Passing many scenes of interest, and meeting with several other strange
incidents, our travellers at length arrived at Archidona--a small town
at the head of boat navigation upon the Napo, and the usual port of
embarkation for persons proceeding from the country around Quito to the
regions upon the Amazon. Up to this place they had been journeying
through a complete wilderness--the only exceptions being some missionary
stations, in each of which a monkish priest holds a sort of control over
two or three hundred half christianised Indians. It would be absurd to
call these missions civilised settlements: since they are in no degree
more advanced, either in civilisation or prosperity, than the
_maloccas_, or villages of the wild Indians--the "infidels," as it
pleases the monks to call those tribes who have not submitted to their
puerile teachings. Whatever difference exists between the two kinds of
Indians, is decidedly in favour of the unconverted tribes, who display
at least the virtues of valour and a love of liberty, while the poor
neophytes of the missions have suffered a positive debasement, by their
conversion to this so called "Christian religion." All these monkish
settlements--not only on the Napo, but on the other tributaries of the
Amazon--were at one time in a state of considerable prosperity. The
missionary padres, backed by a little soldier help from the Spanish
Government, were more able to control their Indian converts, and compel
them to work--so that a certain amount of prosperity was visible in the
mission settlements, and some of them had even attained to a degree of
wealth. This, however, was but an apparent civilisation; and its
benefits only extended to the monks themselves. The Indian neophytes
were in no way bettered by the wealth they created. Their condition was
one of pure slavery--the monks being their masters, and very often hard
taskmasters they proved themselves--living in fine conventual style upon
the sweat and labour of their brown-skinned converts. The only return
made by them to the Indians was to teach the latter those trades, by the
practice of which they themselves might be benefited, and that was their
sole motive for civilising them. On the other hand, instead of
endeavouring to cultivate their intellectual nature, they strove in
every way to restrain it--inculcating those doctrines of duty and
obedience, so popular among the priests and princes of the world. They
taught them a religion of the lips, and not of the heart--a religion of
mere idle ceremonies, of the most showy kind; and above all a religion,
whose every observance required to be paid for by toll and tithe. In
this manner they continued to filch from the poor aboriginal every hour
of his work--and keep him to all intents and purposes an abject slave.
No wonder, that when the Spanish power declined, and the soldier could
no longer be spared to secure the authority of the priest--no wonder
that the whole system gave way, and the missions of Spanish America--
from California to the Patagonian plains--sank into decay. Hundreds of
these establishments have been altogether abandoned--their pseudo
converts having returned once more to the savage state--and the ruins of
convents and churches alone remain to attest that they ever existed.
Those still in existence exhibit the mere remnants of their former
prosperity, and are only kept together by the exertions of the monks
themselves--backed by a slight thread of authority, which they derive
from the superstitions they have been able to inculcate. In fact, in
the missions now existing, the monks have no other power than that which
they wield through the terrors of the Church; and in most cases, these
_padres_ constitute a sort of hierarch chieftaincy, which has supplanted
the old system of the _curacas_, or caciques.
At one period the missions of the Napo were both numerous and powerful.
That was while they were under the superintendence of those active
apostles, the Jesuit fathers; but most of their settlements have long
ago disappeared; and now only a few sparse stations exist along the
borders of the great _Montana_.
In ascending the Napo, our travellers had an opportunity of visiting
some of these old missionary establishments; and observing the odd
rigmarole of superstitions there practised under the guise, and in the
name of religion--a queer commingling of pagan rites with Christian
ceremonies--not unlike those Buddhistic forms from which these same
ceremonies have been borrowed.
One advantage our travellers derived from the existence of these
stations: they were enabled to obtain from them the provisions required
upon their long riverine voyage; and without this assistance they would
have found it much more difficult to accomplish such a journey.
Beyond Archidona the rest of the journey to Quito would have to be
performed on horseback, or rather muleback; but they were not going
direct to Quito. Between them and the old Peruvian capital lay the
eastern Cordillera of the Andes, and it was along its declivities, and
in the valleys between its transverse spurs, facing the Montana, they
would have to search for the haunts of the bear.
On the Napo itself, still higher up than Archidona--where the stream,
fed by the snows of the grand volcano of Cotopaxi, issues from the spurs
of the Andes--there were they most likely to accomplish the object of
their expedition, and thither determined they to go.
Having procured mules and a guide, they proceeded onward; and after a
journey of three days--in which, from the difficulty of the roads, they
had travelled less than fifty miles--they found themselves among the
foot-hills of the Andes--the giant Cotopaxi with his snowy cone towering
stupendous above their heads.
Here they were in the proper range of the bears--a part of the country
famous for the great numbers of these animals--and it only remained for
them to fix their headquarters in some village, and make arrangements
for prosecuting the chase.
The little town of Napo, called after the river, and situated as it is
in the midst of a forest wilderness, offered all the advantages they
required; and, choosing it as their temporary residence, they were soon
engaged in searching for the black bear of the Cordilleras.