Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII. AN ENGLISH JUSTICE. The house of the magistrate of the Macusi district was situated on the other side of Guineatown, about two miles from Belle Susanne. Keeping along the monotonous road, after one had passed the flat swamps, the dirty drains, the jagged, and rutted dams, amidst which there seemed to stalk about in straggling discomposure the timber-legged huts and hovels of the villagers of Guineatown, you came upon a barn-like building, shingle-roofed, of unpainted wood raised upon very lofty piles, and with a steep flight of steps leading from the garden to the verandah. The garden that surrounded this ugly tenement was really one of great beauty. Divided by dipt hedges of thorny orange, its squares of black rich soil were gay with varieties of shrubs and flowers, some of which were not to be matched even in Guianian gardens; in the forks of the branches of shrubs and trees, such as the Frangipanni, the Cannon-ball tree, the G.uava or the Tamarind, grew precious specimens of the orchids, with which, in infinite variety, the trees of the interior forests abound. In a broad trench at the end of the garden floated sleepily the great cups of the Victoria Eegia and its mammoth prickly rafts of leaves. The long line of cocoa-palms beyond, the lime and orange trees with their shining leaves and fruit, the arbour where no one would have dared to sit, for marabuntas, and ants, and centipedes, and. those tiny scourges, the betes rouges, had long since established their kingdom there, and resented the intrusion of foreigners; the straggling, overpowering Stephanotis, with. its wealthy festoons of ivory bugles, sharing with a great Passion-flower the decoration of the entire verandah, made altogether an embowering Paradise for the...
