Observations on the climate, soil, and productions of British Guiana : and on the advantages of emigration to, and colonizing the interior of, that country ; together with incidental remarks on the diseases, their treatment and prevention : founded on a long experience within the tropics / by John Hancock.

Hancock, John, 1808-1890

Date:: 1840

Credit: Observations on the climate, soil, and productions of British Guiana : and on the advantages of emigration to, and colonizing the interior of, that country ; together with incidental remarks on the diseases, their treatment and prevention : founded on a long experience within the tropics / by John Hancock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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&c; and horned cattle multiply so much, as to run wild on the savannahs. Indeed, cattle were often killed for their hides and horns, and the flesh left to the vultures, for want of salt; and, notwithstanding milk was rich and abundant, no butter or cheese was made, whilst two or three shillings per pound were given for foreign butter: this marked the state of enterprise and industry amongst the Portuguese. Would British commerce and industry be thus effete in a country so unboundedly rich ? On the Parime (beyond the western source of the Essequibo), the beef was one halfpenny per pound, whilst it cost in Demerara a guilder or eighteen pence the pound. Besides this, the interior abounds in wild animals, which afford the most delicate and wholesome nourishment; as bush hogs, deer, mypoories, lapas, the great river turtles and their delicious eggs, as also the manatee, with fish and fowls innumerable. We experienced no want of fish and game in going up the falls, although our party numbered upwards of thirty people. The rocks afford in the dry season the means of drying and preserving fish, which are caught in vast abundance amongst the falls, especially the paco, one of the most de- licious articles of food, of which the teeth are formed like those of a sheep, and which feeds entirely on grass and vegetables.* The lan-lau (Silurus sp.) also is amongst the finest as well as the largest of the fresh-water fishes, which abound in these rivers: it grows to about ten feet in length, weighing upwards of two hundred pounds. Here is also another extraordinary fish, of very large size, scarcely known to naturalists, called arapaima, or warapaima, with * The morocoto, cartabac, and some others, are of similar structure, and feed on divers plants, fruits, and nuts, which they crush with their strong molar teeth. Of this group or family of phytivorous fishes, I have a monograph, which will, I trust, ere long be published; for their habits, teeth, and internal economy, sufficiently distinguish them from all the true fishes hitherto known.

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