After having passed two weary nights on horseback, and having sought
in vain by day for some shelter from the heat of the sun, we arrived
before night at the little Hato del Caymen,[21] called also La
Guadaloupe. It was a solitary house in the steppes, surrounded by
a few small huts covered with reeds and skins. The cattle, oxen,
horses, and mules are not penned, but wander freely over an extent
of several square leagues. There is nowhere any enclosure; men,
naked to the waist and armed with a lance, ride over the savannahs
to inspect the animals, bringing back those that wander too far from
the pastures of the farm, and branding all that do not bear the mark
of their proprietor. These mulattoes, who are known by the name of
_peones llaneros_, are partly freedmen and partly slaves. Their
food is meat dried in the air and a little salted, and of this even
their horses sometimes partake. Being always in the saddle, they
fancy they cannot make the slightest exertion on foot. We found an
old negro slave, who managed the farm in the absence of his master.
He told us of herds of several thousand cows that were grazing on
the steppes, yet we asked in vain for a bowl of milk. We were
offered in a calabash some yellow, muddy, and fetid water drawn from
a neighboring pool. The indolence of the inhabitants of the llanos
is such that they do not dig wells though they know that almost
everywhere, at ten feet deep, fine springs are found in a stratum of
red sandstone. After suffering one half the year from the effects of
inundations, they quietly resign themselves during the other half to
the most distressing deprivation of water. The old negro advised us
to cover the cup with a linen cloth and drink as through a filter,
that we might not be incommoded by the smell, and might swallow less
of the yellowish mud deposited in the water. We did not then think
that we should afterwards be forced during whole months to have
recourse to this expedient. The waters of the Orinoco are always
loaded with earthy particles; they are even putrid, where dead bodies
of alligators are found in the creeks, lying on beds of sand, or
half-buried in the mud.
No sooner were our instruments safely placed than our mules were set
at liberty to go, as they say here, “to search for water.” There
are little pools round the farm which the animals find, guided by
their instinct, by the view of some scattered tufts of mauritia,
and by the sense of humid coolness caused by little currents of
air amid an atmosphere which to us appears calm and tranquil. When
the pools of water are far distant, and the people of the farm are
too lazy to lead the cattle to these natural watering places, they
confine them during five or six hours in a very hot stable before
they let them loose. Excess of thirst then augments their sagacity,
sharpening as it were their senses and their instinct. No sooner is
the stable opened than the horses and mules rush into the savannahs.
With upraised tails and heads thrown back they run against the wind,
stopping from time to time as if exploring space; they follow less
the impressions of sight than of smell, and at length announce, by
prolonged neighings, that there is water in the direction of their
course.