COGITATIONS AND CANOEING ON THE AMAZON--BARNEY'S EXPLOIT WITH AN
ALLIGATOR--STUBBORN FACTS--REMARKABLE MODE OF SLEEPING.
It is pleasant, when the sun is bright, and the trees are green, and
when flowering shrubs and sweet-smelling tropical trees scent the balmy
atmosphere at eventide, to lie extended at full length in a canoe, and
drop easily, silently, yet quickly, down the current of a noble river,
under the grateful shadow of overhanging foliage; and to look lazily up
at the bright blue sky which appears in broken patches among the verdant
leaves; or down at the river in which that bright sky and those green
leaves are reflected; or aside at the mud-banks where greedy vultures
are searching for prey, and lazy alligators are basking in the sun; and
to listen, the while, to the innumerable cries and notes of monkeys,
toucans, parrots, orioles, bemtevi or fly-catchers, white-winged and
blue chatterers, and all the myriads of birds and beasts that cause the
forests of Brazil, above all other forests in the world probably, to
resound with the gleeful songs of animated nature!
It is pleasant to be thus situated, especially when a cool breeze blows
the mosquitoes and other insects off the water, and relieves you for a
time from their incessant attacks. Martin Rattler found it pleasant as
he thus lay on his back with his diminutive pet marmoset monkey seated
on his breast quietly picking the kernel out of a nut. And Barney
O'Flannagan found it pleasant, as he lay extended in the bow of the
canoe with his head leaning over the edge gazing abstractedly at his own
reflected visage, while his hands trailed through the cool water, and
his young dog--a shaggy indescribable beast with a bluff nose and a
bushy tail--watched him intently, as a mother might watch an only child
in a dangerous situation. And the old sun-dried, and storm-battered,
and time-shrivelled mulatto trader, in whose canoe they were embarked
and whose servants they had become, found it pleasant, as he sat there
perched in his little montaria, like an exceedingly ancient and
overgrown monkey, guiding it safely down the waters of the great river
of the Tocantins.
Some months have passed since we last parted from our daring
adventurers. During that period they had crossed an immense tract of
country, and reached the head-waters of one of the many streams that
carry the surplus moisture of central Brazil into the Amazon. Here they
found an old trader, a free mulatto, whose crew of Indians had deserted
him,--a common thing in that country,--and who gladly accepted their
services, agreeing to pay them a small wage. And here they sorrowfully,
and with many expressions of good-will, parted from their kind friend
and entertainer the hermit. His last gift to Martin was the wonderfully
small marmoset monkey before mentioned; and his parting souvenir to
Barney was the bluff-nosed dog that watched over him with maternal care,
and loved him next to itself;--as well it might; for if everybody had
been of the same spirit as Barney O'Flannagan, the Act for the
prevention of cruelty to animals would never have been passed in
Britain.
It was a peculiar and remarkable and altogether extraordinary monkey,
that tiny marmoset. There was a sort of romance connected with it, too;
for it had been the mother of an indescribably small infant-monkey,
which was killed at the time of its mother's capture. It drank coffee,
too, like--like a Frenchman; and would by no means retire to rest at
night until it had had its usual allowance. Then it would fold its
delicate little hands on its bosom, and close its eyes with an
expression of solemn grief, as if, having had its last earthly wish
gratified, it now resigned itself to sleep. Martin loved it deeply, but
his love was unrequited; for, strange to say, that small monkey lavished
all its affection on Barney's shaggy dog. And the dog knew it, and was
evidently proud of it, and made no objection whatever to the monkey
sitting on his back, or his head, or his nose, or doing in fact whatever
it chose whenever it pleased. When in the canoe, the marmoset played
with Grampus, as the dog was named; and when on shore it invariably
travelled on his back.
Martin used to lie in the canoe half asleep and watch the little face of
the marmoset, until, by some unaccountable mental process, he came to
think of Aunt Dorothy Grumbit. Often did poor Martin dream of his dear
old aunt, while sleeping under the shelter of these strange-leaved
tropical trees and surrounded by the wild sounds of that distant land,
until he dreamed himself back again in the old village. Then he would
rush to the well-known school, and find all the boys there except Bob
Croaker, who he felt certain must be away drowning the white kitten; and
off he would go and catch him, sure enough, in the very act, and would
give him the old thrashing over again, with all the additional vigour
acquired during his rambles abroad thrown into it. Then he would run
home in eager haste, and find old Mrs Grumbit hard at the one thousand
nine hundred and ninety-ninth pair of worsted socks; and fat Mr Arthur
Jollyboy sitting opposite to her, dressed in the old lady's bed-curtain
chintz and high-crowned cap, with the white kitten in his arms and his
spectacles on his chin, watching the process with intense interest and
cautioning her not to forget the "hitch" by any means; whereupon the
kitten would fly up in his face, and Mr Jollyboy would dash through the
window with a loud howl, and Mrs Grumbit's face would turn blue; and,
uncoiling an enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in among
the trees and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this point and found
the marmoset gazing in his face with an expression of sorrowful
solemnity, and the old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as
he steered his light craft down the broad stream of the Tocantins.
The trader could speak little more English than sufficed to enable him
to say "yes" and "no;" Barney could speak about as much Portuguese as
enabled him to say "no" and "yes;" while Martin, by means of a slight
smattering of that language, which he had picked up by ear during the
last few months, mixed now and then with a word or two of Latin, and
helped out by a clever use of the language of signs, succeeded in
becoming the link of communication between the two.
For many weeks they continued to descend the river; paddling
energetically when the stream was sluggish, and resting comfortably when
the stream was strong, and sometimes dragging their canoe over rocks and
sand-banks to avoid rapids--passing many villages and plantations of the
natives by the way--till at last they swept out upon the bosom of the
great Amazon River.
The very first thing they saw upon entering it was an enormous
alligator, fully eighteen feet long, sound asleep on a mud-bank.
"Och! put ashore, ye Naygur," cried Barney, seizing his pistol and
rising up in the bow of the canoe. The old man complied quickly, for
his spirit was high and easily roused.
"Look out now, Martin, an' hould back the dog for fear he wakes him up,"
said Barney, in a hoarse whisper, as he stepped ashore and hastened
stealthily towards the sleeping monster; catching up a handful of gravel
as he went, and ramming it down the barrel of his pistol. It was a
wonderful pistol that--an Irish one by birth, and absolutely incapable
of bursting, else assuredly it would have gone, as its owner said, to
"smithereens" long ago.
Barney was not a good stalker. The alligator awoke and made for the
water as fast as it could waddle. The Irishman rushed forward close up,
as it plunged into the river, and discharged the compound of lead and
stones right against the back of its head. He might as well have fired
at the boiler of a steam-engine. The entire body of an alligator--back
and belly, head and tail--is so completely covered with thick hard
scales, that shot has no effect on it; and even a bullet cannot pierce
its coat of mail, except in one or two vulnerable places. Nevertheless
the shot had been fired so close to it that the animal was stunned, and
rolled over on its back in the water. Seeing this, the old trader
rushed in up to his chin, and caught it by the tail; but at the same
moment the monster recovered, and, turning round, displayed its terrific
rows of teeth. The old man uttered a dreadful roar, and struggled to
the land as fast as he could; while the alligator, equally frightened,
no doubt, gave a magnificent flourish and splash with its tail, and
dived to the bottom of the river.
The travellers returned disgusted to their canoe, and resumed their
journey up the Amazon in silence.
The vulnerable places about an alligator are the soft parts under the
throat and the joints of the legs. This is well-known to the jaguar,
its mortal foe, which attacks it on land, and fastening on these soft
parts, soon succeeds in killing it; but should the alligator get the
jaguar into its powerful jaws or catch it in the water, it is certain to
come off the conqueror.
The Amazon, at its mouth, is more like a wide lake or arm of the sea
than a river. Mention has been already made of this noble stream in the
Hermit's Story; but it is worthy of more particular notice, for truly
the Amazon is in many respects a wonderful river. It is the largest,
though not quite the longest, in the world. Taking its rise among the
rocky solitudes of the great mountain range of the Andes, it flows
through nearly four thousand miles of the continent in an easterly
direction, trending northward towards its mouth, and entering the
Atlantic Ocean on the northern coast of South America, directly under
the Equator. In its course it receives the waters of nearly all the
great rivers of central South America, and thousands of smaller
tributaries; so that when it reaches the ocean its volume of water is
enormous. Some idea may be formed of its majestic size, from the fact
that one of its tributaries--the Rio Negro--is fifteen hundred miles
long, and varying in breadth; being a mile wide not far from its mouth,
while higher up it spreads out in some places into sheets of ten miles
in width. The Madeira, another tributary, is also a river of the
largest size. The Amazon is divided into two branches at its mouth by
the island of Marajo, the larger branch being ninety-six miles in width.
About two thousand miles from its mouth it is upwards of a mile wide.
So great is the force of this flood of water, that it flows into the sea
unmixed for nearly two hundred miles. The tide affects the river to a
distance of about four hundred miles inland; and it is navigable from
the sea for a distance of three thousand miles inland.
On the north bank of the Amazon there are ranges of low hills, partly
bare and partly covered with thickets. These hills vary from three
hundred to a thousand feet high, and extend about two hundred miles
inland. Beyond them the shores of the river are low and flat, for more
than two thousand miles, till the spurs of the Andes are reached.
During the rainy season the Amazon overflows all its banks, like the
Nile, for many hundreds of miles; during which season, as Martin Rattler
truly remarked, the natives may be appropriately called aquatic animals.
Towns and villages, and plantations belonging to Brazilians, foreign
settlers, and half-civilised Indians, occur at intervals throughout the
whole course of the river; and a little trade in dye-woods,
India-rubber, medicinal drugs, Brazil nuts, coffee, etcetera, is done;
but nothing to what might and ought to be, and perhaps would be, were
this splendid country in the hands of an enterprising people. But the
Amazonians are lazy, and the greater part of the resources of one of the
richest countries in the world is totally neglected.
"Arrah!" said Barney, scratching his head and wrinkling his forehead
intensely, as all that we have just written, and a great deal more, was
told to him by a Scotch settler whom he found superintending a cattle
estate and a saw-mill on the banks of the Amazon--
"Faix, then, I'm jist as wise now as before ye begun to spake. I've no
head for fagures whatsumdiver; an' to tell me that the strame is
ninety-six miles long and three thousand miles broad at the mouth, and
sich like calcerlations, is o' no manner o' use, and jist goes in at wan
ear an' out at the tother."
Whereupon the Scotch settler smiled and said, "Well, then, if ye can
remember that the Amazon is longer than all Europe is broad; that it
opens up to the ocean not less than ten thousand miles of the interior
of Brazil; and that, _comparatively_ speaking, no use is made of it
whatever, ye'll remember enough to think about with profit for some time
to come."
And Barney did think about it, and ponder it, and revolve it in his
mind, for many days after, while he worked with Martin and the old
trader at the paddles of their montaria. They found the work of
canoeing easier than had been anticipated; for during the summer months
the wind blows steadily up the river, and they were enabled to hoist
their mat-sail, and bowl along before it against the stream.
Hotels and inns there were none; for Brazil does not boast of many such
conveniences, except in the chief towns; so they were obliged, in
travelling, to make use of an empty hut or shed, when they chanced to
stop at a village, and to cook their own victuals. More frequently,
however, they preferred to encamp in the woods--slinging their hammocks
between the stems of the trees, and making a fire sometimes, to frighten
away the jaguars, which, although seldom seen, were often heard at
night. They met large canoes and montarias occasionally coming down the
stream, and saw them hauled up on shore, while their owners were cooking
their breakfast in the woods; and once they came upon a solitary old
Indian in a very curious position. They had entered a small stream in
order to procure a few turtles' eggs, of which there were many in that
place buried in the sand-banks. On turning a point where the stream was
narrow and overhung with bushes and trees, they beheld a canoe tied to
the stem of a tree, and a hammock slung between two branches overhanging
the water. In this an old Indian lay extended, quite naked and fast
asleep! The old fellow had grown weary with paddling his little canoe;
and, finding the thicket along the river's banks so impenetrable that he
could not land, he slung his hammock over the water, and thus quietly
took his siesta. A flock of paroquets were screaming like little green
demons just above him, and several alligators gave him a passing glance
as they floundered heavily in the water below; but the red man cared not
for such trifles. Almost involuntarily Martin began to hum the popular
nursery rhyme--
"Hushy ba, baby, on the tree top;
When the wind blows the cradle will rock."
"Arrah, if he was only two foot lower, its thirty pair o' long teeth
would be stuck into his flank in wan minute, or I'm no prophet," said
Barney, with a broad grin.
"Suppose we give him a touch with the paddle in passing," suggested
Martin.
At this moment Barney started up, shaded his eyes with his hand, and,
after gazing for a few seconds at some object ahead of the canoe, he
gave utterance to an exclamation of mingled surprise and consternation.