(an extract from Schomburgk’s expedition to the interior. The work was translated from German by Walter E. Roth, Stipendiary Magistrate of the Demerara River District and author of several scholarly works,. In 1920)
304. But however much I might be attracted by this simplicity of an Indian household, I was all the more powerfully repelled on the other hand by the ghastly filth and uncleanliness that reigned over the whole settlement, and completely confirmed the reproach generally made in the colony about the dirtiness of the Warrau, whose uncleanliness has become proverbial and where “As dirty as a Warrau” expresses its superlative degree of comparison. The more unpromising and dirtier however the inside of the houses, the sweeter and brighter did