(Phœnicopterus) resting on their heads; the body at the same time being
covered with aquatic birds, like the trunk of a tree.
[49] p. 24.--“_Down his swelling throat._”
The saliva with which the boa covers his prey hastens the process of
decomposition; the muscular flesh thus becomes softened into such a
gelatinous state, that he can force entire limbs of larger, and bodies
of smaller, animals down his throat without division. The Creoles call
this gigantic serpent from these circumstances, “Tragavenado,” which
means “Stag swallower:” they tell fabulous stories of snakes being
seen with the antlers of a stag (which it was impossible to swallow)
sticking in their throats. I have several times seen the boa swimming
in the Orinoco, and in the smaller forest streams, the Tuamini, the
Temi and the Atabapo. It holds its head above the water like a dog.
Its skin is finely spotted. It is said to attain a length of 48 feet;
but the largest skins which have as yet been brought to Europe and
carefully measured do not exceed 21 to 23 feet. The South American boa
(which is a Python) differs from the East Indian. On the Ethiopian boa,
see Diodor. lib. iii. p. 204, ed. Wesseling.
[50] p. 25.--“_Using ants, gums, and earth as food._”
It was a very prevalent report on the coasts of Cumana, New Barcelona,
and Caraccas, visited by the Franciscan monks of Guiana on their return
from the missions, that there were men on the banks of the Orinoco
who ate earth. When, in returning from the Rio Negro, we descended
the Orinoco in thirty-six days, we passed the day of the 6th of June,
1800, in the Mission inhabited by the earth-eating Otomacs. This little
village is called La Concepcion de Uruana, and is very picturesquely
situated at the foot of a granite rock. I found its geographical
position to be 7° 8′ 3″ N. lat., and 67° 18′ W. long. from Greenwich.
The earth which the Otomacs eat is a soft unctuous clay; a true
potter’s clay, of a yellowish-grey colour due to a little oxide of
iron. They seek for it in particular spots on the banks of the Orinoco
and the Meta, and select it with care. They distinguish the taste of
one kind of earth from that of another, and do not consider all clays
as equally agreeable to eat. They knead the earth into balls of about
five or six inches diameter, which they burn or roast by a weak fire
until the outside assumes a reddish tint. The balls are remoistened
when about to be eaten. These Indians are generally wild uncultivated
beings, and altogether averse to any kind of tillage. It is a proverb
even among the most distant of the nations living on the Orinoco, when
speaking of anything very unclean, to say that it is “so dirty, that
the Otomacs eat it.”
As long as the waters of the Orinoco and the Meta are low these Indians
live on fish and river tortoises. They kill the fish with arrows when
at the surface of the water, a pursuit in which we have often admired
their great dexterity. During the periodical swelling of the rivers the
taking of fish ceases, for it is as difficult to fish in deep river
water as in the deep sea. It is in this interval, which is of two or
three months’ duration, that the Otomacs swallow great quantities of
earth. We have found considerable stores of it in their huts, the clay
balls being piled together in pyramidal heaps. The very intelligent
monk, Fray Ramon Bueno, a native of Madrid (who lived twelve years
among these Indians), assured us that one of them would eat from three
quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter in a day. According to
the accounts which the Otomacs themselves give, this earth forms their
principal subsistence during the rainy season, though they eat at the
same time occasionally, when they can obtain it, a lizard, a small
fish, or a fern root. They have such a predilection for the clay, that
even in the dry season, when they can obtain plenty of fish, they
eat a little earth after their meals every day as a kind of dainty.
These men have a dark copper-brown complexion, and unpleasing Tartar
features. They are fat, but not large-bellied. The Franciscan monk who
lived among them as a missionary, assured us that he could perceive no
alteration in their health during the earth-eating season.
The simple facts are therefore as follows:--The Indians eat large
quantities of earth without injury to their health; and they themselves
regard the earth so eaten as an alimentary substance, _i. e._ they
feel themselves satisfied by eating it, and that for a considerable
time; and they attribute this to the earth or clay, and not to the
other scanty articles of subsistence which they now and then obtain in
addition. If you inquire from an Otomac about his winter provision, (in
tropical South America the rainy season is usually called winter), he
points to the heap of clay balls stored in his hut. But these simple
facts by no means determine the questions, whether the clay be really
an alimentary substance? whether earths be capable of assimilation? or
whether they merely serve to appease hunger by distending the stomach?
I cannot pretend to decide these questions. (Rel. hist. T. ii. p.
618-620.) It is curious that the usually credulous and uncritical
Father Gumilla positively denies the earth-eating as such. (Historia
del Rio Orinoco, nueva impr. 1791, T. i. p. 179.) He affirms that the
balls of clay had maize-meal and crocodile-fat mixed with them. But the
missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno, and our friend and travelling companion,
the lay brother Fray Juan Gonzalez, who was lost at sea off the Coast
of Africa with part of our collections, both assured us that the
Otomacs never mix crocodile fat with the clay; and of the meal said to
be mixed with it we heard absolutely nothing during our stay in Uruana.
The earth which we brought back with us, and which Vauquelin analysed,
is thoroughly pure and unmixed. May Gumilla, by a confusion of things
wholly distinct, have been alluding to the preparation of bread from
the long pod of a kind of Inga, which is previously buried in the earth
in order to hasten the commencement of the first stage of decay? That
the health of the Otomacs should not suffer from eating so much earth
appears to me particularly remarkable. Have they become accustomed to
it in the course of several generations?
In all tropical countries, human beings shew an extraordinary and
almost irresistible desire to swallow earth; and not alkaline earths,
which they might be supposed to crave to neutralize acid, but unctuous
and strong-smelling clays. It is often necessary to confine children
to prevent them from running out to eat earth immediately after a fall
of rain. I have observed with astonishment the Indian women in the
village of Banco on the Magdalena River, whilst engaged in shaping
earthen vessels on the potter’s wheel, put great lumps of clay into
their mouths. The same thing was remarked at an earlier period by Gili.
(Saggio di Storia Americana, T. ii. p. 311.) Wolves also eat earth, and
especially clay, in winter. It would be important to examine carefully
the excrements of animals and men that eat earth. With the exception of
the Otomacs, individuals of all other races who indulge for any length
of time the strange desire of earth-eating have their health injured by
it. At the mission of San Borja, we saw the child of an Indian woman,
who, his mother said, would hardly eat anything but earth. He was,
however, wasted nearly to a skeleton.
Why is it that in the temperate and cold zones this morbid craving for
eating earth is so much more rare, and is almost entirely confined,
when it is met with, to children and pregnant women; while in the
tropics it would appear to be indigenous in all quarters of the globe?
In Guinea the negroes eat a yellowish earth, which they call Caouac.
When brought as slaves to the West Indies, they try to obtain a similar
earth, and affirm that in their own country the habit never did them
any harm. In the American Islands they were made ill by it, and it was
forbidden in consequence; but a kind of earth (un tuf rouge jaunâtre)
was, in 1751, sold secretly in the market in Martinique. “Les negres
de Guinée disent que dans leur pays ils mangent habituellement une
certaine terre, dont le goût leur plait, sans en être incommodés.
Ceux qui sont dans l’abus de manger du Caouac en sont si friands
qu’il n’y a pas de châtiment qui puisse les empêcher de dévorer de la
terre.” (Thibault de Chanvalon, Voyage à la Martinique, p. 85.) In
the Island of Java, between Sarabaya and Samarang, Labillardière saw
small square reddish-coloured cakes exposed for sale in the villages.
The natives called them tana ampo (tanah, in Malay and Javanese,
signifies earth). On examination and enquiry he found that the cakes
consisted of reddish clay, and that they were eaten. (Voyage à la
Récherche de la Pérouse, T. ii. p. 322.) The edible clay of Samarang
has recently been sent to Berlin by Mohnike, in 1847, in the shape of
rolled tubes, like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It
is a fresh-water formation deposited on limestone, and consisting of
microscopic Polygastrica, Gaillonella, Naviculas, and Phytolitharia.
(Bericht über die Verhandl. der Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, aus dem J.
1848, S. 222-225.) The inhabitants of New Caledonia, to appease their
hunger, eat pieces as big as the fist of friable steatite, which
Vauquelin found to contain in addition no inconsiderable quantity
of copper. (Voyage à la Récherche de la Pérouse, T. ii. p. 205.) In
Popayan, and several parts of Peru, calcareous earth is sold in the
streets as an eatable for the Indians; it is used with Coca (the
leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum.) Thus we find the practice
of eating earth diffused throughout the torrid zone, among indolent
races inhabiting the finest and most fertile parts of the globe. But
accounts have also come from the North, through Berzelius and Retzius,
according to which, hundreds of cartloads of earth containing Infusoria
are said to be annually consumed by the country people, in the most
remote parts of Sweden, as breadmeal, and even more from fancy (like
the smoking of tobacco) than from necessity! In Finland this kind of
earth is occasionally mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells
of animalculæ, so small and soft that they do not crunch perceptibly
between the teeth; it fills the stomach, but gives no real nourishment.
In periods of war, chronicles and documents preserved in archives often
give intimation of earths containing infusoria having been eaten;
speaking of them under the vague and general name of “mountain meal.”
It was thus during the Thirty Years’ War in Pomerania (at Camin); in
the Lausitz (at Muskau); and in the territory of Dessau (at Klieken);
and subsequently in 1719 and 1733 at the fortress of Wittenberg. (See
Ehrenberg über das unsichtbar wirkende organische Leben, 1842, S. 41.)
[51] p. 25.--“_Figures graven on the rock._”
In the interior of South America, between the 2d and 4th degrees of
North latitude, a forest-covered plain is enclosed by four rivers,
the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare. In this
district are found rocks of granite and of syenite, covered, like
those of Caicara and Uruana, with colossal symbolical figures of
crocodiles and tigers, and drawings of household utensils, and of the
sun and moon. At the present time this remote corner of the earth is
entirely without human inhabitants, throughout an extent of more than
8000 square geographical miles. The tribes nearest to its boundaries
are wandering naked savages, in the lowest stage of human existence,
and far removed from any thoughts of carving hieroglyphics on rocks.
One may trace in South America an entire zone, extending through
more than eight degrees of longitude, of rocks so ornamented; viz.
from the Rupuniri, Essequibo, and the mountains of Pacaraima, to the
banks of the Orinoco and of the Yupura. These carvings may belong to
very different epochs, for Sir Robert Schomburgk even found on the
Rio Negro representations of a Spanish galiot (Reisen in Guiana und
am Orinoko, übersetzt von Otto Schomburgk, 1841, S. 500), which must
have been of a later date than the beginning of the 16th century;
and this in a wilderness where the natives were probably as rude
then as at the present time. But it must not be forgotten that, as I
have elsewhere noticed, nations of very different descent, when in a
similar uncivilized state, having the same disposition to simplify and
generalise outlines, and being impelled by inherent mental dispositions
to form rhythmical repetitions and series, may be led to produce
similar signs and symbols. (Compare Relation hist. T. ii. p. 589, and
Martius über die Physionomie des Pflanzenreichs in Brasilien, 1824, S.
14.)
At the Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 17th of
November, 1836, there was read a memoir by Sir Robert Schomburgk “On
the Religious Traditions of the Macusi Indians, who inhabit the Upper
Mahu and a part of the Pacaraima Mountains;” a nation, consequently,
who for a century (since the journey of the adventurous Hortsmann,)
have not changed their residence. Sir Robert Schomburgk says: “The
Macusis believe that the sole survivor of a general deluge repeopled
the earth by changing stones into human beings.” This myth (the fruit
of the lively imagination of these nations, and which reminds us
of Deucalion and Pyrrha), shews itself in a somewhat altered form
among the Tamanaks of the Orinoco. When asked how mankind survived
the great flood, the “age of waters” of the Mexicans, they reply
without any hesitation, that ‘one man and one woman took refuge on
the high mountain of Tamanacu, on the banks of the Asiveru, and that
they then threw over their heads and behind their backs the fruits
of the Mauritia-palm, from the kernels of which sprang men and women
who repeopled the earth.’ Some miles from Encaramada, there rises,
in the middle of the savannah, the rock Tepu-Mereme, or the painted
rock. It shews several figures of animals and symbolical outlines
which resemble much those observed by us at some distance above
Encaramada, near Caycara, in 7° 5′ to 7° 40′ lat. and 66° 28′ to 67°
23′ W. long. from Greenwich. Rocks thus marked are found between the
Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (in 2° 5′ to 3° 20′ lat.), and what is
particularly remarkable, 560 geographical miles farther to the East in
the solitudes of the Parime. This last fact is placed beyond a doubt
by the journal of Nicholas Hortsmann, of which I have seen a copy in
the handwriting of the celebrated D’Anville. That simple and modest
traveller wrote down every day, on the spot, what had appeared to
him most worthy of notice, and he deserves perhaps the more credence
because, being full of dissatisfaction at having failed to discover
the objects of his researches, the Lake of Dorado, with lumps of gold
and a diamond mine, he looked with a certain degree of contempt on
whatever fell in his way. He found, on the 16th of April, 1749, on the
banks of the Rupunuri, at the spot where the river winding between the
Macarana mountains forms several small cascades, and before arriving
in the district immediately round Lake Amucu, “rocks covered with
figures,”--or as he says in Portuguese, “de varias letras.” We were
shown at the rock of Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare,
signs which were called characters, arranged in lines,--but they were
only ill-shaped figures of heavenly bodies, boa-serpents, and the
utensils employed in preparing manioc-meal. I have never found among
these painted rocks (piedras pintadas) any symmetrical arrangement or
any regular even-spaced characters. I am therefore disposed to think
that the word “letras” in Hortsmann’s journal must not be taken in the
strictest sense.
Schomburgk was not so fortunate as to rediscover the rock seen by
Hortsmann, but he has seen and described others on the banks of the
Essequibo, near the cascade of Warraputa. “This cascade,” he says,
“is celebrated not only for its height but also for the quantity of
figures cut on the rock, which have great resemblance to those which
I have seen in the Island of St. John, one of the Virgin Islands, and
which I consider to be, without doubt, the work of the Caribs, by whom
that part of the Antilles was formerly inhabited. I made the utmost
efforts to detach portions of the rock which contained the inscription,
and which I desired to take with me; but the stone was too hard, and
fever had taken away my strength. Neither promises nor threats could
prevail on the Indians to give a single blow with a hammer to these
rocks,--the venerable monuments of the superior mental cultivation of
their predecessors. They regard them as the work of the Great Spirit,
and the different tribes who we met with, though living at a great
distance, were nevertheless acquainted with them. Terror was painted on
the faces of my Indian companions, who appeared to expect every moment
that the fire of heaven would fall on my head. I saw clearly that my
endeavours would be fruitless, and I contented myself with bringing
away a complete drawing of these memorials.” The last determination was
certainly the best, and the editor of the English Journal, to my great
satisfaction, adds a note to the effect that it is to be wished that
no one else may be more successful than Mr. Schomburgk, and that no
future traveller from civilized countries may do anything towards the
destruction of these monuments of the unprotected Indians.
The symbolical signs seen by Robert Schomburgk in the Valley of the
Essequibo, near the rapids of Waraputa, (Richard Schomburgk, Reisen in
Britisch-Guiana, Th. i. S. 320), were remarked by him to bear a great
resemblance to genuine Carib ones in one of the small Virgin Islands
(St. John’s); but notwithstanding the wide extent of the invasions
of the Caribs, and the ancient power of this fine race, I cannot
believe that all the rock engravings,--which, as I have said, form
an immense belt traversing a great part of South America from west
to east,--are to be regarded as their work. I am inclined rather to
view these remains as traces of an ancient civilisation,--belonging,
perhaps, to an epoch when the tribes whom we now distinguish by various
appellations were still unknown. Even the veneration everywhere
testified by the Indians of the present day for these rude sculptures
of their predecessors, shews that they have no idea of the execution
of similar works. There is another circumstance which should be
mentioned: between Encaramada and Caycara, on the banks of the Orinoco,
a number of these hieroglyphical figures are sculptured on the face
of precipices at a height which could now be reached only by means of
extraordinarily high scaffolding. If one asks the natives how these
figures can have been cut, they answer, laughing, as if it were a fact
of which none but a white man could be ignorant, that “in the days of
the great waters their fathers went in canoes at that height.” Thus a
geological fancy is made to afford an answer to the problem presented
by a civilisation which has long passed away.
Let me be permitted to introduce here a remark which I borrow from
a letter addressed to me by the distinguished traveller, Sir Robert
Schomburgk. “The hieroglyphical figures are more widely extended than
you had perhaps supposed. During my expedition, which had for its
object the examination of the Corentyn River, I not only observed some
colossal figures on the rock of Timeri (4-1/2° N. lat. and 57-1/2° W.
long.), but I also discovered similar ones near the great cataracts
of the Corentyn, in 4° 21′ 30″ N. lat. and 57° 55′ 30″ W. long. These
figures are executed with much greater care than any which I discovered
in Guiana. Their size is about ten feet, and they appear to represent
human figures. The head-dress is extremely remarkable; it encompasses
the head, spreading out considerably in breadth, and is not unlike the
halos represented in paintings as surrounding the heads of Saints and
Sacred Persons. I have left my drawings of these figures in the colony,
but I hope some day to be able to lay them all before the public. I
saw ruder figures on the Cuyuwini, a river which empties itself into
the Essequibo in latitude 2° 16′ N., entering it from the north-west;
and I have since seen similar figures on the Essequibo itself in 1°
40′ N. lat. These figures extend, therefore, as ascertained by actual
observation, from 7° 10′ to 1° 40′ N. lat., and from 57° 30′ to 66° 30′
W. long. Thus the zone of pictured rocks extends, so far as it has been
at present examined, over a space of 192000 square geographical miles,
comprising the basins of the Corentyn, the Essequibo, and the Orinoco;
a circumstance from which we may form some inferences respecting the
former amount of population in this part of the continent.”
Other remarkable remains of a degree of civilisation which no longer
exists, are the granite vases with graceful labyrinthine ornaments, and
the earthen masks resembling Roman ones, which have been discovered on
the Mosquito coast, among wild Indians. (Archæologia Britan. vol. v.
1779, p. 318-324; and vol. vi. 1782, p. 107.) I have had them engraved
in the “Picturesque Atlas” which accompanies the historical portion
of my Travels to the Equinoctial Regions. Antiquaries are astonished
at the similarity of these ornaments (resembling a well-known Grecian
form), to those of the Palace of Mitla, near Oaxaca, in Mexico. In
looking at Peruvian carvings, I have never remarked any figures of the
large-nosed race of men, so frequently represented in the bas-reliefs
of Palenque in Guatimala, and in the Aztec paintings. Klaproth
remembered having seen individuals with similar large noses among the
Chalcas, a northern Mogul tribe. It is well known that many tribes of
the North American red or copper-coloured Indians have fine aquiline
noses; and that this is an essential physiognomic distinction between
them and the present inhabitants of Mexico, New Granada, Quito, and
Peru. Are the large-eyed, comparatively fair-complexioned people,
spoken of by Marchand as having been seen in 54° and 58° lat. on the
north-west coast of America, descended from an Alano-Gothic race, the
Usüni of the interior of Asia?
[52] p. 25.--“_Apparently weaponless, and yet prepared for murder._”
The Otomacs often poison the thumb-nail with Curare. A mere scratch
of the nail is deadly if the curare mixes with the blood. We obtained
specimens of the climbing plant, from the juice of which the curare is
prepared, at Esmeralda on the Upper Orinoco, but unfortunately we did
not find it in blossom. Judging by its physiognomy it appears to be
related to Strychnos (Rel. hist. T. ii. p. 547-556). Since the notice
in the work referred to of the curare or ourari (previously mentioned
by Raleigh, both as a plant and as a poison), the brothers Robert
and Richard Schomburgk have done much towards making us accurately
acquainted with the nature and preparation of this substance, of
which I was the first to bring a considerable quantity to Europe.
Richard Schomburgk found the plant in blossom in Guiana on the banks
of the Pomeroon and the Sururu in the territory of the Caribs, who
are not, however, acquainted with the manner of preparing the poison.
His instructive work (Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, Th. i. S. 441-461),
contains the chemical analysis of the juice of the Strychnos toxifera,
which, notwithstanding its name and its organic structure, does not
contain, according to Boussingault, any trace of strychnine. Virchou
and Münter’s interesting physiological experiments make it probable
that the curare or ourari poison does not kill by mere external
absorption, but only when absorbed by living animal substance of
which the continuity has been severed (_i. e._ which has been wounded
slightly); that it does not belong to the class of tetanic poisons;
and that its particular effect is to take away the power of voluntary
muscular movement, whilst the involuntary functions of the heart and
intestines still continue. Compare, also, the older chemical analysis
of Boussingault, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, T. xxxix.
1828, p. 24-37.