wilderness here and
there is powdering with rust and wreathing with creeping tendrils
great piles of machinery. Pounds of gold have been taken out and
hundreds of diamonds, but thus far the negro pork-knocker, with his
pack and washing-pan, is the only really successful miner.

The jungle sends forth healthy trees two hundred feet in height,
thriving for centuries, but it reaches out and blights the attempts of
man, whether sisal, rubber, cocoa, or coffee. So far the ebb-tide has
left but two successful crops to those of us whose kismet has led us
hither--crime and science. The concentration of negroes, coolies,
Chinese and Portuguese on the coast furnishes an unfailing supply of
convicts to the settlement, while the great world of life all about
affords to the naturalist a bounty rich beyond all conception.

So here was I, a grateful legatee of past failures, shaded by
magnificent clumps of bamboo, brought from Java and planted two or
three hundred years ago by the Dutch, and sheltered by a bungalow
which had played its part in the development and relinquishment of a
great gold mine.

* * * * *

For a time we arranged and adjusted and shifted our
equipment,--tables, books, vials, guns, nets, cameras and
microscopes,--as a dog turns round and round before it composes itself
to rest. And then one day I drew a long breath and looked about, and
realized that I was at home. The newness began to pass from my little
shelves and niches and blotters; in the darkness I could put my hand
on flash or watch or gun; and in the morning I settled snugly into my
woolen shirt, khakis, and sneakers, as if they were merely accessory
skin.

In the beginning we were three white men and four servants--the latter
all young, all individual, all picked up by instinct, except Sam, who
was as inevitable as the tides. Our cook was too good-looking and too
athletic to last. He had the reputation of being the fastest sprinter
in Guiana, with a record, so we were solemnly told, of 9-1/5 seconds
for the hundred--a veritable Mercury, as the last world's record of
which I knew was 9-3/5. His stay with us was like the orbit of some
comets, which make a single lap around the sun never to return, and
his successor Edward, with unbelievably large and graceful hands and
feet, was a better cook, with the softest voice and gentlest manner in
the world.

But Bertie was our joy and delight. He too may be compared to a
sta