Three Singles to Adventure

A Word in Advance.

The following book is an account of a trip I made to British Guiana during 1950 with my partner, Kenneth Smith. Our object in going there was to bring back, for various zoological gardens in this country, a living collection of the birds, mammals, reptiles and fish that inhabit that corner of South America .

A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the catching of the animals is the most difficult part of such a trip, and that once the beasts have been caught and dumped into boxes your job is more or less at an end. Actually, at this point the job is only just beginning, for once the animal is caught you have to keep it alive and well, and this, in most cases, is no easy task.

During a trip of this sort you meet with many kinds of adventure, some amusing, some thrilling and some that are extremely irritating. But these are merely the highlights in many months of work and worry that go to make up a collecting trip. However, when you sit down to write a book about it, all the worries, irritations and disappointments seem to fade from your memory, leaving only the more entertaining moments to be recorded. Thus you tend to paint a false picture of collecting. It seems to be nothing more than a thrilling and amusing romp, a rather colourful and exciting sort of job. It is, at times, all of these things; but at other times it is also depressing, disappointing, frustrating and damned hard work as well. But there is one thing to be said for collecting, one advantage it has over all other forms of employment: it can never, under any circumstances, be described as dull.

In a tiny bar in the back streets of Georgetown four of us sat round a table, sipping rum and ginger beer and pondering a problem. Spread on the table in front of us was a large map of Guiana , and occasionally one of us would lean forward and peer at it, frowning fiercely. Our problem was to choose a place, out of all the fascinating names on the map, to serve as a base for our first animal-collecting trip to the interior. For two hours we had been trying to make up our minds, and we still had not found a solution. I stared at the map, tracing the course of the rivers and mountains, gloating over such wonderful names as Pomeroon, Mazaruni, Kanuku, Berbice, and Essequibo .

"What about New Amsterdam?" asked Smith, choosing the one really commonplace name on the map.

I shuddered. Bob shook his head, and Ivan looked blank.

"Well, then, what about the Mazaruni?"

"Flooded," said Bob concisely.

"Guiana," I quoted ecstatically from a guide book, "is an Amerindian word meaning Land of Water."

"There must be somewhere you can go," said Smith in exasperation; "we've been sitting here for hours; for goodness' sake make up your minds, and let's get to bed."

I looked at Ivan; for the last hour he had apparently been in a trance, and had made no suggestions.

"What do you think, Ivan?" I asked him."After all, you were born here, so you ought to know the best place to get specimens."

Ivan awoke from his trance, and a worried expression spread across his face, making him look like a St. Bernard that had mislaid its barrel.

"Well, sir," he began, in his incredibly cultured voice,"I think you'd do well if you went to Adventure."

"Where? asked Bob and I in unison.

"Adventure, sir," he stabbed at the map; "it's a small village just here, near the mouth of the Essequibo ."

I looked at Smith.

"We're going to Adventure," I said firmly."I must go to a place with a name like that."

"Good!" said my partner."Now that's settled can we go to bed?"

"He has no soul," said Bob sorrowfully; "the word Adventure means nothing to him."

To get to this village with the provocative name proved easier than I had anticipated. It transpired that all we had to do was to go down to the quay in Georgetown and ask for a ticket. It struck me as a trifle incongruous, even in these modern days, to be able to ask for a ticket to Adventure and, moreover, to start one's journey there on a large and ugly ferryboat. I felt that we should have set off in canoes paddled by fierce-looking warriors.