impervious to the sun and moon's
rays, the sudden transition to light has a fine heart-cheering effect.
Welcome as a lost friend, the solar beam makes the frame rejoice, and
with it a thousand enlivening thoughts rush at once on the soul, and
disperse, as a vapour, every sad and sorrowful idea, which the deep gloom
had helped to collect there. In coming out of the woods, you see the
western bank of the Essequibo before you, low and flat. Here the river
is two-thirds as broad as the Demerara at Stabroek.

To the northward there is a hill higher than any in the Demerara; and in
the south-south-west quarter a mountain. It is far away, and appears
like a bluish cloud in the horizon. There is not the least opening on
either side. Hills, valleys, and lowlands, are all linked together by a
chain of forest. Ascend the highest mountain, climb the loftiest tree,
as far as the eye can extend, whichever way it directs itself, all is
luxuriant and unbroken forest.

In about nine or ten hours from this, you get to an Indian habitation of
three huts, on the point of an island. It is said that a Dutch post once
stood here; but there is not the smallest vestige of it remaining, and,
except that the trees appear younger than those on the other islands,
which shows that the place has been cleared some time or other, there is
no mark left by which you can conjecture that ever this was a post.

The many islands which you meet with in the way, enliven and change the
scene, by the avenues which they make, which look like the mouths of
other rivers, and break that long-extended sameness which is seen in the
Demerara.

Proceeding onwards, you get to the falls and rapids. In the rainy season
they are very tedious to pass, and often stop your course. In the dry
season, by stepping from rock to rock, the Indians soon manage to get a
canoe over them. But when the river is swollen, as it was in May, 1812,
it is then a difficult task, and often a dangerous one too. At that time
many of the islands were overflowed, the rocks covered, and the lower
branches of the trees in the water. Sometimes the Indians were obliged
to take everything out of the canoe, cut a passage through the branches,
which hung over into the river, and then drag up the canoe by main force.

At one place, the falls form an oblique line quite across the river,
impassable to the ascending canoe, and you are forced to have it dragged
four or five hundred yards by lan