Where, through deserts wild and dreary,
Orinoco dashes on,
Sits a Parrot old and weary,
Like a sculptur’d thing of stone.
Through its rocky barriers flowing,
Onward rolls the foaming stream;
Waving palms on high are glowing
In the sun’s meridian beam.
Ceaselessly the waves are heaving,
Sparkling up in antic play;
While the sunny rays are weaving
Rainbows in the feathery spray.
Where yon billows wild are breaking,
Sleeps a tribe for evermore,
Who, their native land forsaking,
Refuge sought on this lone shore.
As they lived, free, dauntless ever,
So the brave Aturians died;
And the green banks of the river
All their mortal relics hide.
Yet the Parrot, ne’er forgetting
Those who loved him, mourns them still;
On the stone his sharp beak whetting,
While the air his wailings fill.
Where are now the youths who bred him,
To pronounce their mother tongue,—
Where the gentle maids who fed him,
And who built his nest when young?
All, alas! are lifeless lying,
Stretch’d upon their grassy bed;
Nor can all his mournful crying,
E’er awake the slumbering dead.
Still he calls with voice imploring,
To a world that heeds him not;
Nought replies but waters roaring—
No kind soul bewails his lot.
Swift the savage turns his rudder,
When his eyes the bird behold;
None e’er saw without a shudder
That Aturian Parrot old!
THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS
IN THE
PRIMEVAL FOREST.
If the faculty of appreciating nature, in different races of man, and if
the character of the countries they now inhabit, or have traversed in
their earlier migrations, have more or less enriched the respective
languages by appropriate terms, expressive of the forms of mountains, the
state of vegetation, the appearances of the atmosphere, and the contour
and grouping of the clouds, it must be admitted that by long use and
literary caprice many of these designations have been diverted from the
sense they originally bore. Words have gradually been regarded as
synonymous, which ought to have remained distinct; and languages have thus
lost a portion of the expressiveness and force which might else have
imparted a physiognomical character to descriptions of natural scenery. As
an evidence of the extent to which a communion with nature, and the
requirements of a laborious nomadic life, may enrich language, I would
recall the abundance of characteristic denominations employed in Arabic
and Persian, to distinguish plains, steppes, and deserts[65], according as
they are entirely bare, covered with sand, or intersected by tabular
masses of rock; or as they are diversified by spots of pasture land and
extended tracts of social plants. The old Castilian dialects are no less
remarkable[66] for the copiousness of their terms descriptive of the
physiognomy of mountains, especially in reference to those features which
recur in all regions of the earth, and which proclaim afar off the nature
of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes and the mountainous parts of
the Canaries, the Antilles, and the Philippines, are all inhabited by
races of Spanish descent; and as the nature of the soil has there
influenced the mode of life of the inhabitants to a greater degree than in
other parts of the world, excepting perhaps in the Himalaya and the
Thibetian Highlands; so also the designations expressive of the forms of
mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as in
schistose, calcareous, and sandstone formations, have been happily
preserved in daily use. Under such circumstances, newly formed words
become incorporated with the common stock. Speech acquires life from
everything which bears the true impress of nature, whether it be by the
definition of sensuous impressions received from the external world, or by
the expression of thoughts and feelings that emanate from our inner being.
In descriptions of natural phenomena, as well as in the choice of the
expressions employed, this truth to nature should be especially kept in
view. The object will be the best attained by simplicity in the narration
of whatever we have ourselves observed and experienced, and by closely
examining the locality with which the subject-matter is connected.
Generalisation of physical views, and the enumeration of results, belong
principally to the study of the Cosmos, which, indeed, must still be
regarded as an inductive science; but the vivid delineation of organic
forms (animals and plants,) in their picturesque and local relations to
the multiform surface of the earth, although limited to a small section of
terrestrial life, still affords materials for this study. It acts as a
stimulus to the mind wherever it is capable of appreciating the great
phenomena of nature in an æsthetic point of view.
To these phenomena belongs especially the boundless forest district which,
in the torrid zone of South America, connects the river basins of the
Orinoco and the Amazon. This region deserves, in the strictest sense of
the word, to be called a _primeval_ forest—a term that has, in recent
times, been so frequently misapplied. Primeval (or primitive), as applied
to a forest, a nation, or a period of time, is a word of rather indefinite
signification, and generally but of relative import. If every wild forest,
densely covered with trees, on which man has never laid his destroying
hand, is to be regarded as a primitive forest, then the phenomenon is
common to many parts both of the temperate and the frigid zones; if,
however, this character consists in impenetrability, through which it is
impossible to clear with the axe, between trees measuring from 8 to 12
feet in diameter, a path of any length, primitive forests belong
exclusively to tropical regions. This impenetrability is by no means, as
is often erroneously supposed in Europe, always occasioned by the
interlaced climbing “lianes,” or creeping plants, for these often
constitute but a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacles
are the shrub-like plants which fill up every space between the trees, in
a zone where all vegetable forms have a tendency to become arborescent. If
travellers, the moment they set foot in a tropical region, and even while
on islands, in the vicinity of the sea-coast, imagine that they are within
the precincts of a primeval forest, the misconception must be ascribed to
their ardent desire of realizing a long-cherished wish. Every tropical
forest is not _primeval_ forest. I have scarcely ever used the latter term
in the narrative of my travels; although, I believe, that of all
investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius, Pöppig, Robert and
Richard Schomburgk, and myself, have spent the longest period of time in
primeval forests in the interior of a great continent.
Notwithstanding the striking richness of the Spanish language in
designations, (descriptive of natural objects, of which I have already
spoken), yet one and the same word _monte_ is employed for a mountain and
a forest, for _cerro_ (_montaña_), and for _selva_. In a work on the true
breadth and the greatest extension of the chain of the Andes towards the
east, I have shown how this twofold signification of the word _monte_ has
led to the error, in a fine and extensively circulated English map of
South America, of marking ranges of high mountains in districts occupied
only by plains. Where the Spanish map of La Cruz Olmedilla, which formed
the basis of so many others, indicated Cacao Woods, _Montes de Cacao_[67],
Cordilleras were supposed to exist, although the Cacao-tree affects only
the hottest of the low lands.
If we comprehend, in one general view, the woody region which embraces the
whole of South America, between the grassy plains of Venezuela (_los
Llanos de Caracas_) and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, lying between 8° north
and 19° south latitude, we perceive that this connected _Hylæa_ of the
tropical zone is unequalled in extent by any other on the surface of the
earth. Its area is about twelve times that of Germany. Traversed in all
directions by rivers, some of whose direct and indirect tributary streams
(as well those of the second as of the first order) surpass the Danube and
Rhine in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful luxuriance
of its vegetation to the twofold influence of great humidity and high
temperature. In the temperate zone, particularly in Europe and Northern
Asia, forests may be named from particular genera of trees which grow
together as social plants (_plantæ sociales_), and form separate woods. In
the Oak, Pine, and Birch forests of the northern regions, and in the
Linden or Lime Woods of the eastern, there usually predominates only one
species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ or Tiliaceæ; while sometimes a single
species of Piniferæ is intermixed with trees of deciduous foliage. Such
uniformity of association is unknown in tropical forests. The excessive
variety of their rich sylvan flora renders it vain to ask, of what do the
primeval forests consist. Numberless families of plants are here crowded
together; and even in small spaces, plants of the same species are rarely
associated. Every day, and with every change of place, new forms present
themselves to the traveller’s attention; often flowers, beyond his reach,
although the shape of the leaf and the ramifications of the plant excite
his curiosity.
The rivers, with their innumerable branches, are the only means of
traversing the country. Astronomical observations, or in the absence of
these, determinations by compass of the bends of the rivers, between the
Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, have shewn that two lonely
mission-stations might be situated only a few miles apart, and yet the
monks thereof, in visiting each other would require a day and a half to
make the passage in their hollow-tree canoes, along the windings of small
streams. The most striking evidence of the impenetrability of some
portions of these forests, is afforded by a trait in the habits of the
American tiger, or panther-like Jaguar. While the introduction of European
horned cattle, horses, and mules, has yielded so abundant a supply of food
to the beasts of prey in the extensive grassy and treeless plains of
Varinas, Meta, and Buenos Ayres; that these animals, (owing to the unequal
contest between them and their prey,) have considerably increased since
the discovery of America; other individuals of the same species lead a
toilsome life in the dense forests contiguous to the sources of the
Orinoco. The distressing loss of a large mastiff, the faithful companion
of our travels, while we were bivouacking near the junction of the
Cassiquiare with the Orinoco, induced us on our return from the
insect-swarming Esmeralda, to pass another night on the same spot
(uncertain whether he was devoured by a tiger) where we had already long
sought him in vain. We again heard in the immediate neighbourhood the
cries of the Jaguar, probably the very same animal to which we owed our
loss. As the cloudy state of the sky rendered it impossible to conduct
astronomical observations, we made our interpreter (_lenguaraz_) repeat to
us what the natives, our boatmen, related of the tigers of the country.
The so called black Jaguar is, as we learnt, not unfrequently found among
them. It is the largest and most blood-thirsty variety, and has a dark
brown skin marked with scarcely distinguishable black spots. It lives at
the foot of the mountain ranges of Maraguaca and Unturan. “The love of
wandering, and the rapacity of the Jaguars,” said our Indian narrator, one
of the Durimond tribe; “often lead them into such impenetrable thickets of
the forest, that they can no longer hunt on the ground, and then live for
a long time in the trees—the terror of the families of monkeys, and of the
prehensile-tailed viverra. (_Cercoleptes._)”
The journal which I wrote at the time in German, and from which I borrow
these extracts, was not entirely exhausted in the narrative of my travels
(published in French). It contains a circumstantial description of the
nocturnal life of animals; I might say, of their nocturnal voices in the
tropical forests. And this sketch seems to me to be especially adapted to
constitute one of the chapters of the _Views of Nature_. That which is
written down on the spot, or soon after the impression of the phenomena
has been received, may at least claim to possess more freshness than what
is produced by the recollection of long passed events.
We reached the bed of the Orinoco by descending from west to east along
the Rio Apure, whose inundations I have noticed in the sketch of the
Deserts and Steppes. It was the period of low water, and the average
breadth of the Apure was only a little more than 1200 feet; while the
Orinoco, at its confluence with the Apure (near the granite rocks of
Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base-line), was still upwards of
12,180 feet. Yet this point (the rock of Curiquima,) is 400 miles in a
straight line from the sea and from the delta of the Orinoco. Some of the
plains, watered by the Apure and the Payara, are inhabited by Yaruros and
Achaguas, who are called savages in the mission-villages established by
the monks, because they will not relinquish their independence. In
reference to social culture, they however occupy about the same scale as
those Indians, who, although baptized and living “under the bell” (_baxo
la campana_), have remained strangers to every form of instruction and
cultivation.
On leaving the Island del Diamante, where the Zambos, who speak Spanish,
cultivate the sugar-cane, we entered into a grand and wild domain of
nature. The air was filled with countless flamingoes (_Phœnicopterus_) and
other water-fowl, which seemed to stand forth from the blue sky like a
dark cloud in ever-varying outlines. The bed of the river had here
contracted to less than 1000 feet, and formed a perfectly straight canal,
which was inclosed on both sides by thick woods. The margin of the forest
presents a singular spectacle. In front of the almost impenetrable wall of
colossal trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there rises with
the greatest regularity on the sandy bank of the river, a low hedge of
Sauso, only four feet high; it consists of a small shrub, _Hermesia
castanifolia_, which forms a new genus[68] of the family of Euphorbiaceæ.
A few slender, thorny palms, called by the Spaniards Piritu and Corozo
(perhaps species of _Martinezia_ or _Bactris_) stand close alongside; the
whole resembling a trimmed garden hedge, with gate-like openings at
considerable distances from each other, formed undoubtedly by the large
four-footed animals of the forests, for convenient access to the river. At
sunset, and more particularly at break of day, the American Tiger, the
Tapir, and the Peccary (_Pecari_, _Dicotyles_) may be seen coming forth
from these openings accompanied by their young, to give them drink. When
they are disturbed by a passing Indian canoe, and are about to retreat
into the forest, they do not attempt to rush violently through these
hedges of Sauso, but proceed deliberately along the bank, between the
hedge and river, affording the traveller the gratification of watching
their motions for sometimes four or five hundred paces, until they
disappear through the nearest opening. During a seventy-four days’ almost
uninterrupted river navigation of 1520 miles up the Orinoco, to the
neighbourhood of its sources, and along the Cassiquiare, and the Rio
Negro—during the whole of which time we were confined to a narrow
canoe—the same spectacle presented itself to our view at many different
points, and, I may add, always with renewed excitement. There came to
drink, bathe, or fish, groups of creatures belonging to the most opposite
species of animals; the larger mammalia with many-coloured herons,
palamedeas with the proudly-strutting curassow (_Crax Alector_, _C.
Pauxi_). “It is here as in Paradise” (_es como en el Paradiso_), remarked
with pious air our steersman, an old Indian, who had been brought up in
the house of an ecclesiastic. But the gentle peace of the primitive golden
age does not reign in the paradise of these American animals, they stand
apart, watch, and avoid each other. The Capybara, a cavy (or river-hog)
three or four feet long (a colossal repetition of the common Brazilian
cavy, (_Cavia Aguti_), is devoured in the river by the crocodile, and on
the shore by the tiger. They run so badly, that we were frequently able to
overtake and capture several from among the numerous herds.
Below the mission of Santa Barbara de Arichuna we passed the night as
usual in the open air, on a sandy flat, on the bank of the Apure, skirted
by the impenetrable forest. We had some difficulty in finding dry wood to
kindle the fires with which it is here customary to surround the bivouac,
as a safeguard against the attacks of the Jaguar. The air was bland and
soft, and the moon shone brightly. Several crocodiles approached the bank;
and I have observed that fire attracts these creatures as it does our
crabs and many other aquatic animals. The oars of our boats were fixed
upright in the ground, to support our hammocks. Deep stillness prevailed,
only broken at intervals by the blowing of the fresh-water dolphins[69],
which are peculiar to the river net-work of the Orinoco (as, according to
Colebrooke, they are also to the Ganges, as high up the river as Benares);
they followed each other in long tracks.
After eleven o’clock, such a noise began in the contiguous forest, that
for the remainder of the night all sleep was impossible. The wild cries of
animals rung through the woods. Among the many voices which resounded
together, the Indians could only recognise those which, after short
pauses, were heard singly. There was the monotonous, plaintive, cry of the
Aluates (howling monkeys), the whining, flute-like notes of the small
sapajous, the grunting murmur of the striped nocturnal ape[70]
(_Nyctipithecus trivirgatus_, which I was the first to describe), the
fitful roar of the great tiger, the Cuguar or maneless American lion, the
peccary, the sloth, and a host of parrots, parraquas (_Ortalides_), and
other pheasant-like birds. Whenever the tigers approached the edge of the
forest, our dog, who before had barked incessantly, came howling to seek
protection under the hammocks. Sometimes the cry of the tiger resounded
from the branches of a tree, and was then always accompanied by the
plaintive piping tones of the apes, who were endeavouring to escape from
the unwonted pursuit.
If one asks the Indians why such a continuous noise is heard on certain
nights, they answer, with a smile, that “the animals are rejoicing in the
beautiful moonlight, and celebrating the return of the full moon.” To me
the scene appeared rather to be owing to an accidental, long-continued,
and gradually increasing conflict among the animals. Thus, for instance,
the jaguar will pursue the peccaries and the tapirs, which, densely
crowded together, burst through the barrier of tree-like shrubs which
opposes their flight. Terrified at the confusion, the monkeys on the tops
of the trees join their cries with those of the larger animals. This
arouses the tribes of birds who build their nests in communities, and
suddenly the whole animal world is in a state of commotion. Further
experience taught us, that it was by no means always the festival of
moonlight that disturbed the stillness of the forest; for we observed that
the voices were loudest during violent storms of rain, or when the thunder
echoed and the lightning flashed through the depths of the woods. The
good-natured Franciscan monk who (notwithstanding the fever from which he
had been suffering for many months), accompanied us through the cataracts
of Atures and Maypures to San Carlos, on the Rio Negro, and to the
Brazilian coast, used to say, when apprehensive of a storm at night, “May
Heaven grant a quiet night both to us and to the wild beasts of the
forest!”
A singular contrast to the scenes I have here described, and which I had
repeated opportunities of witnessing, is presented by the stillness which
reigns within the tropics at the noontide of a day unusually sultry. I
borrow from the same journal the description of a scene at the Narrows of
Baraguan. Here the Orinoco forms for itself a passage through the western
part of the mountains of the Parime. That which is called at this
remarkable pass a Narrow (_Angostura del Baraguan_), is, however, a basin
almost 5700 feet in breadth. With the exception of an old withered stem of
Aubletia (_Apeiba Tiburbu_), and a new Apocinea (_Allamanda Salicifolia_),
the barren rocks were only covered with a few silvery croton shrubs. A
thermometer observed in the shade, but brought within a few inches of the
lofty mass of granite rock, rose to more than 122° Fahr. All distant
objects had wavy undulating outlines, the optical effect of the _mirage_.
Not a breath of air moved the dust-like sand. The sun stood in the zenith;
and the effulgence of light poured upon the river, and which, owing to a
gentle ripple of the waters, was brilliantly reflected, gave additional
distinctness to the red haze which veiled the distance. All the rocky
mounds and naked boulders were covered with large, thick-scaled Iguanas,
Gecko-lizards, and spotted Salamanders. Motionless, with uplifted heads
and widely extended mouths, they seemed to inhale the heated air with
ecstasy. The larger animals at such times take refuge in the deep recesses
of the forest, the birds nestle beneath the foliage of the trees, or in
the clefts of the rocks; but if in this apparent stillness of nature we
listen closely for the faintest tones, we detect, a dull, muffled sound, a
buzzing and humming of insects close to the earth, in the lower strata of
the atmosphere. Everything proclaims a world of active organic forces. In
every shrub, in the cracked bark of trees, in the perforated ground
inhabited by hymenopterous insects, life is everywhere audibly manifest.
It is one of the many voices of nature revealed to the pious and
susceptible spirit of man.