IMPREGNABLE BRITISH GUIANA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1250, 13 February 1896, Page 11

IMPREGNABLE BRITISH GUIANA.

TERRIBLE SUFFERINGS OF A YE NEZUEL A N 1N Y A SIO N.

"We are reminded by the Pill Mall Gazette (writes (nr London c orr-.sp mdent) that this is not the first time the British Guiana frontier trouble h ;s assumed the importance of a crisis. One afternoon not many years ago a v. ild-eye l member rushed breathless into h* leading club at Georgetown with the ;d . id 'g rumour that a Venezuelan army had invaded the colony, and was approaching the Essequibo. The news had come in some way from the Venezuelan capital, but the only details forwarded were that the expedition was in command of one of the most famous of the Venezuelan Generals, and that it was making its way overland across the mountains at the frontier, over the wide savannahs of the high interior, and through the dense virgin forests which form the heart of the country by the course of the Mazaruni River. The excitement and alarm which this information created was terrible. Mothers clutched their infants to their bosoms, and men, all sticky with sugar, molasses and rum, left their work, and ran hither and thither, each one vainly asking information from others equally ignorant with himself. There was indeed cause for alarm. For, after all, Venezuelans, hostile though they may be, are still fellow creatures, and to men who had the slightest knowledge of the character of the interior, who in adventurous youth perhaps had been birduesting on the fringe of the bush, nr in after life

had been orchid collecting on Saturday afternoons, it seemed awful to think that human beings, a delicately-nurtured General and a number of brave soldiers with loving mothers at home, should be struggling somewhere in the gloomy recess of that vast, trackless, foodless, and well-nigh impenetrable forest. Prompt measures were taken. Messengers were sent to the outlying police posts with instructions for a sharp look-out to be kept, and tor beef tea, brandy, and other restoratives to be held in readiness against the coining of the enemy. Days passed, and all hope of the invasion had been given up, when one day the solitary policeman on point duty at the junction of the Maziruni with the Essequibo heard a faint cry for help proceeding from the forest. He answered it with a hearty shout of encouragement, and, praying that he might be in time, plunged into the forest and, working like a rescue party at a colliery explosion, HEWED HIS WAY

in the direction whence the sounds proceeded.. After a time he was hearetied by hearing the cry repeated nearer and more distinct but fainter. He hewed away again like a maniac, and eventually in a gloomy recess of the forest, in the midst of a maze of mangrove trees, greenhearts, wallabas, palms, and beautiful but unappreciated orchids, he came upon the invasion at its very last gasp. It had had nothing to eat for days except wild berries and an armadillo, though, fortunately, as its route had been through a line of country composed largely of narrow stops of swampy land dividing the innumerable rivers from one another it had been abundantly supplied with water. The distinguished General, even if ho had been able to speak any English, was far too exhausted to talk, but his dumb looks of thankfulness were more eloquent than words. He had started with all the glory of a cocked hat and a sword, and what remained of his cocked hat was still on his head. But the rest of his uniform hung in strips round hi 3 emaciated body, and only a narrow anklet of leather remained to prove that he had ever been equipped with boots. His sword—the only sharp instrument in the expedition —bore signs (if having been used for cutting a passage for the troops through the brushwood, and for hewing down obstructing branches of hard wo.'d trees When the roll of the army was called it was found—and the fact is an illustration of the marvellous endurance of half-bred Venezuelans —that the entire two dozen had survived the perils and difficulties of the march. The police officer—his name has been forgotten, but perhaps the Royal Humane Society may have some record of it—shared the contents of his flask among them, and, as soon as they were sufficiently revived, led them back by the track lie had hewn to the station where he administered be-f tea and eggs beaten up in milk, supplied them with blankets, lent the General a suit of his old uniform, which was dry if ludicrously large, and having made them as comfortable as possible, left them to sleep and recuperate the while he entered up tr.e circumstances in his occurrence book. But having thus obeyed, tho natural dictates of a tender heart that could always feel for a fellow creature in distress, the instincts of the active and intelligent policeman began to a-sevt themselves. He had not seen a living soul for days, and he had not had a charge for months. Promotion had seemed almost hopeless to him, when, in the last old number of Lloyd’s News that had come to hand, he liad read with a watering mouth the incident of the week at Pi?cv didy Circus. He felt in was

DUE TO HIMSELF and his calling to make some use of the opportunity that Heaven had seat him, but he did not know what to charge them with. The over impulsive generosity that had led him to hand round his brandy fitsk prevented him from charging them with being drunk and disorderly without laying himself open to the accusation of serving drunken men. However, the thing had happened on his boat, and he felt sure that the Statute Book contained some provision to meet the ci: cum stances. So while they slept he looked up the subject, and when they woke up and had taken some solid food he charged them with being destitute aliens wandering m the forest without any visible means of subsistence. He adder! that they were at liberty to make any statement they chose, but that anything they said would be taken down in writing and might be used against them at their trial. Lie further informed them that to put the proceedings en regie they must now, being formally charged, remove to the boathouse, that, aud not his private quarters, being the officially appointed gaol. There he made them as comfortable as possible, and after a pleasant chat he left them while he went indoors to change his police uniform for his official magistrate’s costume. He did not lock them up, as there was no lock on the boathouse, but he just informed them that they were not allowed bail. As soon as he had completed his toilet he returned to the boathouse, which also served as the courthouse, and proceeded to try the case. It bristled, he soon found out, with legal and technical difficulties. The Venezuelan General, stoutly backed by his army, subtly contested the first count of the charge. There was, he said, no offence of immigrancy known in colonial law ; indeed, the most important of the colonial departments was that charged with the promotion of alien immigration,

for the keeping up of the labour supply on the sugar plantations. If that charge were to be seriously persevered with, he should, he said, be compelled, by way of effective argument, to claim the Government capitation grant in respect to each of the two dozen members of his army. The worthy magistrate dropped this count like a hot coal, and asked the General what he had to say in answer to the charge of wandering without visible means of subsistence. To this THE GENERAL REPLIED

by saying that the charge was without foundation, that he v as a duly constituted and properly authorised invasion, and as such he claimed the lights and privileges ot a belligerent. Here, again, Ihe magistrate found himself in a difficulty. He endeavoured to surmount it by expressing disbelief of the story. It was all very well, he said, for the General and his accomplices to say that they were an army, but what evidence had they to produce in support of their statements '? The General, upon this, produced from the lining of what remained of his cocked hat the papers of the expedition, his own commission, and lii3 official instructions. It was an awkward corner, but the magistrate got out of it by refusing to accept the documents a 3 evidence, since they were not verified by an affidavit sworn before the British Consul at Caracas. But the General was not yet disposed of. In that case', he said, he must refer the learned magistrate to the evidence of the possession by the expedition of the regu iatiou service rifles of the Venezuelan army. The magistrate was about to rule this out as inadmissible when a happy thought struck him. He examined the weapons and saw that, although antiquated in pattern and rusty from disuse, they were undoubtedly muskets. So he amended the charge to that of carrying firearms without a license, and no defence being offered, as indeed, none was possible, he convicted them and imposed a penalty upon each one of a fine of five dollars, or in default fourteen days’ imprisonment. But even now the poor magistrate had not altogether escaped from his dilemma, for the invasion was not supplied with any funds except Venezuelan paper, winch is not current in the colony. His supply of provisions had already been severely depleted, for in his enjoyment of their society he had most hospitably entertained his prisoners, and the prospect of having to find food for five and-bwenty hungry convalescents for a whole fortnight was a prospect of general starvation. So in desperation he remanded them once more to the boathouse without bail, while he sent down to Georgetown for instrueflous The Governor sent a steam launch up the river, and they were conveyed to the seat of Government, whence after being clothed and otherwise hospitably received, the colony being in a great state of rejoicing over the r safe deliverance from the forest, and after giving a great deal of very valuable information as t.o the geographical Ratines of the forest, and the possibilities of the development of the timber trade, they were sent back to Venezuela by the next Orinoco steamer, with a frieudiy ; ( commendat ion to avoid the overland rou ein future. Since then there has been no other invasion, unless the Cuyuui incident is to be called by that name.