Up the Mazaruni for diamonds . ove everything else they possessed. We were fortunate in finding a Dutch cap-tain, a man who has navigated the turbulentwaters of the Mazaruni for twenty he picked out a skilled bowman, a na-tive who stands at the bow of your boat, withan immense paddle, and fends it off rocks,gives steering directions and acts generallyas a sort of life preserver for the boat. Then there was Jimmy. He was a ne-gro, rather undersized and as black as theinside of a lump of coal. He appointed him-self our special guardian, a sort of valet, over-seer and servant. He looked
Up the Mazaruni for diamonds . ove everything else they possessed. We were fortunate in finding a Dutch cap-tain, a man who has navigated the turbulentwaters of the Mazaruni for twenty he picked out a skilled bowman, a na-tive who stands at the bow of your boat, withan immense paddle, and fends it off rocks,gives steering directions and acts generallyas a sort of life preserver for the boat. Then there was Jimmy. He was a ne-gro, rather undersized and as black as theinside of a lump of coal. He appointed him-self our special guardian, a sort of valet, over-seer and servant. He looked after our per-sonal belongings, cooked our food, made ourtea and devoted himself exclusively to us. Twenty paddlemen were also of them were quite as black as ourJimmy, and four of them were in varyingshades from tobacco brown to light molassescandy tint. These latter were of mixedDutch and Negro blood. They are Bovianders, said the captain. Queer tribal name, I commented. The captain laughed. Not exactly a [4]. jimmy FOR DIAMONDS tribal name/ he explained. ^They live upthe river quite a distance and so it is saidthat they come from ^above yonder. Theyhave twisted that into ^Boviander, so thatthe word always means people who live upthe river. While we were engaging our staff the cap-tain was getting boats for us. He selected agreat fifty-foot boat seemingly as heavy as alocomotive. It looked like a crude craft,made of great thick planks. I soon learnedthe necessity of such a heavy boat. We alsohad a small boat for emergency and for littleside trips here and there. Next came the eats. We had to takeenough food for ourselves, our twenty-twohelpers and partly enough for the native In-dians that we were to employ later. Whenthe big boat was finally loaded properly underthe skillful direction of the captain, we hadfive tons of food aboard and this included nomeat at all except salt fish. There was noneed to take meat, for game and fresh fishwere so plentiful that we
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectguyanad, bookyear1919
