plantation
ceases.

The only mode then that remains is to proceed by water; and when you come
to the high lands, you may make your way through the forest on foot, or
continue your route on the river.

After passing the third island in the river Demerara, there are few
plantations to be seen, and those not joining on to one another, but
separated by large tracts of wood.

The Loo is the last where the sugar-cane is growing. The greater part of
its negroes have just been ordered to another estate; and ere a few
months shall have elapsed all signs of cultivation will be lost in
under-wood.

Higher up stand the sugar-works of Amelia's Waard, solitary and
abandoned; and after passing these there is not a ruin to inform the
traveller that either coffee or sugar has been cultivated.

From Amelia's Waard an unbroken range of forest covers each bank of the
river, saving here and there where a hut discovers itself, inhabited by
free people of colour, with a rood or two of bared ground about it; or
where the wood-cutter has erected himself a dwelling, and cleared a few
acres for pasturage. Sometimes you see level ground on each side of you
for two or three hours at a stretch; at other times a gently sloping hill
presents itself; and often, on turning a point, the eye is pleased with
the contrast of an almost perpendicular height jutting into the water.
The trees put you in mind of an eternal spring, with summer and autumn
kindly blended into it.

Here you may see a sloping extent of noble trees, whose foliage displays
a charming variety of every shade from the lightest to the darkest green
and purple. The tops of some are crowned with bloom of the loveliest
hue; while the boughs of others bend with a profusion of seeds and
fruits.

Those whose heads have been bared by time, or blasted by the
thunder-storm, strike the eye, as a mournful sound does the ear in music;
and seem to beckon to the sentimental traveller to stop a moment or two,
and see that the forests which surround him, like men and kingdoms, have
their periods of misfortune and decay.

The first rocks of any considerable size that are observed on the side of
the river are at a place called Saba, from the Indian word, which means a
stone. They appear sloping down to the water's edge, not shelvy, but
smooth, and their exuberances rounded off, and, in some places, deeply
furrowed, as though they had been worn with continual floods of water.

There are patch