Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.18, Part 2

We departed from San Fernando on the 30th of March, at four in the afternoon.

The weather was extremely hot; the thermometer rising in the shade to 34 degrees, though the breeze blew very strongly from the south-east.

Owing to this contrary wind we could not set our sails.

We were accompanied, in the whole of this voyage on the Apure, the Orinoco, and the Rio Negro, by the brother-in-law of the governor of the province of Varinas, Don Nicolas Soto, who had recently arrived from Cadiz.

Desirous of visiting countries so calculated to excite the curiosity of a European, he did not hesitate to confine himself with us during seventy-four days in a narrow boat infested with mosquitos.

His amiable disposition and gay temper often helped to make us forget the sufferings of a voyage which was not wholly exempt from danger.

We passed the mouth of the Apurito, and coasted the island of the same name, formed by the Apure and the Guarico.

This island is in fact only a very low spot of ground, bordered by two great rivers, both of which, at a little distance from each other, fall into the Orinoco, after having formed a junction below San Fernando by the first bifurcation of the Apure.

The Isla del Apurito is twenty-two leagues in length, and two or three leagues in breadth.

It is divided by the Cano de la Tigrera and the Cano del Manati into three parts, the two extremes of which bear the names of Isla de Blanco and Isla de los Garzitas.

The right bank of the Apure, below the Apurito, is somewhat better cultivated than the left bank, where the Yaruros, or Japuin Indians, have constructed a few huts with reeds and stalks of palm-leaves.

These people, who live by hunting and fishing, are very skilful in killing jaguars.

It is they who principally carry the skins, known in Europe by the name of tiger-skins, to the Spanish villages.

Some of these Indians have been baptized, but they never visit the Christian churches.

They are considered as savages because they choose to remain independent.

Other tribes of Yaruros live under the rule of the missionaries, in the village of Achaguas, situated south of the Rio Payara.

The individuals of this nation, whom I had an opportunity of seeing at the Orinoco, have a stern expression of countenance; and some features in their physiognomy, erroneously called Tartarian, belong to branches of the Mongol race, the eye very long, the cheekbones high, but the nose prominent throughout its whole length.

They are taller, browner, and less thick-set than the Chayma Indians.

The missionaries praise the intellectual character of the Yaruros, who were formerly a powerful and numerous nation on the banks of the Orinoco, especially in the environs of Cuycara, below the mouth of the Guarico.

We passed the night at Diamante, a small sugar-plantation formed opposite the island of the same name.

During the whole of my voyage from San Fernando to San Carlos del Rio Negro, and thence to the town of Angostura, I noted down day by day, either in the boat or where we disembarked at night, all that appeared to me worthy of observation.

Violent rains, and the prodigious quantity of mosquitos with which the air is filled on the banks of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare, necessarily occasioned some interruptions; but I supplied the omission by notes taken a few days after.

I here subjoin some extracts from my journal.

Whatever is written while the objects we describe are before our eyes bears a character of truth and individuality which gives attraction to things the least important.

On the 31st March a contrary wind obliged us to remain on shore till noon.

We saw a part of some cane-fields laid waste by the effect of a conflagration which had spread from a neighbouring forest.

The wandering Indians everywhere set fire to the forest where they have encamped at night; and during the season of drought, vast provinces would be the prey of these conflagrations if the extreme hardness of the wood did not prevent the trees from being entirely consumed.

We found trunks of desmanthus and mahogany which were scarcely charred two inches deep.

Having passed the Diamante we entered a land inhabited only by tigers, crocodiles, and chiguires; the latter are a large species of the genus Cavia of Linnaeus.

We saw flocks of birds, crowded so closely together as to appear against the sky like a dark cloud which every instant changed its form.

The river widens by degrees.

One of its banks is generally barren and sandy from the effect of inundations; the other is higher, and covered with lofty trees.

In some parts the river is bordered by forests on each side, and forms a straight canal a hundred and fifty toises broad.

The manner in which the trees are disposed is very remarkable.

We first find bushes of sauso,* (* Hermesia castaneifolia.

This is a new genus, approaching the alchornea of Swartz.

) forming a kind of hedge four feet high, and appearing as if they had been clipped by the hand of man.

A copse of cedar, brazilletto, and lignum-vitae, rises behind this hedge.

Palm-trees are rare; we saw only a few scattered trunks of the thorny piritu and corozo.

The large quadrupeds of those regions, the jaguars, tapirs, and peccaries, have made openings in the hedge of sauso which we have just described.

Through these the wild animals pass when they come to drink at the river.

As they fear but little the approach of a boat, we had the pleasure of viewing them as they paced slowly along the shore till they disappeared in the forest, which they entered by one of the narrow passes left at intervals between the bushes.

These scenes, which were often repeated, had ever for me a peculiar attraction.

The pleasure they excite is not owing solely to the interest which the naturalist takes in the objects of his study, it is connected with a feeling common to all men who have been brought up in the habits of civilization.

You find yourself in a new world, in the midst of untamed and savage nature.

Now the jaguar--the beautiful panther of America--appears upon the shore; and now the hocco,* (* Ceyx alector, the peacock-pheasant; C. pauxi, the cashew-bird.

) with its black plumage and tufted head, moves slowly along the sausos.

Animals of the most different classes succeed each other.

"Esse como en el Paradiso," "It is just as it was in Paradise," said our pilot, an old Indian of the Missions.

Everything, indeed, in these regions recalls to mind the state of the primitive world with its innocence and felicity.

But in carefully observing the manners of animals among themselves, we see that they mutually avoid and fear each other.

The golden age has ceased; and in this Paradise of the American forests, as well as everywhere else, sad and long experience has taught all beings that benignity is seldom found in alliance with strength.

When the shore is of considerable breadth, the hedge of sauso remains at a distance from the river.

In the intermediate space we see crocodiles, sometimes to the number of eight or ten, stretched on the sand.

Motionless, with their jaws wide open, they repose by each other, without displaying any of those marks of affection observed in other animals living in society.

The troop separates as soon as they quit the shore.

It is, however, probably composed of one male only, and many females; for as M. Descourtils, who has so much studied the crocodiles of St. Domingo, observed to me, the males are rare, because they kill one another in fighting during the season of their loves.

These monstrous creatures are so numerous, that throughout the whole course of the river we had almost at every instant five or six in view.

Yet at this period the swelling of the Rio Apure was scarcely perceived; and consequently hundreds of crocodiles were still buried in the mud of the savannahs.

About four in the afternoon we stopped to measure a dead crocodile which had been cast ashore.

It was only sixteen feet eight inches long; some days after M. Bonpland found another, a male, twenty-two feet three inches long.

In every zone, in America as in Egypt, this animal attains the same size.

The species so abundant in the Apure, the Orinoco,* (* It is the arua of the Tamanac Indians, the amana of the Maypure Indians, the Crocodilus acutus of Cuvier.

) and the Rio de la Magdalena, is not a cayman, but a real crocodile, analogous to that of the Nile, having feet dentated at the external edges.

When it is recollected that the male enters the age of puberty only at ten years, and that its length is then eight feet, we may presume that the crocodile measured by M. Bonpland was at least twenty-eight years old.

The Indians told us, that at San Fernando scarcely a year passes, without two or three grown-up persons, particularly women who fetch water from the river, being drowned by these carnivorous reptiles.

They related to us the history of a young girl of Uritucu, who by singular intrepidity and presence of mind, saved herself from the jaws of a crocodile.

When she felt herself seized, she sought the eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingers into them with such violence, that the pain forced the crocodile to let her go, after having bitten off the lower part of her left arm.

The girl, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of blood she lost, reached the shore, swimming with the hand that still remained to her.

In those desert countries, where man is ever wrestling with nature, discourse daily turns on the best means that may be employed to escape from a tiger, a boa, or a crocodile; every one prepares himself in some sort for the dangers that may await him.

"I knew," said the young girl of Uritucu coolly, "that the cayman lets go his hold, if you push your fingers into his eyes."

Long after my return to Europe, I learned that in the interior of Africa the negroes know and practise the same means of defence.

Who does not recollect, with lively interest, Isaac, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, who was seized twice by a crocodile, and twice escaped from the jaws of the monster, having succeeded in thrusting his fingers into the creature's eyes while under water.

The African Isaac, and the young American girl, owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same combination of ideas.

The movements of the crocodile of the Apure are sudden and rapid when it attacks any object; but it moves with the slowness of a salamander, when not excited by rage or hunger.

The animal in running makes a rustling noise, which seems to proceed from the rubbing of the scales of its skin one against another.

In this movement it bends its back, and appears higher on its legs than when at rest.

We often heard this rattling of the scales very near us on the shore; but it is not true, as the Indians pretend, that, like the armadillo, the old crocodiles "can erect their scales, and every part of their armour."

The motion of these animals is no doubt generally in a straight line, or rather like that of an arrow, supposing it to change its direction at certain distances.

However, notwithstanding the little apparatus of false ribs, which connects the vertebrae of the neck, and seems to impede the lateral movement, crocodiles can turn easily when they please.

I

often saw young ones biting their tails; and other observers have seen the same action in crocodiles at their full growth.

If their movements almost always appear to be straight forward, it is because, like our small lizards, they move by starts.

Crocodiles are excellent swimmers;

they go with facility against the most rapid current.

It appeared to me, however, that in descending the river, they had some difficulty in turning quickly about.

A large dog, which had accompanied us in our journey from Caracas to the Rio Negro, was one day pursued in swimming by an enormous crocodile.

The latter had nearly reached its prey, when the dog escaped by turning round suddenly and swimming against the current.

The crocodile performed the same movement, but much more slowly than the dog, which succeeded in gaining the shore.

The crocodiles of the Apure find abundant food in the chiguires (thick-nosed tapirs),* which live fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of the river.

(* Cavia capybara, Linn.

The word chiguire belongs to the language of the Palenkas and the Cumanagotos.

The Spaniards call this animal guardatinaja; the Caribs, capigua; the Tamanacs, cappiva; and the Maypures, chiato.

According to Azara, it is known at Buenos Ayres by the Indian names of capiygua and capiguara.

These various denominations show a striking analogy between the languages of the Orinoco and those of the Rio de la Plata.

) These animals, as large as our pigs, have no weapons of defence; they swim somewhat better than they run: yet they become the prey of the crocodiles in the water, and of the tigers on land.

It is difficult to conceive, how, being thus persecuted by two powerful enemies, they become so numerous; but they breed with the same rapidity as the little cavies or guinea-pigs, which come to us from Brazil.

We stopped below the mouth of the Cano de la Tigrera, in a sinuosity called la Vuelta del Joval, to measure the velocity of the water at its surface.

It was not more than 3. 2 feet* in a second, which gives 2. 56 feet for the mean velocity.

(* In order to measure the velocity of the surface of a river, I generally measured on the beach a base of 250 feet, and observed with the chronometer the time that a floating body, abandoned to the current, required to reach this distance.

) The height of the barometer indicated barely a slope of seventeen inches in a mile of nine hundred and fifty toises.

The velocity is the simultaneous effect of the slope of the ground, and the accumulation of the waters by the swelling of the upper parts of the river.

We were again surrounded by chiguires, which swim like dogs, raising their heads and necks above the water.

We saw with surprise a large crocodile on the opposite shore, motionless, and sleeping in the midst of these nibbling animals.

It awoke at the approach of our canoe, and went into the water slowly, without frightening the chiguires.

Our Indians accounted for this indifference by the stupidity of the animals, but it is more probable that the chiguires know by long experience, that the crocodile of the Apure and the Orinoco does not attack upon land, unless he finds the object he would seize immediately in his way, at the instant when he throws himself into the water.

Near the Joval nature assumes an awful and extremely wild aspect.

We there saw the largest jaguar we had ever met with.

The natives themselves were astonished at its prodigious length, which surpassed that of any Bengal tiger I had ever seen in the museums of Europe.

The animal lay stretched beneath the shade of a large zamang.

* (* A

species of mimosa.

) It had just killed a chiguire, but had not yet touched its prey, on which it kept one of its paws.

The zamuro vultures were assembled in great numbers to devour the remains of the jaguar's repast.

They presented the most curious spectacle, by a singular mixture of boldness and timidity.

They advanced within the distance of two feet from the animal, but at the least movement he made they drew back.

In order to observe more nearly the manners of these creatures, we went into the little skiff that accompanied our canoe.

Tigers very rarely attack boats by swimming to them; and never but when their ferocity is heightened by a long privation of food.

The noise of our oars led the animal to rise slowly, and hide itself behind the sauso bushes that bordered the shore.

The vultures tried to profit by this moment of absence to devour the chiguire; but the tiger, notwithstanding the proximity of our boat, leaped into the midst of them, and in a fit of rage, expressed by his gait and the movement of his tail, carried off his prey to the forest.

The Indians regretted that they were not provided with their lances, in order to go on shore and attack the tiger.

They are accustomed to this weapon, and were right in not trusting to our fire-arms.

In so excessively damp an atmosphere muskets often miss fire.

Continuing to descend the river, we met with the great herd of chiguires which the tiger had put to flight, and from which he had selected his prey.

These animals saw us land very unconcernedly; some of them were seated, and gazed upon us, moving the upper lip like rabbits.

They seemed not to be afraid of man, but the sight of our dog put them to flight.

Their hind legs being longer than their fore legs, their pace is a slight gallop, but with so little swiftness that we succeeded in catching two of them.

The chiguire, which swims with the greatest agility, utters a short moan in running, as if its respiration were impeded.

It is the largest of the family of rodentia or gnawing animals.

It defends itself only at the last extremity, when it is surrounded and wounded.

Having great strength in its grinding teeth,* particularly the hinder ones, which are pretty long, it can tear the paw of a tiger, or the leg of a horse, with its bite.

(* We counted eighteen on each side.

On the hind feet, at the upper end of the metatarsus, there is a callosity three inches long and three quarters of an inch broad, destitute of hair.

The animal, when seated, rests upon this part.

No tail is visible externally; but on putting aside the hair we discover a tubercle, a mass of naked and wrinkled flesh, of a conical figure, and half an inch long.

) Its flesh has a musky smell somewhat disagreeable; yet hams are made of it in this country, a circumstance which almost justifies the name of water-hog, given to the chiguire by some of the older naturalists.

The missionary monks do not hesitate to eat these hams during Lent.

According to their zoological classification they place the armadillo, the thick-nosed tapir, and the manatee, near the tortoises; the first, because it is covered with a hard armour like a sort of shell; and the others because they are amphibious.

The chiguires are found in such numbers on the banks of the rivers Santo Domingo, Apure, and Arauca, in the marshes and in the inundated savannahs* of the Llanos, that the pasturages suffer from them.

(* Near Uritucu, in the Cano del Ravanal, we saw a flock of eighty or one hundred of these animals.

) They browze the grass which fattens the horses best, and which bears the name of chiguirero, or chiguire-grass.

They feed also upon fish; and we saw with surprise, that, when scared by the approach of a boat, the animal in diving remains eight or ten minutes under water.

We passed the night as usual, in the open air, though in a plantation, the proprietor of which employed himself in hunting tigers.

He wore scarcely any clothing, and was of a dark brown complexion like a Zambo.

This did not prevent his classing himself amongst the Whites.

He called his wife and his daughter, who were as naked as himself, Dona Isabella and Dona Manuela.

Without having ever quitted the banks of the Apure, he took a lively interest in the news of Madrid--enquiring eagerly respecting those never-ending wars, and everything down yonder (todas las cosas de alla).

He knew, he said, that the king was soon to come and visit the grandees of the country of Caracas, but he added with some pleasantry, as the people of the court can eat only wheaten bread, they will never pass beyond the town of Victoria, and we shall not see them here.

I had brought with me a chiguire, which I had intended to have roasted; but our host assured us, that such Indian game was not food fit for nos otros caballeros blancos, (white gentlemen like ourselves and him).

Accordingly he offered us some venison, which he had killed the day before with an arrow, for he had neither powder nor fire-arms.

We supposed that a small wood of plantain-trees concealed from us the hut of the farm; but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves.

He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo).

We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life.

A furious wind arose after midnight, lightnings flashed over the horizon, thunder rolled, and we were wet to the skin.

During this storm a whimsical incident served to amuse us for a moment.

Dona Isabella's cat had perched upon the tamarind-tree, at the foot of which we lay.

It fell into the hammock of one of our companions, who, being hurt by the claws of the cat, and suddenly aroused from a profound sleep, imagined he was attacked by some wild beast of the forest.

We ran to him on hearing his cries, and had some trouble to convince him of his error.

While it rained in torrents on our hammocks and on our instruments which we had brought ashore, Don Ignacio congratulated us on our good fortune in not sleeping on the strand, but finding ourselves in his domain, among whites and persons of respectability (entre gente blanca y de trato).

Wet as we were, we could not easily persuade ourselves of the advantages of our situation, and we listened with some impatience to the long narrative our host gave us of his pretended expedition to the Rio Meta, of the valour he had displayed in a sanguinary combat with the Guahibo Indians, and "the services that he had rendered to God and his king, in carrying away Indian children (los Indiecitos) from their parents, to distribute them in the Missions."

We were struck with the singularity of finding in that vast solitude a man believing himself to be of European race and knowing no other shelter than the shade of a tree, and yet having all the vain pretensions, hereditary prejudices, and errors of long-standing civilization!

On the 1st of April, at sunrise, we quitted Senor Don Ignacio and Senora Dona Isabella his wife.

The weather was cooler, for the thermometer (which generally kept up in the daytime to 30 or 35 degrees) had sunk to 24 degrees.

The temperature of the river was little changed: it continued constantly at 26 or 27 degrees.

The current carried with it an enormous number of trunks of trees.

It might be imagined that on ground entirely smooth, and where the eye cannot distinguish the least hill, the river would have formed by the force of its current a channel in a straight line; but a glance at the map, which I traced by the compass, will prove the contrary.

The two banks, worn by the waters, do not furnish an equal resistance; and almost imperceptible inequalities of the level suffice to produce great sinuosities.

Yet below the Joval, where the bed of the river enlarges a little, it forms a channel that appears perfectly straight, and is shaded on each side by very tall trees.

This part of the river is called Cano Rico.

I found it to be one hundred and thirty-six toises broad.

We passed a low island, inhabited by thousands of flamingos, rose-coloured spoonbills, herons, and moorhens, which displayed plumage of the most various colours.

These birds were so close together that they seemed to be unable to stir.

The island they frequent is called Isla de Aves, or Bird Island.

Lower down we passed the point where the Rio Arichuna, an arm of the Apure, branches off to the Cabulare, carrying away a considerable body of its waters.

We stopped, on the right bank, at a little Indian mission, inhabited by the tribe of the Guamos, called the village of Santa Barbara de Arichuna.

The Guamos* are a race of Indians very difficult to fix on a settled spot.

(* Father Gili observes that their Indian name is Uamu and Pau, and that they originally dwelt on the Upper Apure.

) They have great similarity of manners with the Achaguas, the Guajibos,* (* Their Indian name is Guahiva.

) and the Ottomacs, partaking their disregard of cleanliness, their spirit of vengeance, and their taste for wandering; but their language differs essentially.

The greater part of these four tribes live by fishing and hunting, in plains often inundated, situated between the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare.

The nature of these regions seems to invite the natives to a wandering life.

On entering the mountains of the Cataracts of the Orinoco, we shall soon find, among the Piraoas, the Macos, and the Maquiritaras, milder manners, a love of agriculture, and great cleanliness in the interior of their huts.

On mountain ridges, in the midst of impenetrable forests, man is compelled to fix himself; and cultivate a small spot of land.

This cultivation requires little care; while, in a country where there are no other roads than rivers, the life of the hunter is laborious and difficult.

The Guamos of the mission of Santa Barbara could not furnish us with the provision we wanted.

They cultivate only a little cassava.

They appeared hospitable; and when we entered their huts, they offered us dried fish, and water cooled in porous vessels.

Beyond the Vuelta del Cochino Roto, in a spot where the river has scooped itself a new bed, we passed the night on a bare and very extensive strand.

The forest being impenetrable, we had the greatest difficulty to find dry wood to light fires, near which the Indians believe themselves in safety from the nocturnal attacks of the tiger.

Our own experience seems to bear testimony in favour of this opinion;

but Azara asserts that, in his time, a tiger in Paraguay carried off a man who was seated near a fire lighted in the savannah.

The night was calm and serene, and there was a beautiful moonlight.

The crocodiles, stretched along the shore, placed themselves in such a manner as to be able to see the fire.

We thought we observed that its blaze attracted them, as it attracts fishes, crayfish, and other inhabitants of the water.

The Indians showed us the tracks of three tigers in the sand, two of which were very young.

A female had no doubt conducted her little ones to drink at the river.

Finding no tree on the strand, we stuck our oars in the ground, and to these we fastened our hammocks.

Everything passed tranquilly till eleven at night; and then a noise so terrific arose in the neighbouring forest, that it was almost impossible to close our eyes.

Amid the cries of so many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated such only as were at intervals heard separately.

These were the little soft cries of the sapajous, the moans of the alouate apes, the howlings of the jaguar and couguar, the peccary, and the sloth, and the cries of the curassao, the parraka, and other gallinaceous birds.

When the jaguars approached the skirt of the forest, our dog, which till then had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for shelter beneath our hammocks.

Sometimes, after a long silence, the cry of the tiger came from the tops of the trees; and then it was followed by the sharp and long whistling of the monkeys, which appeared to flee from the danger that threatened them.

We heard the same noises repeated, during the course of whole months, whenever the forest approached the bed of the river.

The security evinced by the Indians inspires confidence in the minds of travellers, who readily persuade themselves that the tigers are afraid of fire, and that they do not attack a man lying in his hammock.

These attacks are in fact extremely rare; and, during a long abode in South America, I remember only one example, of a llanero, who was found mutilated in his hammock opposite the island of Achaguas.

When the natives are interrogated on the causes of the tremendous noise made by the beasts of the forest at certain hours of the night, the answer is, "They are keeping the feast of the full moon."

I believe this agitation is most frequently the effect of some conflict that has arisen in the depths of the forest.

The jaguars, for instance, pursue the peccaries and the tapirs, which, having no defence but in their numbers, flee in close troops, and break down the bushes they find in their way.

Terrified at this struggle, the timid and mistrustful monkeys answer, from the tops of the trees, the cries of the large animals.

They awaken the birds that live in society, and by degrees the whole assembly is in commotion.

It is not always in a fine moonlight, but more particularly at the time of a storm and violent showers, that this tumult takes place among the wild beasts.

"May Heaven grant them a quiet night and repose, and us also!"

said the monk who accompanied us to the Rio Negro, when, sinking with fatigue, he assisted in arranging our accommodations for the night.

It was indeed strange, to find no silence in the solitude of woods.

In the inns of Spain we dread the sound of guitars from the next apartment; on the Orinoco, where the traveller's resting-place is the open beach, or beneath the shelter of a solitary tree, his slumbers are disturbed by a serenade from the forest.