Identifier: oursearchforwild00nile (find matches)
Title: Our search for a wilderness; an account of two ornithological expeditions to Venezuela and to British Guiana
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Niles, Blair Beebe, William, 1877-1962
Subjects: Natural history Birds
Publisher: New York, H. Holt and company

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e water for their regular morning swim.Head first they went, splashing about as gayly as a schoolof strange copper-colored fish. We found as we went on that the Marooka changedrapidly in character. It was no wider but the water liliesand pampas grass disappeared and a softer, finer grasscovered the marsh, dotted with a host of purple and yellowflowers rising from some aquatic plant. Isolated trees be-came more numerous, and great Woodpeckers, resemblingour splendid Ivory-bills, looped here and there. Swallow-tailed Kites 58 dipped and soared and Kiskadees 101 shriekednear the occasional huts of the Indians. At noon we lunched on erbswurst and jam at a Protest-ant Mission — Warramuri — where a small colony of Red-backed Cassiques were established. A school of about fiftyIndian children were studying and reciting at the top oftheir lungs. We left in an hour and from here on tin- Marooka widenedand consequently Lost somewhal in interest. The low eleva 232 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS.
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THROUGH THE COASTAL WILDERNESS. 233 tion on which the English Mission is built is composedwholly of fine white sand, and beyond this mangroves beganto appear and the foliaga became less diversified. We landed for an hour at a small cocoanut plantation andfound a most ingenious method of improving time and spaceuntil the main crops should yield. Rice was planted in longnarrow trenches which are flooded twice a day. Betweenthese trenches the young cocoanut palms are placed, and inthe spaces separating the palms, cassava and coffee aregrown, while between them in turn and around the edge ofthe trenches were plantain and tania. The catch crops arethus made to pay for the price of the land and labor. Land- virgin forest — can be empoldered and ditched for $35an acre. The first years two rice crops will repay this andcontinue to do so for five years, when the cocoanuts will yielda regular income for fifty or sixty years. This, at least, is thecalculation of the agriculturist. Deer, peccar

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