churches, some forty in number, including, mission stations, have nobly taken their stand as Free Churches in the land, and they have steadfastly refused all State aid. Their noble example and the soundness of their principles are like leaven, gradually leavening the whole lump, and the day is now within measurable distance when State Churchism in this land will be done away withand the Free Churches will be able to do their work with reconsecrated energy amongst a free people.

M

XII

UP THE BERBICE RIVER

ONDAY, the 16th of March, was a very busy day for us. We had many callers that morning, and in addition to the usual work of a busy minister with over a thousand people to look after, we had to prepare for our journey of two hundred miles into the interior. Many little things will be necessary, for we are going far away from the haunts of civilisation. It is a return. to those simple and primitive conditions of existence which prevailed in the Garden of Eden. The Indian aborigines are the children of the forest. Amid its majestic trees-its wallaba, its mora, its green heart, its purple heart, and its bullet tree, &c.-they wander according to their own sweet will. With cutlass and arrow and knife they hunt for their food, fetching the labba out of his hole and tracking the bush-hog and the

deer. Such a life knows nothing of those refinements that give ease and comfort to the initiated. Its wants are few, and if a man's riches consist, not in the abundance of his possessions but in the fewness of his wants, then these aborigines are rich. Dispensing with all unnecessary commodities, the Indian lives a kind of untamed life amid the wilds of his native forest. The chirp of the insects, the croak of the frogs, the plaintive whistle of the monkeys, the shrill cry of the birds, is music enough for him. For his pictures he has the far-stretching, undulating savannah, the rich leafage of the forest, and the little creeks with their overhanging trees, giving such wondrous beauty of form and light and shade. He dispenses with chairs and tables and sofas. He needs no knives or forks or spoons; his fingers do duty for them. For cups and saucers and glasses he has a good substitute in the calabash which grows wild upon the trees. In fact the Indian has only two things, his hammock and his cooking pot. With these he can be as happy as a king. His hammock is his vade mecum. carries that with him wherever he goes. The Indian's hammock is his chair, his table, his sofa, his bed. It is made, like most of the things he uses, out of the wood of the forest. When up amongst the

He

Arawacks we saw a Buckeen, or Indian woman, with one of these hammocks in process of construction. The beautiful palm tree called the Ita palm, in addition to many other useful qualities, possesses a strong fibre, which they draw out and twist into a thread; these threads are again twisted into a string, and these, by a simple hand-loom process, are worked into a strong, durable, network hammock. These hammocks are about eight feet long and seven feet wide, with a loop for a handle at each end. They will bear the heaviest of men, and last a long time. They are far preferable in these regions to beds. In the hammock you are suspended in mid-air, and so you escape those numerous insects and reptiles that crawl upon the floor. In the Benaab, where we stayed, it would have been simply impossible to sleep in a bed. The big red ants, called "cushi ants," were so numerous, and the beetles and the spiders and the lizards, that we should have been bitten and blistered from head to foot In addition to this you sometimes find yourself in a place where trees must be your bedposts and the tropical sky your covering, then a hammock becomes the traveller's indispensable. After a night's rest you have only to fold it up and "take up your bed and walk." But we must get back to our packing. Our boxes

are nearly ready. We have got some tea and sugar and butter-the latter is in an air-tight tin, and runs like oil; also some Swiss milk, for there are no cows up there, and some tinned meats and some loaves of bread. These, after about ten days, get mouldy, and we can just break them with an axe, but put them in boiling water and they soon get soft. "Have you put the salt in?" I ask; for how can we live without salt? "Yes, massa, ebery ting dere," is the reply of the little black boy. I will see to the medicines myself, for I always like to have with me a few simple remedies in case of accident or unexpected attacks of fever. The quinine I must not forget, for some parts of the district-those where the swamps lieare said to be very malarial, and the quinine is a splendid antidote. As soon as daylight dawns we are up, and by half-past six we are making our way to the river side. The boat is alongside, and having got our luggage in, we take our places and wait for the whistle.

The Berbice river is a fine stream. It is navigable for steamships of considerable size for upwards of two hundred miles. It is about two and a quarter miles broad at its mouth, near which the town of New Amsterdam stands. It abounds in sharks and alligators and other monsters of the