Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.23, Part 5

Although the Indians of the Cassiquiare readily return to their barbarous habits, they evince, whilst in the missions, intelligence, some love of labour, and, in particular, a great facility in learning the Spanish language.

The villages being, for the most part, inhabited by three or four tribes, who do not understand each other, a foreign idiom, which is at the same time that of the civil power, the language of the missionary, affords the advantage of more general means of communication.

I heard a Poinave Indian conversing in Spanish with a Guahibo, though both had come from their forests within three months.

They uttered a phrase every quarter of an hour, prepared with difficulty, and in which the gerund of the verb, no doubt according to the grammatical turn of their own languages, was constantly employed.

"When I seeing Padre, Padre to me saying;"* (* "Quando io mirando Padre, Padre me diciendo."

) instead of, "when I saw the missionary, he said to me."

I have mentioned in another place, how wise it appeared to me in the Jesuits to generalize one of the languages of civilized America, for instance that of the Peruvians,* (* The Quichua or Inca language, Lengua del Inga.

) and instruct the Indians in an idiom which is foreign to them in its roots, but not in its structure and grammatical forms.

This was following the system which the Incas, or king-priests of Peru had employed for ages, in order to humanize the barbarous nations of the Upper Maranon, and maintain them under their domination; a system somewhat more reasonable than that of making the natives of America speak Latin, as was gravely proposed in a provincial concilio at Mexico.

We were told that the Indians of the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro are preferred on the Lower Orinoco, and especially at Angostura, to the inhabitants of the other missions, on account of their intelligence and activity.

Those of Mandavaca are celebrated among the tribes of their own race for the preparation of the curare poison, which does not yield in strength to the curare of Esmeralda.

Unhappily the natives devote themselves to this employment more than to agriculture.

Yet the soil on the banks of the Cassiquiare is excellent.

We find there a granitic sand, of a blackish-brown colour, which is covered in the forests with thick layers of rich earth, and on the banks of the river with clay almost impermeable to water.

The soil of the Cassiquiare appears more fertile than that of the valley of the Rio Negro, where maize does not prosper.

Rice, beans, cotton, sugar, and indigo yield rich harvests, wherever their cultivation has been tried.

* (* M.

Bonpland found at Mandavaca, in the huts of the natives, a plant with tuberous roots, exactly like cassava (yucca).

It is called cumapana, and is cooked by being baked on the ashes.

It grows spontaneously on the banks of the Cassiquiare.

) We saw wild indigo around the missions of San Miguel de Davipe, San Carlos, and Mandavaca.

No doubt can exist that several nations of America, particularly the Mexicans, long before the conquest, employed real indigo in their hieroglyphic paintings; and that small cakes of this substance were sold at the great market of Tenochtitlan.

But a colouring matter, chemically identical, may be extracted from plants belonging to neighbouring genera; and I should not at present venture to affirm that the native indigoferae of America do not furnish some generic difference from the Indigofera anil, and the Indigofera argentea of the Old World.

In the coffee-trees of both hemispheres this difference has been observed.

Here, as at the Rio Negro, the humidity of the air, and the consequent abundance of insects, are obstacles almost invincible to new cultivation.

Everywhere you meet with those large ants that march in close bands, and direct their attacks the more readily on cultivated plants, because they are herbaceous and succulent, whilst the forests of these countries afford only plants with woody stalks.

If a missionary wishes to cultivate salad, or any culinary plant of Europe, he is compelled as it were to suspend his garden in the air.

He fills an old boat with good mould, and, having sown the seed, suspends it four feet above the ground with cords of the chiquichiqui palm-tree;

but most frequently places it on a slight scaffolding.

This protects the young plants from weeds, worms, and those ants which pursue their migration in a right line, and, not knowing what vegetates above them, seldom turn from their course to climb up stakes that are stripped of their bark.

I mention this circumstance to prove how difficult, within the tropics, on the banks of great rivers, are the first attempts of man to appropriate to himself a little spot of earth in that vast domain of nature, invaded by animals, and covered by spontaneous plants.

During the night of the 13th of May, I obtained some observations of the stars, unfortunately the last at the Cassiquiare.

The latitude of Mandavaca is 2 degrees 4 minutes 7 seconds; its longitude, according to the chronometer, 69 degrees 27 minutes.

I found the magnetic dip 25. 25 degrees (cent div), showing that it had increased considerably from the fort of San Carlos.

Yet the surrounding rocks are of the same granite, mixed with a little hornblende, which we had found at Javita, and which assumes a syenitic aspect.

We left Mandavaca at half-past two in the morning.

After six hours' voyage, we passed on the east the mouth of the Idapa, or Siapa, which rises on the mountain of Uuturan, and furnishes near its sources a portage to the Rio Mavaca, one of the tributary streams of the Orinoco.

This river has white waters, and is not more than half as broad as the Pacimoni, the waters of which are black.

Its upper course has been strangely misrepresented on maps.

I

shall have occasion hereafter to mention the hypotheses that have given rise to these errors, in speaking of the source of the Orinoco.

We stopped near the raudal of Cunuri.

The noise of the little cataract augmented sensibly during the night, and our Indians asserted that it was a certain presage of rain.

I recollected that the mountaineers of the Alps have great confidence in the same prognostic.

* (* "It is going to rain, because we hear the murmur of the torrents nearer," say the mountaineers of the Alps, like those of the Andes.

The cause of the phenomenon is a modification of the atmosphere, which has an influence at once on the sonorous and on the luminous undulations.

The prognostic drawn from the increase and the intensity of sound is intimately connected with the prognostic drawn from a less extinction of light.

The mountaineers predict a change of weather, when, the air being calm, the Alps covered with perpetual snow seem on a sudden to be nearer the observer, and their outlines are marked with great distinctness on the azure sky.

What is it that causes the want of homogeneity in the vertical strata of the atmosphere to disappear instantaneously?

) It fell before sunrise, and the araguato monkeys had warned us, by their lengthened howlings, of the approaching rain, long before the noise of the cataract increased.

On the 14th, the mosquitos, and especially the ants, drove us from the shore before two in the morning.

We had hitherto been of opinion that the ants did not crawl along the cords by which the hammocks are usually suspended: whether we were correct in this supposition, or whether the ants fell on us from the tops of the trees, I cannot say;

but certain it is that we had great difficulty to keep ourselves free from these troublesome insects.

The river became narrower as we advanced, and the banks were so marshy, that it was not without much labour M. Bonpland could get to a Carolinea princeps loaded with large purple flowers.

This tree is the most beautiful ornament of these forests, and of those of the Rio Negro.

We examined repeatedly, during this day, the temperature of the Cassiquiare.

The water at the surface of the river was only 24 degrees (when the air was at 25. 6 degrees.

) This is nearly the temperature of the Rio Negro, but four or five degrees below that of the Orinoco.

After having passed on the west the mouth of the Cano Caterico, which has black waters of extraordinary transparency, we left the bed of the river, to land at an island on which the mission of Vasiva is established.

The lake which surrounds this mission is a league broad, and communicates by three outlets with the Cassiquiare.

The surrounding country abounds in marshes which generate fever.

The lake, the waters of which appear yellow by transmitted light, is dry in the season of great heat, and the Indians themselves are unable to resist the miasmata rising from the mud.

The complete absence of wind contributes to render the climate of this country more pernicious.

From the 14th to the 21st of May we slept constantly in the open air;

but I cannot indicate the spots where we halted.

These regions are so wild, and so little frequented, that with the exception of a few rivers, the Indians were ignorant of the names of all the objects which I set by the compass.

No observation of a star helped me to fix the latitude within the space of a degree.

After having passed the point where the Itinivini separates from the Cassiquiare, to take its course to the west towards the granitic hills of Daripabo, we found the marshy banks of the river covered with bamboos.

These arborescent gramina rise to the height of twenty feet; their stem is constantly arched towards the summit.

It is a new species of Bambusa with very broad leaves.

M.

Bonpland fortunately found one in flower; a circumstance I mention, because the genera Nastus and Bambusa had before been very imperfectly distinguished, and nothing is more rare in the New World, than to see these gigantic gramina in flower.

N.

Mutis herborised during twenty years in a country where the Bambusa guadua forms marshy forests several leagues broad, without having ever been able to procure the flowers.

We sent that learned naturalist the first ears of Bambusa from the temperate valleys of Popayan.

It is strange that the parts of fructification should develop themselves so rarely in a plant which is indigenous, and which vegetates with such extraordinary rigour, from the level of the sea to the height of nine hundred toises, that is, to a subalpine region the climate of which, between the tropics, resembles that of the south of Spain.

The Bambusa latifolia seems to be peculiar to the basins of the Upper Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Amazon; it is a social plant, like all the gramina of the family of the nastoides; but in that part of Spanish Guiana which we traversed it does not grow in those large masses which the Spanish Americans call guadales, or forests of bamboos.

Our first resting-place above Vasiva was easily arranged.

We found a little nook of dry ground, free from shrubs, to the south of the Cano Curamuni, in a spot where we saw some capuchin monkeys.

* (* Simia chiropotes.

) They were recognizable by their black beards and their gloomy and sullen air, and were walking slowly on the horizontal branches of a genipa.

During the five following nights our passage was the more troublesome in proportion as we approached the bifurcation of the Orinoco.

The luxuriance of the vegetation increases in a manner of which it is difficult even for those acquainted with the aspect of the forests between the tropics, to form an idea.

There is no longer a bank: a palisade of tufted trees forms the margin of the river.

You see a canal two hundred toises broad, bordered by two enormous walls, clothed with lianas and foliage.

We often tried to land, but without success.

Towards sunset we sailed along for an hour seeking to discover, not an opening (since none exists), but a spot less wooded, where our Indians by means of the hatchet and manual labour, could clear space enough for a resting-place for twelve or thirteen persons.

It was impossible to pass the night in the canoe; the mosquitos, which tormented us during the day, accumulated toward evening beneath the toldo covered with palm-leaves, which served to shelter us from the rain.

Our hands and faces had never before been so much swelled.

Father Zea, who had till then boasted of having in his missions of the cataracts the largest and fiercest (las mas feroces) mosquitos, at length gradually acknowledged that the sting of the insects of the Cassiquiare was the most painful he had ever felt.

We experienced great difficulty, amid a thick forest, in finding wood to make a fire, the branches of the trees in those equatorial regions where it always rains, being so full of sap, that they will scarcely burn.

There being no bare shore, it is hardly possible to procure old wood, which the Indians call wood baked in the sun.

However, fire was necessary to us only as a defence against the beasts of the forest; for we had such a scarcity of provision that we had little need of fuel for the purpose of preparing our food.

On the 18th of May, towards evening, we discovered a spot where wild cacao-trees were growing on the bank of the river.

The nut of these cacaos is small and bitter; the Indians of the forest suck the pulp, and throw away the nut, which is picked up by the Indians of the missions, and sold to persons who are not very nice in the preparation of their chocolate.

"This is the Puerto del Cacao" (Cacao Port), said the pilot; "it is here our Padres sleep, when they go to Esmeralda to buy sarbacans* (* The bamboo tubes furnished by the Arundinaria, used for projecting the poisoned arrows of the natives.

See Views of Nature page 180. ) and juvias ( Brazil nuts).

Not five boats, however, pass annually by the Cassiquiare; and since we left Maypures (a whole month previously), we had not met one living soul on the rivers we navigated, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the missions.

To the south of lake Duractumuni we slept in a forest of palm-trees.

It rained violently, but the pothoses, arums, and lianas, furnished so thick a natural trellis, that we were sheltered as under a vault of foliage.

The Indians whose hammocks were placed on the edge of the river, interwove the heliconias and other musaceae, so as to form a kind of roof over them.

Our fires lighted up, to the height of fifty or sixty feet, the palm-trees, the lianas loaded with flowers, and the columns of white smoke, which ascended in a straight line toward the sky.

The whole exhibited a magnificent spectacle; but to have enjoyed it fully, we should have breathed an air clear of insects.

The most depressing of all physical sufferings are those which are uniform in their duration, and can be combated only by long patience.

It is probable, that in the exhalations of the forests of the Cassiquiare M. Bonpland imbibed the seeds of a severe malady, under which he nearly sunk on our arrival at Angostura.

Happily for him and for me, nothing led us to presage the danger with which he was menaced.

The view of the river, and the hum of the insects, were a little monotonous; but some remains of our natural cheerfulness enabled us to find sources of relief during our wearisome passage.

We discovered, that by eating small portions of dry cacao ground without sugar, and drinking a large quantity of the river water, we succeeded in appeasing our appetite for several hours.

The ants and the mosquitos troubled us more than the humidity and the want of food.

Notwithstanding the privations to which we were exposed during our excursions in the Cordilleras, the navigation from Mandavaca to Esmeralda has always appeared to us the most painful part of our travels in America.

I advise those who are not very desirous of seeing the great bifurcation of the Orinoco, to take the way of the Atabapo in preference to that of the Cassiquiare.

Above the Cano Duractumuni, the Cassiquiare pursues a uniform direction from north-east to south-west.

We were surprised to see how much the high steep banks of the Cassiquiare had been undermined on each side by the sudden risings of the water.

Uprooted trees formed as it were natural rafts; and being half-buried in the mud, they were extremely dangerous for canoes.

We passed the night of the 20th of May, the last of our passage on the Cassiquiare, near the point of the bifurcation of the Orinoco.

We had some hope of being able to make an astronomical observation, as falling-stars of remarkable magnitude were visible through the vapours that veiled the sky; whence we concluded that the stratum of vapours must be very thin, since meteors of this kind have scarcely ever been seen below a cloud.

Those we now beheld shot towards the north, and succeeded each other at almost equal intervals.

The Indians, who seldom ennoble by their expressions the wanderings of the imagination, name the falling-stars the urine;

and the dew the spittle of the stars.

The clouds thickened anew, and we discerned neither the meteors, nor the real stars, for which we had impatiently waited during several days.

We had been told, that we should find the insects at Esmeralda still more cruel and voracious than in the branch of the Orinoco which we were going up; nevertheless we indulged the hope of at length sleeping in a spot that was inhabited, and of taking some exercise in herbalizing.

This anticipation was, however, disturbed at our last resting-place on the Cassiquiare.

Whilst we were sleeping on the edge of the forest, we were warned by the Indians, in the middle of the night, that they heard very near us the cries of a jaguar.

These cries, they alleged, came from the top of some neighbouring trees.

Such is the thickness of the forests in these regions, that scarcely any animals are to be found there but such as climb trees; as, for instance, the monkeys, animals of the weasel tribe, jaguars, and other species of the genus Felis.

As our fires burnt brightly, we paid little attention to the cries of the jaguars.

They had been attracted by the smell and noise of our dog.

This animal (which was of the mastiff breed) began at first to bark; and when the tiger drew nearer, to howl, hiding himself below our hammocks.

how great was our grief, when in the morning, at the moment of re-embarking, the Indians informed us that the dog had disappeared!

There could be no doubt that it had been carried off by the jaguars.

* (* See Views of Nature page 195. ) Perhaps, when their cries had ceased, it had wandered from the fires on the side of the beach; and possibly we had not heard its moans, as we were in a profound sleep.

We have often heard the inhabitants of the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Magdalena affirm, that the oldest jaguars will carry off animals from the midst of a halting-place, cunningly grasping them by the neck so as to prevent their cries.

We waited part of the morning, in the hope that our dog had only strayed.

Three days after we came back to the same place; we heard again the cries of the jaguars, for these animals have a predilection for particular spots;

but all our search was vain.

The dog, which had accompanied us from Caracas, and had so often in swimming escaped the pursuit of the crocodiles,* had been devoured in the forest.

(* Ibid page 198. )