Life within the Great
River.--Fishes.--Alligators.--Turtles.--Porpoises and Manatís.
The Amazon is a crowded aquarium, holding representatives of every
zoological class--infusoria, hydras, fresh-water shells (chiefly
Ampullaria, Melania, and Unios), aquatic beetles (belonging mostly to
new genera), fishes, reptiles, water birds, and cetaceans. The abundance
and variety of fishes are extraordinary; so also are the species. This
great river is a peculiar ichthyic province, and each part has its
characteristics. According to Agassiz, the whole river, as well as its
tributaries, is broken up into numerous distinct fauna.[170] The
_pirarucú_, or "redfish" (the _Sudis gigas_ of science), is at once the
largest, most common, and most useful fish. The Peruvian Indians call it
_payshi_. It is a powerful fish, often measuring eight feet in length
and five in girth, clad in an ornamental coat-of-mail, its large scales
being margined with bright red. It ranges from Peru to Pará. It is
usually taken by the arrow or spear. Salted and dried, the meat will
keep for a year, and forms, with farina, the staple food on the Amazon.
The hard, rough tongue is used as a grater. Other fishes most frequently
seen are the prettily-spotted catfish, Pescada, Piranha, Acará, which
carries its young in its mouth, and a long, slender needle-fish. There
are ganoids in the river, but no sturgeons proper. Pickerel, perch, and
trout are also wanting. The sting-ray represents the shark family. As a
whole, the fishes of the Amazon have a marine character peculiarly their
own.
[Footnote 170: We await the Professor's examination of his "more than
80,000 specimens" before we give the number of new species.]
The reptilian inhabitants of this inland sea are introduced by numerous
batrachians, water-snakes (_Heliops_), and anacondas. But alligators
bear the palm for ugliness, size, and strength. In summer the main river
swarms with them; in the wet season they retreat to the interior lakes
and flooded forests. It was for this reason that we did not see an
alligator on the Napo. At low water they are found above the entrance of
the Curaray. About Obidos, where many of the pools dry up in the fine
months, the alligator buries itself in the mud, and sleeps till the
rainy season returns. "It is scarcely exaggerating to say (writes Bates)
that the waters of the Solimoens are as well stocked with large
alligators in the dry season as a ditch in England is in summer with
tadpoles." There are three or four species in the Amazon. The largest,
the Jacaré-uassú of the natives, attains a length of twenty feet. The
Jacaré-tinga is a smaller kind (only five feet long when full grown),
and has the long, slender muzzle of the extinct teleosaurus. The South
American alligators are smaller than the crocodiles of the Nile or
Ganges, and they are also inferior in rank. The head of the Jacaré-uassú
(the ordinary species) is broad, while the gavial of India has a long,
narrow muzzle, and that of the Egyptian lizard is oblong. The dentition
differs: while in the Old World saurian the teeth interlock, so that the
two jaws are brought close together, the teeth in the upper jaw of the
Amazonian cayman pass by the lower series outside of them. The latter
has therefore much less power. It has a ventral cuirass as well as
dorsal, and it is web-footed, while the crocodile has the toes
free--another mark of inferiority. Sluggish on land, the alligator is
very agile in its element. It never attacks man when on his guard, but
it is cunning enough to know when it may do this with safety. It lays
its eggs (about twenty) some distance from the river bank, covering them
with leaves and sticks. They are larger than those of Guayaquil, or
about four inches long, of an elliptical shape, with a rough, calcareous
shell. Negro venders sell them cooked in the streets of Pará.
Turtles are, perhaps, the most important product of the Amazon, not
excepting the pirarucú. The largest and most abundant species is the
Tortaruga grande. It measures, when full grown, nearly three feet in
length and two in breadth, and has an oval, smooth, dark-colored shell.
Every house has a little pond (called _currúl_) in the back yard to hold
a stock of turtles through the wet season. It furnishes the best meat on
the Upper Amazon. We found it very tender, palatable, and wholesome; but
Bates, who was obliged to live on it for years, says it is very cloying.
Every part of the creature is turned to account. The entrails are made
into soup; sausages are made of the stomach; steaks are cut from the
breast; and the rest is roasted in the shell.[171] The turtle lays its
eggs (generally between midnight and dawn) on the central and highest
part of the plaias, or about a hundred feet from the shore. The Indians
say it will lay only where itself was hatched out. With its hind
flippers it digs a hole two or three feet deep, and deposits from eighty
to one hundred and sixty eggs (Gibbon says from one hundred and fifty to
two hundred). These are covered with sand, and the next comer makes
another deposit on the top, and so on until the pit is full. Egg-laying
comes earlier on the Amazon than on the Napo, taking place in August and
September. The tracajá, a smaller species, lays in July and August; its
eggs are smaller and oval, but richer than those of the great turtles.
[Footnote 171: The natives have this notion about the land-tortoise,
that by throwing it three times over the head, the liver (the best part)
will be enlarged.]
The mammoth tortoise of the Galápagos lays an egg very similar in size
and shape to that of the Tortaruga, but a month later, or in October.
The hunting of turtle eggs is a great business on the Amazon. They are
used chiefly in manufacturing oil (mantéca) for illumination. Thrown
into a canoe, they are broken and beaten up by human feet; water is then
poured in, and the floating oil is skimmed off, purified over the fire
in copper kettles, and finally put up in three-gallon earthen jars for
the market. The turtles are caught for the table as they return to the
river after laying their eggs. To secure them, it suffices to turn them
over on their backs. The turtles certainly have a hard time of it. The
alligators and large fishes swallow the young ones by hundreds; jaguars
pounce upon the full-grown specimens as they crawl over the plaias, and
vultures and ibises attend the feast. But man is their most formidable
foe. The destruction of turtle life is incredible. It is calculated that
fifty millions of eggs are annually destroyed. Thousands of those that
escape capture in the egg period are collected as soon as hatched and
devoured, "the remains of yolk in their entrails being considered a
great delicacy." An unknown number of full-grown turtles are eaten by
the natives on the banks of the Marañon and Solimoens and their
tributaries, while every steamer, schooner, and little craft that
descends the Amazon is laden with turtles for the tables of Manáos,
Santarem, and Pará. When we consider, also, that all the mature turtles
taken are females, we wonder that the race is not well-nigh extinct.
They are, in fact, rapidly decreasing in numbers. A large turtle which
twenty years ago could be bought for fifty cents, now commands three
dollars. One would suppose that the males, being unmolested, would far
outnumber the other sex, but Bates says "they are immensely less
numerous than the females." The male turtles, or _Capitaris_, "are
distinguishable by their much smaller size, more circular shape, and the
greater length and thickness of their tails." Near the Tapajos we met a
third species, called _Matá-matá_. It has a deeply-keeled carapax,
beautifully bossed, and a hideous triangular head, having curious,
lobed, fleshy appendages, and nostrils prolonged into a tube. It is
supposed to have great virtues as a remedy for rheumatism. But the most
noticeable feature of the Amazonian fauna, as Agassiz has remarked, is
the abundance of cetaceans through its whole extent. From the brackish
estuary of Pará to the clear, cool waters at the base of the Andes,
these clumsy refugees from the ocean may be seen gamboling and blowing
as in their native element. Four different kinds of porpoises have been
seen. A black species lives in the Bay of Marajó. In the Middle Amazon
are two distinct porpoises, one flesh-colored;[172] and in the upper
tributaries is the _Inia Boliviensis_, resembling, but specifically
different from the sea-dolphin and the soosoo of the Ganges. "It was
several years (says the Naturalist on the Amazon) before I could induce
a fisherman to harpoon dolphins (_Boutos_) for me as specimens, for no
one ever kills these animals voluntarily; the superstitious people
believe that blindness would result from the use of the oil in lamps."
The herbivorous manati (already mentioned, Chap. XV.) is found
throughout the great river. It differs slightly from the Atlantic
species. It rarely measures over twelve feet in length. It is taken by
the harpoon or nets of chambiri twine. Both Herndon and Gibbon mention
seals as occurring in the Peruvian tributaries; but we saw none, neither
did Bates, Agassiz, or Edwards. They probably meant the manati.
[Footnote 172: _Dephinus pallidus_. Bates observed this species at Villa
Nova; we saw it at Coary, 500 miles west; and Herndon found it in the
Huallaga.]