CHAPTER XVIII

_ARRIVAL AT THE DIAMOND FIELDS_

Next morning the sun was shining brightly. The Indians were coming in from a hunting trip with game.

Our blacks had finished their tea and crackers, the shelters were coming down and soon we would be on the way up the river.

"We ought to make the big bend by to-morrow," said Captain Peters.

Those were thrilling words to me, for up just around the big bend in the Mazaruni River, which I have already described, lay our diamond fields, and while every inch of the seventeen days' boat trip up this mad, wild river, among the primitive Indians, had been one of interest and adventure for me, after all, I was out for diamonds and naturally eager to get to the fields and try my luck at digging up the sparklers. Of course I did not expect to pick them up off the ground. "Dud" Lewis had told me of the process and I had read up on diamond mining before starting, yet I had high hopes of finding wealth there in the gravel of the old river bed. Mountains could be seen in the distance rising like temples above the low land.

Nothing startling occurred that day. I believe I saw more birds than usual, and the banks became less marshy. The jungle seemed to be slightly changing into a trifle higher and drier forest land. It was still thick, almost impenetrable, yet a bit different.

On the seventeenth day we came to a small portage. We could not paddle over it, yet it was not necessary to remove all of our five tons of supplies. Lightening our cargo about one half, the men jumped out, fastened the ropes astern and the single rope to the bow for the last time on our upriver trip and hauled away with a will.

Soon we were over, goods repacked and the blacks paddling in still, smooth water, but more vigorously than usual as they, too, were glad to be at the end of their hard journey. Seventeen days of paddling a fifty-foot boat made of great planks and laden with five tons of goods, hauling it over portages, is not exactly a picnic, and the men certainly earned their forty-eight cents a day. And so they thumped and scraped their much-worn paddles along the gunwales of that old boat, worn smooth with constant paddling, and they sang their everlasting paddle song with more cheerfulness than they had done for days.

Finally Captain Peter spoke something to the bowman while he swung his steering paddle over, and our craft put in shore. We nosed about and found just the site we needed, and proceeded to unload everything, this time to set up our mining camp.

A temporary shelter went up to store the goods under, with low hanging eaves to keep out the rain. We had now got into a country where there were no more haphazard rains. We could almost set our watches by the rains, which came regularly every morning about daybreak, for a half hour or more, and again every night right after sunset, for a little while. Although these twice-a-day rains were of short duration the water certainly came down in bucketfuls while it was raining.

A rack of poles kept our goods from the ground so that the rain could run underneath. Our shelters went up for that night, and eagerly I began to study the gravel formation, really not expecting to see any diamonds, but anxious to study the soil and somehow all the time wondering if, by chance, I might not see a diamond in the dirt. Every sparkling bit of rock I picked up. Lewis laughed good-naturedly at this, but he was quite as eager as I to get at the business for which we had the long, tiresome and really costly trip.

We had journeyed 300 miles up the river. At this point the Mazaruni had once flowed over the dry land where our camp was located. Some convulsion of nature, probably of volcanic origin, had changed the course of the river, and it was in this dry and ancient river bed that we hoped to find a fortune.

For tools we had brought along only the simplest kind, good old picks and shovels, and a hand pump. We had plenty of material with us for making the mining apparatus, crude but necessary, but there was a great deal to be done and we decided to get well settled and start in right.

First we had to have a permanent home, a "logie," which is much like a bungalow, only more open and quite high and dry. Then we had to make good shelters for our three groups of blacks, and also for what Indians we would find it necessary to hire.

We also had to set up our mine, arrange with Indians to hunt a steady supply of food, make a permanent cooking place and get as comfortable as possible so that we could go ahead with our diamond mining without interruption.

Two beautiful white egrets sailed up the river and, without fear of us at all, proceeded to make a nesting place close to our camp site. I considered this to be a good omen. The wonderful crest feathers on their heads would have brought several hundred dollars in the days before wise lawmakers at home forbade bringing such feathers into the country.

"How about tigers?" I asked of Captain Peter.

There had been frequent talk of them. It is true that there is a species of large and ferocious jaguar that haunts the wilds of British Guiana and I hoped to bag at least one and take the skin home as a trophy. Captain Peter smiled.

"As scarce as hens' teeth," he said.

I wondered where he got that expression. Perhaps they use it all over the world. I know that we use it at home in all parts of the country, yet it surprised me to hear this Dutchman, who for twenty years had navigated the wild waters of the old Mazaruni, say it.

It was a disappointment to hear him declare that tigers were scarce. I had visions of stalking one and proudly bringing his carcass into camp.

I got a tiger skin all right before I left the country, but there is no glamor of adventure about it. I cannot exhibit it at home and spin yarns of stalking the ferocious jungle beast, for it was an old skin and I bought it from an Indian for five dollars' worth of trade articles.

The Indians get a tiger now and then, but will not journey far afield just to bag them as they are not fit to eat and are extremely dangerous beasts to face, even for the skilled natives.