Columns & Blogs

Not suprisingly, the Madeirans who went to Guyana weren't the only ones to abandon the hard, slow life of the island. There are now 300,000 Madeirans in South Africa, perhaps 500,000 in Venezuela, and others scattered elswhere. In all, there are thought to be some 1.3 million Madeirans dotted round the world, nearly 5 times as many as live there.

The Madeiran immigrants of the 1830s were perfectly adapted to take over British Guiana's wholesale and retail trade. As farmers (see photo) they were natural savers, hoarders and investors.

Guyana (or British Guiana) has long been familiar with the wine of Madeira, long before the arrival of the Madeiran immigrants. Because it is fortified, it doesn't go off, and it isn't damaged by heat. For that reason, it was the tipple of empire-builders.

Although the Madeiran immigrants of the 1830s came to Guyana to work in the fields, the venture was not a success. They readily succumbed to the heat and to disease (and ended up being fed by the 'Africans'). In a relatively short time, they moved into trade, and became the colony’s shopkeepers. By 1851, ½ of British Guiana's shops were Portuguese.

Arriving in Georgetown, the early Madeiran immigrants of 1835 cannot have experienced a greater contrast with the land they'd left behind. Whereas the sugar fields of Guyana are hot, low and flat, the Madeiran landscape is unimaginably precipitous. The island forms part of a volcano that sits, twice as high as the French Alps, on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

In 1835, a year after the abolition of slavery in British Guiana, the colonial authorities began to import the first indentured labourers, a shipload of 430 starving Portuguese from the famine-ravaged island of Madeira. Despite the warnings of the Governor of Madeira that they’d be branded like slaves, a total of 31,0000 Madeirans left for BG.

These are some of the last houses of Macushi territory, in the southern savannahs of Guyana (near Shulinab). At this point, the road curls round the southern side of the Kanuku Mountains.

Pubs and bars are always a feature of travel books. Many are dreary and functional (the worst I've come across were in Norway and the outports of Newfoundland). But some stand out. In Heidelberg, the old 16th century student pubs often have a pianist and a sing-song; at the Shire River Hotel (Malawi), the bar was invaded every night by hippos; meanwhile, there are a couple of places in Havana, Cuba, that mix drinks just as they did in Hemingway's day (although without the punch-up).

Isn't odd the whole business of staying in someone else's house for money? In Labrador, I once stayed with a completely disfunctional family, who prowled around all night, and fought over the food. In mid-Wales I stayed with a farmer whose house hadn't been re-decorated for almost 100 years.

This may not look much but, to hydrologists, its heaven. It's a watershed, deep in the Rupununi Savannah (Guyana). From here, the water runs off to join the tributaries of Essequibo in one direction, and the Amazon in the other. During the wet season, these two mighty river basins are linked by floodwaters, and the eastern Guianas become – if not exactly an island – completely encircled by water.