to examine, I find that the surgeon Hortsmann, of Hildesheim, who
described these countries with great care, saw a second Alpine lake,
which he places two days’ journey above the confluence of the Mahu
with the Rio Parime (Tacutu?). It is a lake of black water on the top
of a mountain. He distinguishes it clearly from the Lake of Amucu,
which he describes as “covered with reeds.” The narratives of Hortsmann
and Santos are as far as the Portuguese manuscript maps of the Bureau
de la Marine at Rio Janeiro from indicating or admitting a constant
connection between the Rupunuri and the Lake of Amucu. In D’Anville’s
maps the rivers are better drawn in the first edition of his South
America, published in 1748, than in the more widely circulated edition
of 1760. Schomburgk’s travels have completely established this general
independence of the basins of the Rupunuri and the Essequibo; but he
remarks that during the rainy season the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary
of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caño Pirara. Such is the
state of these river basins, which are, as it were, still imperfectly
developed, and are almost entirely without separating ridges.
The Rupunuri and the village of Anai (lat. 3° 56′, long. 58° 34′), are
at present recognised as the political boundary between the British and
the Brazilian territories in these uncultivated regions. Sir Robert
Schomburgk makes his chronologically determined longitude of the Lake
of Amucu depend on the mean of several lunar distances (East and West)
measured by him during his stay at Anai, where he was detained some
time by severe illness. His longitudes for these points of the Parime
are in general a degree more easterly than the longitudes of my map of
Columbia. I am far from throwing any doubt on the observations of lunar
distances taken at Anai, and would only remark that their calculation
is important if it is desired to carry the comparison from the Lake of
Amucu to Esmeralda, which I found in long. 68° 23′ 19″ W. from Paris
(66° 21′ 19″ Gr.)
We see, then, the great Mar de la Parima,--which was so difficult to
displace from our maps that, after my return from America, it was still
set down as having a length of 160 English geographical miles,--reduced
by the result of modern researches to the little Lake of Amucu, of
two or three miles circumference. The illusions cherished for nearly
two centuries (several hundred lives were lost in the last Spanish
expedition for the discovery of el Dorado, in 1775), have thus finally
terminated, leaving some results of geographical knowledge as their
fruit. In 1512, thousands of soldiers perished in the expedition
undertaken by Ponce de Leon for the discovery of the “Fountain of
Youth,” supposed to exist in one of the Bahama Islands called Bimini,
and which is not to be found on our maps. This Expedition led to the
conquest of Florida, and to the knowledge of the great current of the
Gulf Stream, which issues forth through the Bahama channel. The thirst
for treasures, and the desire of renovated youth, stimulated with
nearly equal force the passions and cupidity of the nations of Europe.
[62] p. 216.--“_The Piriguao, one of the noblest of palm trees._”
Compare Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, Nova Genera Plant. æquinoct. T.
i. p. 315.
[63] p. 229.--“_The vault or cemetery of an extinct nation._”
During the period of my stay in the forests of the Orinoco, these
caves of bones were examined by order of the Court. The Missionary of
the Cataracts had been unjustly accused of having discovered in the
caves treasures which had been hidden there by the Jesuits previous to
their flight.
THE NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS
IN THE
PRIMEVAL FOREST.
If the vivid appreciation and sentiment of nature which differ so
greatly in nations of different descent, and if the natural character
and aspect of the countries which those nations now inhabit, or
which have been the scene of their earlier wanderings or abode, have
rendered different languages more or less rich in well defined and
characteristic expressions denoting the forms of mountains, the state
of vegetation, the appearance of the atmosphere, and the contour and
grouping of the clouds, it is also true that long use, and perhaps
their arbitrary employment by literary men, have diverted many such
words from their original meaning. Terms have been gradually regarded
as synonymous which ought to have been preserved distinct; and thus
languages have lost part of the vigour and the grace, as well as the
fidelity, which they might otherwise have been capable of imparting to
descriptions of natural scenery and of the characteristic physiognomy
of a landscape. With the view of shewing how much an intimate
acquaintance and contact with nature, and the wants and necessities
of a laborious nomade life, may increase the riches of a language,
I would recall the numerous characteristic appellations which may be
used in Arabic[64] and in Persian to distinguish plains, steppes, and
deserts, according as they are quite bare, covered with sand, broken
by tabular masses of rock, or interspersed with patches of pasturage,
or with long tracts occupied by social plants. Scarcely less striking
is it to observe in the old Castilian idiom[65] the many expressions
afforded for describing the physiognomy of mountain-masses, and more
particularly for designating those features which, recurring in every
zone of the earth’s surface, announce from afar to the attentive
beholder the nature of the rock. As the declivities of the Andes, of
Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and the mountainous parts of the Canaries,
the Antilles and the Philippines, are all inhabited by men of Spanish
descent, and as these are the parts of the earth where, (with the
exception, perhaps, of the Himalaya and the Thibetian Highlands), the
manner of life of the inhabitants is most affected by and dependent
on the form of the earth’s surface, so all the expressions which the
language of the mother country afforded for denoting the forms of
mountains in trachytic, basaltic, and porphyritic districts, as well as
in those where schists, limestones, and sandstone are the prevailing
rocks, have been happily preserved in daily use. Under such influences
even newly formed words become part of the common treasure. Speech is
enriched and animated by everything that tends to and promotes truth
to nature, whether in rendering the impressions received through the
senses from the contemplation of the external world, or in expressing
thoughts, emotions, or sentiments which have their sources in the inner
depths of our being.
In descriptions of natural objects or scenery, both in the manner of
viewing the phenomena, and in the choice of the expressions employed
to describe them, this truth to nature must ever be kept in view as
the guiding aim: its attainment will be at once most easily and most
effectually secured by simplicity in the narration of what we have
ourselves beheld or experienced, and by limiting and individualising
the locality with which the narrative is connected. Generalisation of
physical views, and the statement of general results, belong rather
to the “study of the Cosmos,” which, indeed, must ever continue to be
to us a science of Induction; but the animated description of organic
forms (plants and animals) in their local and picturesque relations
to the varied surface of the earth (as a small fragment of the whole
terrestrial life) affords materials towards the study of the Cosmos,
and also tends to advance it by the stimulus or impulse imparted to the
mind when artistic treatment is applied to phenomena of nature on a
great scale.
Among such phenomena must certainly be classed the vast forest
region which, in the tropical portion of South America, fills the
great connected basins of the Orinoco and the Amazons. If the name
of primeval forest, or “Urwald,” which has of late years been so
prodigally bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of the
earth, none can claim it perhaps so strictly as the region of which
we are speaking. The term “Urwald,” primitive or primeval forest, as
well as Urseit and Urvolk,--primitive age, primitive nation,--are words
of rather indefinite meaning, and, for the most part, only relative
import. If this name is to be given to every wild forest full of a
thick growth of trees on which Man has never laid a destroying hand,
then the phenomenon is one which belongs to many parts of the temperate
and cold zones. But if the character of the “Urwald” is that of a
forest so truly impenetrable, that it is impossible to clear with an
axe any passage between trees of eight or twelve feet diameter for more
than a few paces, then such forests belong exclusively to the tropical
regions. Nor is it by any means, as is often supposed in Europe, only
the interlacing “lianes” or climbers which make it impossible to
penetrate the forest; the “lianes” often form only a very small portion
of the underwood. The chief obstacle is presented by an undergrowth of
plants filling up every interval in a zone where all vegetation has a
tendency to become ligneous. An impatient desire for the fulfilment of
a long cherished wish may sometimes have led travellers who have only
just landed in a tropical country, or perhaps island, to imagine that
although still in the immediate vicinity of the sea-shore they had
entered the precincts of a primeval forest, or “Urwald,” such as I have
described as impenetrable. In this they deceived themselves; it is not
every tropical forest which is entitled to an appellation which I have
scarcely ever used in the narrative of my travels; although I believe
that of all investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius,
Poppig, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, are those who have
spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior of
a great continent.
Rich as is the Spanish language, (as I have already remarked), in
appellations of distinct and definite meaning in the description of
nature, yet the same word “Monte” is employed for mountain and forest,
for cerro, (montaña) and for selva. In an inquiry into the true breadth
and greatest easterly extension of the chain of the Andes, I have
shewed how this two-fold signification of the word “monte” led to the
introduction, in a fine and extensively circulated English map of South
America, of high mountain ranges, where, in reality, only plains exist.
When the Spanish map of La Cruz Olmedilla, which has served as the
foundation of so many other maps, shewed “Montes de Cacao,”[66] “cacao
woods,” Cordilleras were made to rise although the cacao seeks only the
lowest and hottest localities.
If we comprehend in one general view the wooded region which includes
the whole of the interior of South America, from the grassy steppes
of Venezuela (los Llanos de Caracas) to the Pampas of Buenos Ayres,
or from 8° North to 19° South latitude, we shall perceive that this
connected forest of the tropical zone has an extent unequalled in any
other portion of the earth’s surface. Its area is about twelve times
that of Germany. Traversed in all directions by systems of rivers, in
which the minor and tributary streams sometimes exceed our Rhine or
our Danube in the abundance of their waters, it owes the wonderful
luxuriance of the growth of its trees to the combined influence of
great moisture and high temperature. In the temperate zone, and
especially in Europe and Northern Asia, forests may be named from
particular genera or species, which, growing together as social plants,
(plantæ sociales) form separate and distinct woods. In the northern
forests of Oaks, Pines, and Birches, and in the eastern forests of
Limes or Linden trees, usually only one species of Amentaceæ, Coniferæ,
or Tiliaceæ, prevails or is predominant; sometimes a single species
of Needle-trees is intermingled with the foliage of trees of other
classes. Tropical forests, on the other hand, decked with thousands
of flowers, are strangers to such uniformity of association; the
exceeding variety of their flora renders it vain to ask of what trees
the primeval forest consists. A countless number of families are here
crowded together, and even in small spaces individuals of the same
species are rarely associated. Each day, and at each change of place,
new forms present themselves to the traveller, who, however, often
finds that he cannot reach the blossoms of trees whose leaves and
ramifications had previously arrested his attention.
The rivers, with their countless lateral arms, afford the only routes
by which the country can be traversed. Between the Orinoco, the
Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, astronomical observations, and where
these were wanting, determinations by compass of the direction of the
rivers, respectively shewed us that two lonely mission villages might
be only a few miles apart, and yet that the monks when they wished
to visit each other could only do so by spending a day and a half in
following the windings of small streams, in canoes hollowed out of
the trunks of trees. A striking evidence of the impenetrability of
particular parts of the forest is afforded by a trait related by an
Indian of the habits of the large American tiger, or panther-like
jaguar. While in the Llanos of Varinas and the Meta, and in the Pampas
of Buenos Ayres, the introduction of European cattle, horses, and mules
has enabled the beasts of prey to find an abundant subsistence,--so
that since the first discovery of America their numbers have increased
exceedingly in those extended and treeless grassy steppes,--their
congeners in the dense forests around the sources of the Orinoco lead a
very different and far less easy life. In a bivouac near the junction
of the Cassiquiare with the Orinoco we had had the misfortune of losing
a large dog, to which we were much attached, as the most faithful and
affectionate companion of our wanderings. Being still uncertain whether
he had been actually killed by the tigers, a faint hope of recovering
him induced us, in returning from the mission of Esmeralda through the
swarms of musquitoes by which it is infested, to spend another night at
the spot where we had so long sought him in vain. We heard the cries
of the jaguar, probably the very individual which we suspected of the
deed, extremely near to us; and as the clouded sky made astronomical
observations impossible, we passed part of the night in making our
interpreter (lenguaraz) repeat to us the accounts given by our native
boat’s crew of the tigers of the country.
The “black jaguar” was, they said, not unfrequently found there; it is
the largest and most bloodthirsty variety, with black spots scarcely
distinguishable on its deep dark-brown skin. It lives at the foot of
the mountains of Maraguaca and Unturan. One of the Indians of the
Durimund tribe then related to us that jaguars are often led, by their
love of wandering and by their rapacity, to lose themselves in such
impenetrable parts of the forest that they can no longer hunt along
the ground, and live instead in the trees, where they are the terror
of the families of monkeys and of the prehensile-tailed viverra, the
Cercoleptes. I borrow these notices from journals written at the time
in German, and which were not entirely exhausted in the Narrative of
my Travels, which I published in the French language. They contain a
detailed description of the nocturnal life, or perhaps I might rather
say the nocturnal voices, of the wild animals in the forests of the
torrid zone; which appears to me particularly suited to form part of a
work bearing the title of the present volumes. That which is written
down on the spot, either in the immediate presence of the phenomena,
or soon after the reception of the impressions which they produce, may
at least lay claim to more life and freshness than can be expected in
recollections.
Descending from West to East the Rio Apure, the overflowings of whose
waters and the inundations produced by them were noticed in the chapter
on Steppes and Deserts, we arrived at its junction with the Orinoco. It
was the season of low water, and the average breadth of the Apure was
only a little more than twelve hundred English feet, yet I found the
Orinoco at the confluence of the two rivers, not far from the granite
rock of Curiquima, where I was able to measure a base line, still
upwards of 11430 French (12180 English) feet wide. Yet this point, _i.
e._ the Rock of Curiquima, is four hundred geographical miles in a
straight line from the sea and from the Delta of the Orinoco. Part of
the plains watered by the Apure and the Pagara are inhabited by tribes
of the Yaruros and Achaguas, who, as they persist in maintaining their
independence, are called savages in the mission villages established by
the monks: their manners, however, are scarcely more rude than those of
the Indians of the villages,--who, although baptized and living “under
the bell” (baxo la compana), are still almost entirely untaught and
uninstructed.
On leaving the Island del Diamante, in which Zambos who speak Spanish
cultivate sugar-canes, we entered on scenes of nature characterized
by wildness and grandeur. The air was filled with countless flocks
of flamingoes (Phœnicopterus) and other water birds, which appeared
against the blue sky like a dark cloud with continually varying
outlines. The river had here narrowed to between 900 and 1000 feet, and
flowing in a perfectly straight line formed a kind of canal enclosed
on either side by dense wood. The margin of the forest presents at
this part a singular appearance. In front of the almost impenetrable
wall of giant trunks of Cæsalpinia, Cedrela, and Desmanthus, there
rises from the sandy river beach, with the greatest regularity, a low
hedge of Sauso, only four feet high, consisting of a small shrub,
Hermesia castaneifolia, which forms a new genus[67] of the family of
Euphorbiaceæ. Some slender thorny palms, called by the Spaniards Piritu
and Coroso (perhaps species of Martinezia and Bactris), stand next;
and the whole resembles a close, well-pruned garden hedge, having only
occasional openings at considerable distances from each other, which
have doubtless been made by the larger four-footed beasts of the forest
to gain easy access to the river. One sees, more especially in the
early morning and at sunset, the American tiger or jaguar, the tapir,
and the peccary, lead their young through these openings to the river
to drink. When startled by the passing canoe, they do not attempt to
regain the forest by breaking forcibly through the hedge which has
been described, but one has the pleasure of seeing these wild animals
stalk leisurely along between the river and the hedge for four or
five hundred paces, until they have reached the nearest opening, when
they disappear through it. In the course of an almost uninterrupted
river navigation of 1520 geographical miles on the Orinoco to near its
sources, on the Cassiquiare, and on the Rio Negro,--and during which
we were confined for seventy-four days to a small canoe,--we enjoyed
the repetition of the same spectacle at several different points,
and I may add, always with new delight. There came down together, to
drink, to bathe, or to fish, groups consisting of the most different
classes of animals, the larger mammalia, being associated with many
coloured herons, palamedeas, and proudly-stepping curassow and cashew
birds (Crax Alector and C. Pauxi). “Es como en el Paraiso;” it is here
as in Paradise, said, with a pious air, our steersman, an old Indian
who had been brought up in the house of an ecclesiastic. The peace of
the golden age was, however, far from prevailing among the animals of
this American paradise, which carefully watched and avoided each other.
The Capybara, a Cavy three or four feet long, (a magnified repetition
of the Brazilian Cavy, Cavia aguti), is devoured in the river by the
crocodiles, and on shore by the tiger. It runs so indifferently that we
were several times able to catch individuals from among the numerous
herds which presented themselves.
Below the mission of Santa Barbara de Arichuna we passed the night
as usual, under the open sky, on a sandy flat on the bank of the
Rio Apure closely bordered by the impenetrable forest. It was not
without difficulty that we succeeded in finding dry wood to kindle the
fire with which it is always customary in that country to surround
a bivouac, in order to guard against the attacks of the jaguar. The
night was humid, mild, and moonlight. Several crocodiles approached
the shore; I think I have observed these animals to be attracted by
fire, like our cray-fish and many other inhabitants of the water. The
oars of our boat were placed upright and carefully driven into the
ground, to form poles from which our hammocks could be suspended. Deep
stillness prevailed; only from time to time we heard the blowing of the
fresh-water dolphins[68] which are peculiar to the Orinoco net-work of
rivers (and, according to Colebrooke, to the Ganges as far as Benares),
which followed each other in long lines.
Soon after 11 o’clock such a disturbance began to be heard in the
adjoining forest, that for the remainder of the night all sleep was
impossible. The wild cries of animals appeared to rage throughout the
forest. Among the many voices which resounded together, the Indians
could only recognise those which, after short pauses in the general
uproar, were first heard singly. There was the monotonous howling of
the aluates (the howling monkeys); the plaintive, soft, and almost
flute-like tones of the small sapajous; the snorting grumblings of the
striped nocturnal monkey[69] (the Nyctipithicus trivirgatus, which I was
the first to describe); the interrupted cries of the great tiger, the
cuguar or maneless American lion, the peccary, the sloth, and a host of
parrots, of parraquas, and other pheasant-like birds. When the tigers
came near the edge of the forest, our dog, which had before barked
incessantly, came howling to seek refuge under our hammocks. Sometimes
the cry of the tiger was heard to proceed from amidst the high branches
of a tree, and was in such case always accompanied by the plaintive
piping of the monkeys, who were seeking to escape from the unwonted
pursuit.
If one asks the Indians why this incessant noise and disturbance arises
on particular nights, they answer, with a smile, that “the animals
are rejoicing in the bright moonlight, and keeping the feast of the
full moon.” To me it appeared that the scene had probably originated
in some accidental combat, and that hence the disturbance had spread
to other animals, and thus the noise had increased more and more. The
jaguar pursues the peccaries and tapirs, and these, pressing against
each other in their flight, break through the interwoven tree-like
shrubs which impede their escape; the apes on the tops of the trees,
being frightened by the crash, join their cries to those of the larger
animals; this arouses the tribes of birds, who build their nests in
communities, and thus the whole animal world becomes in a state of
commotion. Longer experience taught us that it is by no means always
the celebration of the brightness of the moon which disturbs the repose
of the woods: we witnessed the same occurrence repeatedly, and found
that the voices were loudest during violent falls of rain, or when,
with loud peals of thunder, the flashing lightning illuminated the deep
recesses of the forest. The good-natured Franciscan monk, who, although
he had been suffering for several months from fever, accompanied us
through the Cataracts of Atures and Maypures to San Carlos on the Rio
Negro, and to the Brazilian boundary, used to say, when fearful on the
closing in of night that there might be a thunder-storm, “May Heaven
grant a quiet night both to us and to the wild beasts of the forest!”