By Mohamed Khan

LEGEND has it that a “Dutch punt” with gold sank at Kabakaburi Mission, sixteen miles up the Pomeroon River, and had its fifty-metre metal chain tied to a huge silk cotton tree which today is still alive.The huge metal links of the chain were reportedly noticeable up to the mid-1940s. In 1948, the bi-monthly cargo steamer MV Pomeroon was said to have been directed to pull up the submerged Dutch punt, but the steamer tilted dangerously and the effort was aborted, although the winch had brought up two huge pieces of pitch pine wood.

The Kabakaburi mission was consecrated in 1872. A bronze bell at Kabakaburi with the inscription of the first Amerindian convert to Christianity is still visible.

MISCELLANEOUS FACTS
The Pomeroon River was first inhabited by the Cariwanna tribes, which left many historical landmarks, one of which is the largest shell mound in Guyana. It is located at Siriki in the Upper Pomeroon.

The St Louis Church was built at Siriki in 1896.

With the exception of a brief Spanish occupation, the Pomeroon River was occupied by the Dutch in 1620, and cotton was cultivated there. Remnants of a Dutch hospital at Siriki and a huge bronze bell are still there for all to see.

The Dutch-constructed Fort Zeelandia is located in the back lands of Plantation Panama and Caledonia, in the Lower Pomeroon.
Unlike Kyk-Over-Al, Fort Island and Fort Nassau in the Berbice River, which were built with baked bricks and cement, Fort Zeelandia was built with pitch pine materials. The forest was full of those trees at that time, but they have all disappeared because of logging.

There are several Amerindian communities located in the Pomeroon River. There is also the largest contingent of Portuguese dwellers living there, apart from those living in the capital city of Georgetown.

Portuguese pioneers came to the Pomeroon in 1837 and reoccupied the abandoned Dutch cotton fields, rehabilitated the existing canals, and began cultivating coconuts and ground provisions to subside the remaining sugar estates in the Essequibo.

Labour on the Pomeroon estates was provided by free slaves, Amerindians, and later Indentured Indian workers who, in three groups, migrated from the coastland to the Upper Pomeroon between 1910 and 1940.

The Greenheart trees, which provide straight grain wood, and the Kabakali trees, which can withstand all kinds of weather, are peculiarities of the Pomeroon River forest.

Region One, Barima Waini, is famous for the Purpleheart tree. Its forests are inhabited by three species of wild hogs and two species of deer, besides tapir, jaguars, labbas, agoutis, land turtles and many venomous snakes.

The Pomeroon river comprises 150 miles of smooth black water.