Diorama of the Waterfront of Paramaribo
The waterfront along the Suriname River was the vital hub of Surinamese trade. At left a merchantman sails out. The boat next to it – a pondo covered with leaves of the pina (a kind of palm) – carries goods to the plantations. Europeans used the green boat with the Dutch flag for their own transport. The person who commissioned this diorama, British merchant William Leckie, lived in the green house. It went up in flames
during a fire that ravaged this part of Paramaribo in 1821.
Gerrit Schouten