The course of the rivers on the _llanos_ is far from being as straight
as the proverbial path of righteousness. They meander, wind, and turn
about, so that when on a sharp curve one often sails almost directly
against the main direction of the waters. The Indians take short cuts
overland which enable them to travel much faster than the canoes. Thus
the news of our coming preceded us by several days, and long before we
reached the mouth of the Vichada all the tribes had heard that the
largest expedition known in their history was on the way.
For reasons which he explained to us afterwards, Leal had, without
consulting us, informed the first Indians whom we met that ours was a
party of missionaries. I do not suppose that he went into any further
details. In the mind of the Indians the remembrance of missionaries
seems to have lingered from the days when Jesuit missions were
established on nearly all the principal rivers of the Orinoco watershed.
From the time of the Independence there have been no regular missions
following a consistent plan and belonging to a special organization. Now
and then desultory attempts have been made without any appreciable
results. But the Indians respect the missionary; possibly they also fear
him, and, as we could observe later on from our own experience, they
expect from him gifts not only of a spiritual, but of a material kind.
The result of all this is that a missionary is more likely to be
welcomed and assisted than any other traveller. This was what guided
Leal in what he considered a harmless assertion—a pious fraud, in which
the fraud is more obvious than the piety.
Be it remarked, however, that neither my companions nor I had the least
responsibility for Leal’s action. When travelling along the mule-tracks
leading to the plains, public opinion, or what under the existing
circumstances took its place, had assigned to our expedition an
episcopal character. This assimilation to the Church seemed to have been
our fate. Here again we were incorporated in its fold in an official
capacity, so to speak, without the least intention or effort on our
part. When we learnt what Leal had done, it was too late to withdraw,
and we resigned ourselves to our new ecclesiastical honours with proper
humility.
It is said that men may be great, some because they are born great,
others because they achieve greatness, and others yet again because
greatness is thrust upon them. In the present instance the clerical
character was thrust upon us. We—at least, I can answer for myself—tried
to live up to the new dignity, not only inwardly, but outwardly,
assuming, as far as circumstances would permit, the sedate and reverent,
contemplative demeanour which so well suits him who devotes his life to
the welfare of others, seeking to guide them to heaven by an easy path,
no matter at what cost of personal sacrifice or discomfort to himself.
Strange, however, that this self-sacrificing mood adopted in imitation
of true priests, who despise the comforts and joys of life, should have
been assumed in our own spurious case for the special purpose of
increasing those worldly comforts and material joys!
We soon discovered, to our amazement, that our new position was far from
being a sinecure.
One day we were waiting for the noon-day heat to pass, having halted on
a _poyata_, the name given to small beaches that seem to stretch like a
tongue of sand from under the very roots of the forest into the river;
we had fled for shelter to the coolness of the high vaulting trees, from
whose trunks the hammocks swung invitingly. The blue heaven appeared
like an enamelled background beyond the lace-work of the intertwined
leaves and branches. The fires burned brightly and cheerily, their
flames pale and discoloured in the bright glare of the sun; the pots
simmered, and soon tempting whiffs were wafted by the lazy breeze that
hardly stirred, welcome heralds of good things to come. The stomach
reigns supreme just before and after a meal, which, if it be assured to
a hungry mortal, constitutes for him the most satisfactory event in the
immediate future, calming his anxieties or blunting the edge of care;
and after it has been eaten, the process of digestion, which for the
moment monopolizes the principal energies of the organism, seems to cast
a veil over the unpleasant aspects of life, and to soften the thorns
that beset our path.
Some General of the Confederate Army in the United States, who had
retired to his lands after the final collapse of the South, used to
remark that one of the saddest things for an old man who had been very
active in former years was to receive the frequent news of the death of
former comrades and companions. ‘Whenever such news reaches me,’ he went
on to say, ‘I always order two pigeons for my dinner; they are so
soothing!’
In the midst of our pleasant expectations we found ourselves suddenly
invaded by a swarm of Indians, male and female of all ages, who came
either from the forest or in canoes. They pounced on us so swiftly that
we were practically swamped by them in an instant. They at once began to
beg for presents, to touch and smell any of the articles belonging to us
that they could, and they certainly would have taken everything had it
been possible.
The men were all in the primitive attire of the proud Indian whom we had
been unable to press into our service a few days before. The women wore
tunics made either from coarse cotton stuffs obtained from the traders,
or from a sort of bark, pliant and fairly soft, called _marimba_. Some
of the women were accompanied by two or three children.
With the tribe—for it was a whole tribe that had fallen upon us—came a
man dressed in trousers—the regulation article such as you may see in
any civilized capital—and a woollen shirt of a deep red hue. He was the
chief of the tribe, and had donned that garb in our honour.
The captain told Leal that the various mothers who had brought their
children were anxious to have them baptized. Leal replied that the
matter would be attended to on our return trip, arguing furthermore that
the three reverend missionaries should not be disturbed as they lay in
their hammocks, for though, had they been ordinary men, they might be
thought to be asleep, yet being persons of eminent piety it was more
probable that they were entranced in meditation. Leal backed his plea
with a gift, a most wonderful argument which carries conviction to wild
Indians almost as quickly as to civilized men. The chief did not insist,
and for the moment we were left to our pseudo-religious and silent
contemplations.
Shortly after, however, an Indian mother, with one child in her arms and
two in her wake, proved obdurate and relentless. Her thirst for the
baptismal waters—at least, on behalf of her children if not of
herself—must be slaked at all costs. All Leal’s efforts proving
fruitless, he ended by telling her that I was the chief missionary. Once
recognised as a pillar of the Church, I was prepared for any sacrifice
of self, so that on the Indian woman approaching me I got ready to
perform whatever ceremony she might want to the best of my ability. She
was not only prudent and cautious, but distrustful. She pulled my hat
off, and ran her fingers swiftly through my hair. On seeing that I had
no tonsure—her mimic was as clear as speech—she flung my hat violently
on the ground, gesticulated and shouted, attracting the attention of all
her companions.
Here was a complication for which we had not bargained. If there were
great advantages in our being taken for missionaries, there was also
great danger in being exposed as sham missionaries. Something must be
done to remedy the evil. Leal at once bethought himself of an expedient;
he took the Indian woman towards the hammock where Alex slept in sweet
oblivion, unconscious of what was going on around him. She at once
dragged off his hat, and on finding a head brilliantly bald almost fell
prostrate. Hierarchy, or what in her savage mind stood for it, evidently
grew higher with the size of the tonsure, and here the tonsure was
immense. Had she known the various dignities into which the Catholic
priesthood is divided, she might have taken Alex for the Pope. Be that
as it may, she was satisfied. Alex, on being informed, swallowed the
pill gracefully, and prepared to do his duty.
The woman brought forward her smallest child. Here again new
difficulties ensued. We held a council of consultation as to the _modus
operandi_. Opinions differed widely, and were supported vehemently, as
is sure to be the case when all those discussing a given subject happen
to be equally ignorant. Finally some sort of plan was adopted, and the
child was baptized in accordance with a rite evolved from our own dim
recollections, with such modifications as seemed most fit.
There under the blue heaven, with the broad winding river at our feet,
close by the dense, darkening forest that lay behind us, its branches
overhead forming a panoply of green, studded with the gold and yellow
and blue flowers of the numerous creepers, we performed the ceremony of
baptism, initiating the young savage into the Church of Christ our Lord
with a feeling of deep reverence, intensified by our own sense of
ignorance. Let us hope that the solemnity of the act, which flashed
before us like an unexpected revelation, compensated for any involuntary
informality.
But after the water had been poured on the babe’s head, and the ceremony
had, as we thought, come to an end, the mother would not take her child
back. She had evidently seen other baptisms, and our christening was not
up to her standard. She made us understand that on former occasions
‘book reading’ had taken place: such was Leal’s interpretation of her
words.
We had come to look upon this Indian woman as an expert critic. Through
unpardonable neglect, which to this day I cannot explain satisfactorily,
we had neither a breviary nor a prayer-book with us, so we laid hands on
the next best thing, bearing in mind what a stickler for detail this
Indian woman had proved to be. A book of poems, an anthology of Spanish
poets, gilt-edged and finely bound, stood us in good service. Alex
opened it at random, and read a short poem with due and careful
elocution for the edification of the new little Christian.
The ceremony had to be performed eight or ten times. After the third
child we gave them only one stanza apiece, as our ardour was somewhat
chilled.
When all the children had been christened, the chief claimed the ‘usual’
gifts. He soon explained to us that it was customary for the
missionaries to make presents to the parents of the children newly
baptized. I had begun to admire the zeal of these mothers in quest of a
higher religion for their children; this demand showed that their
fervour was accompanied by greed, being thus of the same nature as that
species of ‘charity with claws’—the Spanish _caridad con uñas_. Trifles
were distributed amongst the mothers, and the tribe disappeared,
rejoicing in their possessions, for to these folk the things were no
trifles, and, let us hope, exultant in the acquisition of eight or ten
buds destined to bloom into Christian flowers.
History doth indeed repeat itself, and humanity imitates humanity
heedless of time and space. If I remember rightly, Clovis, justly
anxious for the conversion of his legions to Christianity, presented
each dripping warrior after baptism with a tunic—a most valuable article
in those days, when Manchester looms did not exist and all weaving was
done by hand. Those pious paladins, it is said, were like our Indian
friends of the Vichada, always ready to be rechristened on the same
terms as before—that is to say, in exchange for a new tunic. Yet, for
all their sameness, things do somehow change with time. In these two
instances we have the Church as a donor, and the new proselyte as a
receiver of presents more or less valuable. Once the conversion fully
assured, what a change in the parts within a few generations! The Church
gives naught; at least, it gives nothing that is of this world. On the
contrary, it takes all it can; the people are led to heaven, the poorer
the easier, for in the kind and capacious bosom of Mother Church they
are to deposit all worldly goods which might hamper their flight to
higher regions. A beautiful and wonderful evolution, and we had not far
to go to see it in full play and force. The savages of the Colombian
plains are still in that primitive pitiful state when they have to be
bribed, so to say, into the fold of the Church; many of the civilized
people in the towns and cities obey and respect that Church which holds
sway supreme over them in life and in death, guiding, controlling,
saving them. Happy the nations where the chosen and appointed servants
of the Most High, disciplined into some sort of priesthood or other,
undertake the pleasing task of saving their reluctant fellow-men at the
latter’s expense, but with the sure and certain faith of those who know
that they are working for justice and for the happiness of their
fellows, though these may choose to deny it. Happy, thrice happy, lands
where the invasion of diabolical modern ideas has been baffled, and the
good old doctrine of abject submission still rules!