Up the Mazaruni for diamonds (1919) (14597205738)

Identifier: upmazarunifordia00lavarich (find matches)
Title: Up the Mazaruni for diamonds
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: La Varre, William, 1898-
Subjects: Diamond mines and mining -- Guyana Guyana -- Description and travel Mazaruni River (Guyana)
Publisher: Boston : Marshall Jones company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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ures in the wilds. Most white men have to use quinine con-tinually. Dud. Lewis took quantities of itevery day. He took so much that it madehim temporarily deaf. I was afraid to taketoo much of it as I didnt care to become deafnor did I want the headaches that it fre-quently caused. Of course I took some fromtime to time, but in small quantities. One great trouble was our lack of freshwater. We had only the river water and itwas dangerous to drink that without purify-ing it. The Indians and even the blacksseemed to get along well enough on it andwould drink right out of the river. We had steel drops with us, a highly con-centrated form of iron. One drop in a gallonof water was sufficient to remove the dangerof disease from drinking the water. We alsoused bits of rusty iron. By keeping these inthe water it was fairly safe, but it was al-ways muddy. And it was always warm. Ilearned to get used to it. We used to keep itin jars and pails with a wet cloth over it inorder to cool it. ( 122 )
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ABRAHAM, FELLING A WOODSKIN T REE FOR DIAMONDS While there were a few poisonous snakesabout, they seemed no more plentiful thanare the rattlesnakes, copperheads and mocca-sins in certain parts of the United States, andwe had no trouble with them. I never sawany of the big boa constrictors or othersnakes, that I had been told about, but pre-sume there were plenty of them in the deepmarshlands if one cared to hunt the reptiles. Frequently I had seen Indians glidingabout the river in the most peculiar and fraillooking craft I had ever beheld. ^Make um woodskin, the Indians toldme. I examined one and it was nothing morethan the bark of a tree. Not at all like thebirch bark used by our Indians, nor like roughelm bark, but more like the tough, smoothbark of the basswood or ironwood trees athome. One time I was fortunate enough to see andphotograph the whole process of woodskincanoe making. I went with the Indians backsomewhat from the water to where they hadlocated a giant woodskin tree. Th