Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.2 — Chapter 2.24, Part 3

The tree that yields the Brazil-nuts is generally not more than two or three feet in diameter, but attains one hundred or one hundred and twenty feet in height.

It does not resemble the mammee-tree, the star-apple, and several other trees of the tropics, the branches of which (as in the laurel-trees of the temperate zone) rise almost straight towards the sky.

The branches of the bertholletia are open, very long, almost entirely bare towards the base, and loaded at their summits with tufts of very close foliage.

This disposition of the semicoriaceous leaves, which are a little silvery on their under part, and more than two feet long, makes the branches bend down toward the ground, like the fronds of the palm-tree.

We did not see this majestic tree in blossom: it is not loaded with flowers* till in its fifteenth year, and they appear about the end of March and the beginning of April.

(* According to accounts somewhat vague, they are yellow, very large, and have some similitude to those of the Bombax ceiba.

M.

Bonpland says, however, in his botanical journal written on the banks of the Rio Negro, flos violaceus.

It was thus the Indians of the river had described to him the colour of the corolla.

) The fruits ripen towards the end of May, and some trees retain them till the end of August.

These fruits, which are as large as the head of a child, often twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, make a very loud noise in falling from the tops of the trees.

Nothing is more fitted to fill the mind with admiration of the force of organic action in the equinoctial zone than the aspect of those great igneous pericarps, for instance, the cocoa-tree (lodoicea) of the Maldives among the monocotyledons, and the bertholletia and the lecythis among the dicotyledons.

In our climates only the cucurbitaceae produce in the space of a few months fruits of an extraordinary size; but these fruits are pulpy and succulent.

Within the tropics, the bertholletia forms in less than fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the ligneous part of which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw with the sharpest instruments.

A great naturalist has observed, that the wood of fruits attains in general a hardness which is scarcely to be found in the wood of the trunks of trees.

The pericarp of the bertholletia has traces of four cells, and I have sometimes found even five.

The seeds have two very distinct coverings, and this circumstance renders the structure of the fruit more complicated than in the lecythis, the pekea or caryocar, and the saouvari.

The first tegument is osseous or ligneous, triangular, tuberculated on its exterior surface, and of the colour of cinnamon.

Four or five, and sometimes eight of these triangular nuts, are attached to a central partition.

As they are loosened in time, they move freely in the large spherical pericarp.

The capuchin monkeys (Simia chiropotes) are singularly fond of the Brazil nuts; and the noise made by the seeds, when the fruit is shaken as it falls from the tree, excites the appetites of these animals in the highest degree.

I have most frequently found only from fifteen to twenty-two nuts in each fruit.

The second tegument of the almonds is membranaceous, and of a brown-yellow.

Their taste is extremely agreeable when they are fresh; but the oil, with which they abound, and which is so useful in the arts, becomes easily rancid.

Although at the Upper Orinoco we often ate considerable quantities of these almonds for want of other food, we never felt any bad effects from so doing.

The spherical pericarp of the bertholletia, perforated at the summit, is not dehiscent; the upper and swelled part of the columella forms (according to M. Kunth) a sort of inner cover, as in the fruit of the lecythis, but it seldom opens of itself.

Many seeds, from the decomposition of the oil contained in the cotyledons, lose the faculty of germination before the rainy season, in which the ligneous integument of the pericarp opens by the effect of putrefaction.

A tale is very current on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, that the capuchin and cacajao monkeys (Simia chiropotes, and Simia melanocephala) place themselves in a circle, and, by striking the shell with a stone, succeed in opening it, so as to take out the triangular nuts.

This operation must, however, be impossible, on account of the extreme hardness and thickness of the pericarp.

Monkeys may have been seen rolling along the fruit of the bertholletia, but though this fruit has a small hole closed by the upper extremity of the columella, nature has not furnished monkeys with the means of opening the ligneous pericarp, as it has of opening the covercle of the lecythis, called in the missions the covercle of the monkeys' cocoa.

* (* La tapa del coco de monos.

) According to the report of several Indians, only the smaller rodentia, particularly the cavies (the acuri and the lapa), by the structure of their teeth, and the inconceivable perseverance with which they pursue their destructive operations, succeed in perforating the fruit of the juvia.

As soon as the triangular nuts are spread on the ground, all the animals of the forest, the monkeys, the manaviris, the squirrels, the cavies, the parrots, and the macaws, hastily assemble to dispute the prey.

They have all strength enough to break the ligneous tegument of the seed; they get out the kernel, and carry it to the tops of the trees.

"It is their festival also," said the Indians who had returned from the harvest; and on hearing their complaints of the animals, one may perceive that they think themselves alone the lawful masters of the forest.

One of the four canoes, which had taken the Indians to the gathering of the Juvias, was filled in great part with that species of reeds (carices) of which the blow-tubes are made.

These reeds were from fifteen to seventeen feet long, yet no trace of a knot for the insertion of leaves and branches was perceived.

They were quite straight, smooth externally, and perfectly cylindrical.

These carices come from the foot of the mountains of Yumariquin and Guanaja.

They are much sought after, even beyond the Orinoco, by the name of reeds of Esmeralda.

A hunter preserves the same blow-tube during his whole life, and boasts of its lightness and precision, as we boast of the same qualities in our fire-arms.

What is the monocotyledonous plant* that furnishes these admirable reeds?

(* The smooth surface of these tubes sufficiently proves that they are not furnished by a plant of the family of umbelliferae.

) Did we see in fact the internodes (parts between the knots) of a gramen of the tribe of nastoides?

or may this carex be perhaps a cyperaceous plant* destitute of knots?

(* The caricillo del manati, which grows abundantly on the banks of the Orinoco, attains from eight to ten feet in height.

) I cannot solve this question, or determine to what genus another plant belongs, which furnishes the shirts of marima.

We saw on the slope of the Cerra Duida shirt-trees fifty feet high.

The Indians cut off cylindrical pieces two feet in diameter, from which they peel the red and fibrous bark, without making any longitudinal incision.

This bark affords them a sort of garment, which resembles sacks of a very coarse texture, and without a seam.

The upper opening serves for the head; and two lateral holes are cut for the arms to pass through.

The natives wear these shirts of marima in the rainy season: they have the form of the ponchos and ruanas of cotton, which are so common in New Grenada, at Quito, and in Peru.

In these climates the riches and beneficence of nature being regarded as the primary causes of the indolence of the inhabitants, the missionaries say in showing the shirts of marima, in the forests of the Orinoco garments are found ready-made on the trees.

We may also mention the pointed caps, which the spathes of certain palm-trees furnish, and which resemble coarse network.

At the festival of which we were the spectators, the women, who were excluded from the dance, and every sort of public rejoicing, were daily occupied in serving the men with roasted monkey, fermented liquors, and palm-cabbage.

This last production has the taste of our cauliflowers, and in no other country had we seen specimens of such an immense size.

The leaves that are not unfolded are united with the young stem, and we measured cylinders of six feet long and five inches in diameter.

Another substance, which is much more nutritive, is obtained from the animal kingdom: this is fish-flour (manioc de pescado).

The Indians throughout the Upper Orinoco fry fish, dry them in the sun, and reduce them to powder without separating the bones.

I

have seen masses of fifty or sixty pounds of this flour, which resembles that of cassava.

When it is wanted for eating, it is mixed with water, and reduced to a paste.

In every climate the abundance of fish has led to the invention of the same means of preserving them.

Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have described the fish-bread of the ichthyophagous nations, that dwelt on the Persian Gulf and the shores of the Red Sea.

* (* These nations, in a still ruder state than the natives of the Orinoco, contented themselves with drying the raw fish in the sun.

They made up the fish-paste in the form of bricks, and sometimes mixed with it the aromatic seed of paliurus (rhamnus), as in Germany, and some other countries, cummin and fennel-seed are mixed with wheaten bread.

) At Esmeralda, as everywhere else throughout the missions, the Indians who will not be baptized, and who are merely aggregated in the community, live in a state of polygamy.

The number of wives differs much in different tribes.

It is most considerable among the Caribs, and all the nations that have preserved the custom of carrying off young girls from the neighbouring tribes.

How can we imagine domestic happiness in so unequal an association?

The women live in a sort of slavery, as they do in most nations which are in a state of barbarism.

The husbands being in the full enjoyment of absolute power, no complaint is heard in their presence.

An apparent tranquillity prevails in the household; the women are eager to anticipate the wishes of an imperious and sullen master; and they attend without distinction to their own children and those of their rivals.

The missionaries assert, what may easily be believed, that this domestic peace, the effect of fear, is singularly disturbed when the husband is long absent.

The wife who contracted the first ties then applies to the others the names of concubines and servants.

The quarrels continue till the return of the master, who knows how to calm their passions by the sound of his voice, by a mere gesticulation, or, if he thinks it necessary, by means a little more violent.

A certain inequality in the rights of the women is sanctioned by the language of the Tamanacs.

The husband calls the second and third wife the companions of the first;

and the first treats these companions as rivals and enemies (ipucjatoje), a term which truly expresses their position.

The whole weight of labour being supported by these unhappy women, we must not be surprised if, in some nations, their number is extremely small.

Where this happens, a kind of polyandry is formed, which we find more fully displayed in Thibet, and on the lofty mountains at the extremity of the Indian peninsula.

Among the Avanos and Maypures, brothers have often but one wife.

When an Indian, who lives in polygamy, becomes a christian, he is compelled by the missionaries, to choose among his wives her whom he prefers, and to reject the others.

At the moment of separation the new convert sometimes discovers the most valuable qualities in the wives he is obliged to abandon.

One understands gardening perfectly; another knows how to prepare chiza, an intoxicating beverage extracted from the root of cassava; all appear to him alike clever and useful.

Sometimes the desire of preserving his wives overcomes in the Indian his inclination to christianity; but most frequently, in his perplexity, the husband prefers submitting to the choice of the missionary, as to a blind fatality.

The Indians, who from May to August take journeys to the east of Esmeralda, to gather the vegetable productions of the mountains of Yumariquin, gave us precise notions of the course of the Orinoco to the east of the mission.

This part of my itinerary may differ entirely from the maps that preceded it.

I shall begin the description of this country with the granitic group of Duida, at the foot of which we sojourned.

This group is bounded on the west by the Rio Tamatama, and on the east by the Rio Guapo.

Between these two tributary streams of the Orinoco, amid the morichales, or clumps of mauritia palm-trees, which surround Esmeralda, the Rio Sodomoni flows, celebrated for the excellence of the pine-apples that grow upon its banks.

I measured, on the 22nd of May, in the savannah at the foot of Duida, a base of four hundred and seventy-five metres in length; the angle, under which the summit of the mountain appeared at the distance of thirteen thousand three hundred and twenty-seven metres, was still nine degrees.

A

trigonometric measurement, made with great care, gave me for Duida (that is, for the most elevated peak, which is south-west of the Cerro Maraguaca) two thousand one hundred and seventy-nine metres, or one thousand one hundred and eighteen toises, above the plain of Esmeralda.

The Cerro Duida thus yields but little in height (scarcely eighty or one hundred toises) to the summit of St. Gothard, or the Silla of Caracas on the shore of Venezuela.

It is indeed considered as a colossal mountain in those countries; and this celebrity gives a precise idea of the mean height of Parima and of all the mountains of eastern America.

To the east of the Sierra Nevada de Merida, as well as to the south-east of the Paramo de las Rosas, none of the chains that extend in the same parallel line reach the height of the central ridge of the Pyrenees.

The granitic summit of Duida is so nearly perpendicular that the Indians have vainly attempted the ascent.

It is a well-known fact that mountains not remarkable for elevation are sometimes the most inaccessible.

At the beginning and end of the rainy season, small flames, which seem to change their place, are seen on the top of Duida.

This phenomenon, the existence of which is borne out by concurrent testimony, has caused this mountain to be improperly called a volcano.

As it stands nearly alone, it might be supposed that lightning from time to time sets fire to the brushwood; but this supposition loses its probability when we reflect on the extreme difficulty with which plants are ignited in these damp climates.

It must be observed also that these flames are said to appear often where the rock seems scarcely covered with turf, and that the same igneous phenomena are visible, on days entirely exempt from storms, on the summit of Guaraco or Murcielago, a hill opposite the mouth of the Rio Tamatama, on the southern bank of the Orinoco.

This hill is scarcely elevated one hundred toises above the neighbouring plains.

If the statements of the natives be correct, it is probable that some subterraneous cause produces these flames on the Duida and the Guaraco; for they never appear on the lofty neighbouring mountains of Jao and Maraguaca, so often wrapped in electric storms.

The granite of the Cerro Duida is full of veins, partly open, and partly filled with crystals of quartz and pyrites.

Gaseous and inflammable emanations, either of hydrogen or of naphtha, may pass through these veins.

Of this the mountains of Caramania, of Hindookho, and of Himalaya, furnish frequent examples.

We saw the appearance of flames in many parts of eastern America subject to earthquakes, even from secondary rocks, as at Cuchivero, near Cumanacoa.

The fire shows itself when the ground, strongly heated by the sun, receives the first rains; or when, after violent showers, the earth begins to dry.

The first cause of these igneous phenomena lies at immense depths below the secondary rocks, in the primitive formations: the rains and the decomposition of atmospheric water act only a secondary part.

The hottest springs of the globe issue immediately from granite.

Petroleum gushes from mica-schist; and frightful detonations are heard at Encaramada, between the rivers Arauca and Cuchivero, in the midst of the granitic soil of the Orinoco and the Sierra Parima.

Here, as everywhere else on the globe, the focus of volcanoes is in the most ancient soils; and it appears that an intimate connection exists between the great phenomena that heave up and liquify the crust of our planet, and those igneous meteors which are seen from time to time on its surface, and which from their littleness we are tempted to attribute solely to the influence of the atmosphere.

Duida, though lower than the height assigned to it by popular belief, is however the most prominent point of the whole group of mountains that separate the basin of the Lower Orinoco from that of the Amazon.

These mountains lower still more rapidly on the north-east, toward the Purunama, than on the east, toward the Padamo and the Rio Ocamo.

In the former direction the most elevated summits next to Duida are Cuneva, at the sources of the Rio Paru (one of the tributary streams of the Ventuari), Sipapo, Calitamini, which forms one group with Cunavami and the peak of Umiana.

East of Duida, on the right bank of the Orinoco, Maravaca, or Sierra Maraguaca, is distinguished by its elevation, between the Rio Caurimoni and the Padamo; and on the left bank of the Orinoco rise the mountains of Guanaja and Yumariquin, between the Rios Amaguaca and Gehette.

It is almost superfluous to repeat that the line which passes through these lofty summits (like those of the Pyrenees, the Carpathian mountains, and so many other chains of the old continent) is very distinct from the line that marks the partition of the waters.

This latter line, which separates the tributary streams of the Lower and Upper Orinoco, intersects the meridian of 64 degrees in latitude 4 degrees.

After having separated the sources of the Rio Branco and the Carony, it runs north-west, sending off the waters of the Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari towards the south, and the waters of the Arui, the Caura, and the Cuchivero towards the north.