seem all to join and demand for him the title of emperor of all the parrots.

There are nine species of the goatsucker in Demerara, a bird with prettily mottled plumage like that of the owl. Its cry is so remarkable that, once heard it can never be forgotten. When night reigns over these wilds you will hear this goatsucker lamenting like one in deep distress. A stranger would never conceive the cry to be that of a bird. He would say it was the departing voice of a midnight murdered victim, or the last wailing of Niobe for her poor children, before she was turned into stone.

Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow, begin with a high loud note, and pronounce "ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," each note lower and lower, till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two betwixt every note, and you will have some idea of the moaning of the goatsucker of Demerara. You will never persuade the native to let fly his arrow at these birds. They are creatures of omen and of reverential dread. They are the receptacles of departed souls come back to earth, unable to rest for crimes done in their days of nature.

III.—Third Journey

Gentle reader, after staying a few months in England, I strayed across the Alps and the Apennines, and returned home, but could not tarry. Guiana still whispered in my ear, and seemed to invite me once more to wander through her distant forests. In February, 1820, I sailed from the Clyde, on board the Glenbervie, a fine West Indiaman.

Sad and mournful was the story we heard on entering the river Demerara. The yellow fever had swept off numbers of the old inhabitants, and the mortal remains of many a new comer were daily passing down the streets, in slow and mute procession.

I myself was soon attacked severely by the fever, but was fortunate enough to recover after much suffering. Next I was wounded painfully in the foot by treading on a hard stump, while pursuing a red woodpecker in the depths of the forest. The wound healed in about three weeks, and I again joyfully sallied forth.

Let us now turn attention to the sloth, whose haunts have hitherto been so little known. He is a scarce and solitary animal, living in trees, and being good food, is never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes obstruct the steps of civilized man. We are now in the sloth's own domain.