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Indeed the vulture is of real service in this respect, for he clears the carrion away from the hot countries he inhabits, which would otherwise putrify and infect the air. In some places, as at Paramaribo, the value of these birds, on this account, is so fully recognized, that they are protected by law, a fine being imposed on him who kills one.
As they neared Paramaribo, the river became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations; the air was perfumed music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water."
But the Brethren did not stay very long in Paramaribo.
As they advanced on the voyage she observed that he grew more and more constrained; and, by the time they had crossed the Line, he was quite depressed, just as he had been before proposing to her. A day or two before landing at Paramaribo, he embraced her in a very tearful and passionate manner, and said he wished to make a confession.
We pass on to California, where the Brethren have a modern Mission among the Red Indians; to the Moskito Coast, once the scene of a wonderful revival; to Paramaribo in Surinam, the city where the proportion of Christians is probably greater than in any other city in the world; to South Africa, where it is commonly reported that a Hottentot or Kaffir Moravian convert can always be trusted to be honest; to German East Africa, where the Brethren took over the work at Urambo at the request of the London Missionary Society; to North Queensland, where the natives were once so degraded that Anthony Trollope declared that the "game was not worth the candle," where Moravians now supply the men and Presbyterians the money, and where the visitor gazes in amazement at the "Miracle of Mapoon"; and last to British India, near Tibet, where, perched among the Himalaya Mountains, the Brethren in the city of Leh have the highest Missionary station in the world.
Its capital, Paramaribo, is handsome, rich, and populous: hitherto it has been considered by far the finest town in Guiana; but probably the time is not far off when the capital of Demerara may claim the prize of superiority. You may enter a creek above Paramaribo, and travel through the interior of Surinam, till you come to the Nacari, which is close to the large river Coryntin.
As it was not convenient for me to undergo this quarantine, I sailed immediately. I have coaled at Cienfuegos in the island of Cuba, at Curaçao, at Trinidad, at Paramaribo, and at Maranham. It appears that Spain, Holland, England and Brazil have each deemed it consistent with their neutrality in the present war to permit me freely to supply myself with coal.
Finding, therefore, that a beat to the Amazons would be long, tedious and even uncertain, and aware that the season for procuring birds in fine plumage had already set in, I left Cayenne in an American ship for Paramaribo, went through the interior to the Coryntin, stopped a few days in New Amsterdam, and proceeded to Demerara.
This completed the conquest; the passionate young Englishman, once recovered, loaded her with presents, which she refused, talked of purchasing her and educating her in Europe, which she also declined, as burdening him too greatly, and finally, amid the ridicule of all good society in Paramaribo, surmounted all legal obstacles and was united to the beautiful girl in honorable marriage.
On the 31st August, then, she took her final leave of Paramaribo, and running some eight or nine miles off the coast in a northerly direction as a blind, altered her course to east half-south, with the intention of avoiding the current by which she had on the former occasion been so baffled, by keeping along the coast in soundings where its strength would be less felt.
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