Produced by Dianne Bean
GREEN MANSIONS
A Romance of the Tropical Forest
by W. H. Hudson
FOREWORD
I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows that he
cannot do justice to his subject, and the trembling of one who would
not, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to the eye of him who
wrote Green Mansions, The Purple Land, and all those other books which
have meant so much to me. For of all living authors--now that Tolstoi
has gone I could least dispense with W. H. Hudson. Why do I love his
writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, the
rarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature
of that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be
explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have
a favourite hunting-ground, which, in his good will--or perhaps merely
in his egoism--he would wish others to share with him.
The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are twofold: We
are, as worlds, rather common tramping-ground for our readers,
rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans thereto we are too
superficial, lacking clear intimacy of expression; in fact--like guide
or dragoman--we cannot let folk into the real secrets, or show them the
spirit, of the land.
Now, Hudson, whether in a pure romance like this Green Mansions, or in
that romantic piece of realism The Purple Land, or in books like Idle
Days in Patagonia, Afoot in England, The Land’s End, Adventures
among Birds, A Shepherd’s Life, and all his other nomadic records of
communings with men, birds, beasts, and Nature, has a supreme gift of
disclosing not only the thing he sees but the spirit of his vision.
Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural
world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going
there.
He is of course a distinguished naturalist, probably the most acute,
broad-minded, and understanding observer of Nature living. And this, in
an age of specialism, which loves to put men into pigeonholes and label
them, has been a misfortune to the reading public, who seeing the label
Naturalist, pass on, and take down the nearest novel. Hudson has indeed
the gifts and knowledge of a Naturalist, but that is a mere fraction of
his value and interest. A really great writer such as this is no more to
be circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it called
New York. The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature gives to all
his work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his sense of beauty an
intimate actuality. But his real eminence and extraordinary attraction
lie in his spirit and philosophy. We feel from his writings that he
is nearer to Nature than other men, and yet more truly civilized. The
competitive, towny culture, the queer up-to-date commercial knowingness
with which we are so busy coating ourselves simply will not stick to
him. A passage in his Hampshire Days describes him better than I
can: “The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the
animals, the wind, and rain, and stars are never strange to me; for I am
in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and
the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and the
tempests and my passions are one. I feel the ‘strangeness’ only with
regard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist in
conditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them.... In such moments we
sometimes feel a kinship with, and are strangely drawn to, the dead,
who were not as these; the long, long dead, the men who knew not life in
towns, and felt no strangeness in sun and wind and rain.” This unspoiled
unity with Nature pervades all his writings; they are remote from the
fret and dust and pettiness of town life; they are large, direct, free.
It is not quite simplicity, for the mind of this writer is subtle and
fastidious, sensitive to each motion of natural and human life; but his
sensitiveness is somehow different from, almost inimical to, that of us
others, who sit indoors and dip our pens in shades of feeling. Hudson’s
fancy is akin to the flight of the birds that are his special loves--it
never seems to have entered a house, but since birth to have been
roaming the air, in rain and sun, or visiting the trees and the grass.
I not only disbelieve utterly, but intensely dislike, the doctrine of
metempsychosis, which, if I understand it aright, seems the negation of
the creative impulse, an apotheosis of staleness--nothing quite new in
the world, never anything quite new--not even the soul of a baby; and
so I am not prepared to entertain the whim that a bird was one of his
remote incarnations; still, in sweep of wing, quickness of eye, and
natural sweet strength of song he is not unlike a super-bird--which is
a horrid image. And that reminds me: This, after all, is a foreword to
Green Mansions--the romance of the bird-girl Rima--a story actual yet
fantastic, which immortalizes, I think, as passionate a love of all
beautiful things as ever was in the heart of man. Somewhere Hudson says:
“The sense of the beautiful is God’s best gift to the human soul.” So
it is: and to pass that gift on to others, in such measure as herein
is expressed, must surely have been happiness to him who wrote Green
Mansions. In form and spirit the book is unique, a simple romantic
narrative transmuted by sheer glow of beauty into a prose poem. Without
ever departing from its quality of a tale, it symbolizes the yearning
of the human soul for the attainment of perfect love and beauty in this
life--that impossible perfection which we must all learn to see fall
from its high tree and be consumed in the flames, as was Rima the
bird-girl, but whose fine white ashes we gather that they may be mingled
at last with our own, when we too have been refined by the fire of
death’s resignation. The book is soaked through and through with a
strange beauty. I will not go on singing its praises, or trying to make
it understood, because I have other words to say of its author.
Do we realize how far our town life and culture have got away from
things that really matter; how instead of making civilization our
handmaid to freedom we have set her heel on our necks, and under it bite
dust all the time? Hudson, whether he knows it or not, is now the chief
standard-bearer of another faith. Thus he spake in The Purple Land: “Ah,
yes, we are all vainly seeking after happiness in the wrong way. It
was with us once and ours, but we despised it, for it was only the old
common happiness which Nature gives to all her children, and we went
away from it in search of another grander kind of happiness which some
dreamer--Bacon or another--assured us we should find. We had only to
conquer Nature, find out her secrets, make her our obedient slave, then
the Earth would be Eden, and every man Adam and every woman Eve. We are
still marching bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sad
we are getting! The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished,
though we do sometimes pause for a few moments in our long forced march
to watch the labours of some pale mechanician, seeking after perpetual
motion, and indulge in a little, dry, cackling laugh at his expense.”
And again: “For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or
steals shamefaced to hide itself in dim churches flourishes greatly,
filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast
hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?
“Out of his heart God shall not pass
His image stamped is on every grass.”
All Hudson’s books breathe this spirit of revolt against our new
enslavement by towns and machinery, and are true oases in an age so
dreadfully resigned to the “pale mechanician.”
But Hudson is not, as Tolstoi was, a conscious prophet; his spirit is
freer, more willful, whimsical--almost perverse--and far more steeped in
love of beauty. If you called him a prophet he would stamp his foot
at you--as he will at me if he reads these words; but his voice is
prophetic, for all that, crying in a wilderness, out of which, at the
call, will spring up roses here and there, and the sweet-smelling grass.
I would that every man, woman, and child in England were made to read
him; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is a
tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he
is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As
a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has
few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable
freedom from any thought of after-benefit--even from the desire that we
should read him. He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer love
of the thing seen, and the emotion felt; the smell of the lamp has not
touched a single page that he ever wrote. That alone is a marvel to us
who know that to write well, even to write clearly, is a wound business,
long to learn, hard to learn, and no gift of the angels. Style should
not obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, not
master. To use words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacle
to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet by
juxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the recipient continuing emotion
or gratification--this is the essence of style; and Hudson’s writing has
pre-eminently this double quality. From almost any page of his books an
example might be taken. Here is one no better than a thousand others, a
description of two little girls on a beach: “They were dressed in black
frocks and scarlet blouses, which set off their beautiful small dark
faces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and their loose hair
was a wonder to see, a black mist or cloud about their heads and necks
composed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining like
spun glass--hair that looked as if no comb or brush could ever tame its
beautiful wildness. And in spirit they were what they seemed: such a
wild, joyous, frolicsome spirit, with such grace and fleetness, one
does not look for in human beings, but only in birds or in some small
bird-like volatile mammal--a squirrel or a spider-monkey of the tropical
forest, or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes; the swiftest,
wildest, loveliest, most airy, and most vocal of small beauties.” Or
this, as the quintessence of a sly remark: “After that Mantel got on to
his horse and rode away. It was black and rainy, but he had never needed
moon or lantern to find what he sought by night, whether his own
house, or a fat cow--also his own, perhaps.” So one might go on quoting
felicity for ever from this writer. He seems to touch every string with
fresh and uninked fingers; and the secret of his power lies, I suspect,
in the fact that his words: “Life being more than all else to me. . .”
are so utterly true.
I do not descant on his love for simple folk and simple things, his
championship of the weak, and the revolt against the cagings and
cruelties of life, whether to men or birds or beasts, that springs out
of him as if against his will; because, having spoken of him as one with
a vital philosophy or faith, I don’t wish to draw red herrings across
the main trail of his worth to the world. His work is a vision of
natural beauty and of human life as it might be, quickened and sweetened
by the sun and the wind and the rain, and by fellowship with all the
other forms of life--the truest vision now being given to us, who are
more in want of it than any generation has ever been. A very great
writer; and--to my thinking--the most valuable our age possesses.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
September 1915 Manaton: Devon
GREEN MANSIONS
PROLOGUE
It is a cause of very great regret to me that this task has taken so
much longer a time than I had expected for its completion. It is
now many months--over a year, in fact--since I wrote to Georgetown
announcing my intention of publishing, IN A VERY FEW MONTHS, the whole
truth about Mr. Abel. Hardly less could have been looked for from his
nearest friend, and I had hoped that the discussion in the newspapers
would have ceased, at all events, until the appearance of the promised
book. It has not been so; and at this distance from Guiana I was not
aware of how much conjectural matter was being printed week by week in
the local press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr.
Abel’s friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never
been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished
only with an ebony stand on which stood a cinerary urn, its surface
ornamented with flower and leaf and thorn, and winding through it all
the figure of a serpent; an inscription, too, of seven short words which
no one could understand or rightly interpret; and finally the disposal
of the mysterious ashes--that was all there was relating to an untold
chapter in a man’s life for imagination to work on. Let us hope that
now, at last, the romance-weaving will come to an end. It was, however,
but natural that the keenest curiosity should have been excited; not
only because of that peculiar and indescribable charm of the man, which
all recognized and which won all hearts, but also because of that hidden
chapter--that sojourn in the desert, about which he preserved silence.
It was felt in a vague way by his intimates that he had met with unusual
experiences which had profoundly affected him and changed the course of
his life. To me alone was the truth known, and I must now tell, briefly
as possible, how my great friendship and close intimacy with him came
about.
When, in 1887, I arrived in Georgetown to take up an appointment in a
public office, I found Mr. Abel an old resident there, a man of means
and a favourite in society. Yet he was an alien, a Venezuelan, one
of that turbulent people on our border whom the colonists have always
looked on as their natural enemies. The story told to me was that about
twelve years before that time he had arrived at Georgetown from some
remote district in the interior; that he had journeyed alone on foot
across half the continent to the coast, and had first appeared among
them, a young stranger, penniless, in rags, wasted almost to a skeleton
by fever and misery of all kinds, his face blackened by long exposure
to sun and wind. Friendless, with but little English, it was a hard
struggle for him to live; but he managed somehow, and eventually letters
from Caracas informed him that a considerable property of which he had
been deprived was once more his own, and he was also invited to return
to his country to take his part in the government of the Republic. But
Mr. Abel, though young, had already outlived political passions and
aspirations, and, apparently, even the love of his country; at all
events, he elected to stay where he was--his enemies, he would say
smilingly, were his best friends--and one of the first uses he made of
his fortune was to buy that house in Main Street which was afterwards
like a home to me.
I must state here that my friend’s full name was Abel Guevez de
Argensola, but in his early days in Georgetown he was called by his
Christian name only, and later he wished to be known simply as “Mr.
Abel.”
I had no sooner made his acquaintance than I ceased to wonder at the
esteem and even affection with which he, a Venezuelan, was regarded in
this British colony. All knew and liked him, and the reason of it was
the personal charm of the man, his kindly disposition, his manner with
women, which pleased them and excited no man’s jealousy--not even
the old hot-tempered planter’s, with a very young and pretty and
light-headed wife--his love of little children, of all wild creatures,
of nature, and of whatsoever was furthest removed from the common
material interests and concerns of a purely commercial community.
The things which excited other men--politics, sport, and the price of
crystals--were outside of his thoughts; and when men had done with
them for a season, when like the tempest they had “blown their fill” in
office and club-room and house and wanted a change, it was a relief to
turn to Mr. Abel and get him to discourse of his world--the world of
nature and of the spirit.
It was, all felt, a good thing to have a Mr. Abel in Georgetown. That
it was indeed good for me I quickly discovered. I had certainly
not expected to meet in such a place with any person to share my
tastes--that love of poetry which has been the chief passion and delight
of my life; but such a one I had found in Mr. Abel. It surprised me
that he, suckled on the literature of Spain, and a reader of only ten or
twelve years of English literature, possessed a knowledge of our modern
poetry as intimate as my own, and a love of it equally great. This
feeling brought us together and made us two--the nervous olive-skinned
Hispano-American of the tropics and the phlegmatic blue-eyed Saxon of
the cold north--one in spirit and more than brothers. Many were the
daylight hours we spent together and “tired the sun with talking”; many,
past counting, the precious evenings in that restful house of his where
I was an almost daily guest. I had not looked for such happiness; nor,
he often said, had he. A result of this intimacy was that the vague idea
concerning his hidden past, that some unusual experience had profoundly
affected him and perhaps changed the whole course of his life, did not
diminish, but, on the contrary, became accentuated, and was often in
my mind. The change in him was almost painful to witness whenever our
wandering talk touched on the subject of the aborigines, and of the
knowledge he had acquired of their character and languages when
living or travelling among them; all that made his conversation most
engaging--the lively, curious mind, the wit, the gaiety of spirit
tinged with a tender melancholy--appeared to fade out of it; even the
expression of his face would change, becoming hard and set, and he would
deal you out facts in a dry mechanical way as if reading them in a book.
It grieved me to note this, but I dropped no hint of such a feeling, and
would never have spoken about it but for a quarrel which came at last to
make the one brief solitary break in that close friendship of years.
I got into a bad state of health, and Abel was not only much concerned
about it, but annoyed, as if I had not treated him well by being ill,
and he would even say that I could get well if I wished to. I did not
take this seriously, but one morning, when calling to see me at the
office, he attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him.
He told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of
my bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not quite
meaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised. Stung by his
reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk to me, even
in fun, in such a way. Yes, he said, getting serious, he had the best
right--that of our friendship. He would be no true friend if he kept his
peace about such a matter. Then, in my haste, I retorted that to me the
friendship between us did not seem so perfect and complete as it did to
him. One condition of friendship is that the partners in it should be
known to each other. He had had my whole life and mind open to him, to
read it as in a book. HIS life was a closed and clasped volume to me.
His face darkened, and after a few moments’ silent reflection he got up
and left me with a cold good-bye, and without that hand-grasp which had
been customary between us.
After his departure I had the feeling that a great loss, a great
calamity, had befallen me, but I was still smarting at his too candid
criticism, all the more because in my heart I acknowledged its truth.
And that night, lying awake, I repented of the cruel retort I had made,
and resolved to ask his forgiveness and leave it to him to determine
the question of our future relations. But he was beforehand with me, and
with the morning came a letter begging my forgiveness and asking me to
go that evening to dine with him.
We were alone, and during dinner and afterwards, when we sat smoking and
sipping black coffee in the veranda, we were unusually quiet, even to
gravity, which caused the two white-clad servants that waited on us--the
brown-faced subtle-eyed old Hindu butler and an almost blue-black young
Guiana Negro--to direct many furtive glances at their master’s face.
They were accustomed to see him in a more genial mood when he had a
friend to dine. To me the change in his manner was not surprising: from
the moment of seeing him I had divined that he had determined to open
the shut and clasped volume of which I had spoken--that the time had now
come for him to speak.
CHAPTER I
Now that we are cool, he said, and regret that we hurt each other, I am
not sorry that it happened. I deserved your reproach: a hundred times
I have wished to tell you the whole story of my travels and adventures
among the savages, and one of the reasons which prevented me was the
fear that it would have an unfortunate effect on our friendship. That
was precious, and I desired above everything to keep it. But I must
think no more about that now. I must think only of how I am to tell you
my story. I will begin at a time when I was twenty-three. It was early
in life to be in the thick of politics, and in trouble to the extent of
having to fly my country to save my liberty, perhaps my life.
Every nation, someone remarks, has the government it deserves, and
Venezuela certainly has the one it deserves and that suits it best. We
call it a republic, not only because it is not one, but also because a
thing must have a name; and to have a good name, or a fine name, is
very convenient--especially when you want to borrow money. If the
Venezuelans, thinly distributed over an area of half a million square
miles, mostly illiterate peasants, half-breeds, and indigenes, were
educated, intelligent men, zealous only for the public weal, it would
be possible for them to have a real republic. They have instead
a government by cliques, tempered by revolution; and a very good
government it is, in harmony with the physical conditions of the country
and the national temperament. Now, it happens that the educated men,
representing your higher classes, are so few that there are not many
persons unconnected by ties of blood or marriage with prominent members
of the political groups to which they belong. By this you will see how
easy and almost inevitable it is that we should become accustomed to
look on conspiracy and revolt against the regnant party--the men of
another clique--as only in the natural order of things. In the event
of failure such outbreaks are punished, but they are not regarded as
immoral. On the contrary, men of the highest intelligence and virtue
among us are seen taking a leading part in these adventures. Whether
such a condition of things is intrinsically wrong or not, or would be
wrong in some circumstances and is not wrong, because inevitable, in
others, I cannot pretend to decide; and all this tiresome profusion
is only to enable you to understand how I--a young man of unblemished
character, not a soldier by profession, not ambitious of political
distinction, wealthy for that country, popular in society, a lover of
social pleasures, of books, of nature actuated, as I believed, by the
highest motives, allowed myself to be drawn very readily by friends and
relations into a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the moment,
with the object of replacing it by more worthy men--ourselves, to wit.
Our adventure failed because the authorities got wind of the affair
and matters were precipitated. Our leaders at the moment happened to be
scattered over the country--some were abroad; and a few hotheaded men
of the party, who were in Caracas just then and probably feared arrest,
struck a rash blow: the President was attacked in the street and
wounded. But the attackers were seized, and some of them shot on the
following day. When the news reached me I was at a distance from the
capital, staying with a friend on an estate he owned on the River
Quebrada Honda, in the State of Guarico, some fifteen to twenty miles
from the town of Zaraza. My friend, an officer in the army, was a leader
in the conspiracy; and as I was the only son of a man who had been
greatly hated by the Minister of War, it became necessary for us both
to fly for our lives. In the circumstances we could not look to be
pardoned, even on the score of youth.
Our first decision was to escape to the sea-coast; but as the risk of a
journey to La Guayra, or any other port of embarkation on the north
side of the country, seemed too great, we made our way in a contrary
direction to the Orinoco, and downstream to Angostura. Now, when we had
reached this comparatively safe breathing-place--safe, at all events,
for the moment--I changed my mind about leaving or attempting to leave
the country. Since boyhood I had taken a very peculiar interest in that
vast and almost unexplored territory we possess south of the Orinoco,
with its countless unmapped rivers and trackless forests; and in
its savage inhabitants, with their ancient customs and character,
unadulterated by contact with Europeans. To visit this primitive
wilderness had been a cherished dream; and I had to some extent even
prepared myself for such an adventure by mastering more than one of the
Indian dialects of the northern states of Venezuela. And now, finding
myself on the south side of our great river, with unlimited time at
my disposal, I determined to gratify this wish. My companion took his
departure towards the coast, while I set about making preparations and
hunting up information from those who had travelled in the interior to
trade with the savages. I decided eventually to go back upstream and
penetrate to the interior in the western part of Guayana, and the
Amazonian territory bordering on Colombia and Brazil, and to return to
Angostura in about six months’ time. I had no fear of being arrested
in the semi-independent and in most part savage region, as the Guayana
authorities concerned themselves little enough about the political
upheavals at Caracas.
The first five or six months I spent in Guayana, after leaving the city
of refuge, were eventful enough to satisfy a moderately adventurous
spirit. A complaisant government employee at Angostura had provided
me with a passport, in which it was set down (for few to read) that my
object in visiting the interior was to collect information concerning
the native tribes, the vegetable products of the country, and other
knowledge which would be of advantage to the Republic; and the
authorities were requested to afford me protection and assist me in my
pursuits. I ascended the Orinoco, making occasional expeditions to the
small Christian settlements in the neighbourhood of the right bank, also
to the Indian villages; and travelling in this way, seeing and learning
much, in about three months I reached the River Metal. During this
period I amused myself by keeping a journal, a record of personal
adventures, impressions of the country and people, both semi-civilized
and savage; and as my journal grew, I began to think that on my return
at some future time to Caracas, it might prove useful and interesting to
the public, and also procure me fame; which thought proved pleasurable
and a great incentive, so that I began to observe things more narrowly
and to study expression. But the book was not to be.
From the mouth of the Meta I journeyed on, intending to visit the
settlement of Atahapo, where the great River Guaviare, with other
rivers, empties itself into the Orinoco. But I was not destined to reach
it, for at the small settlement of Manapuri I fell ill of a low fever;
and here ended the first half-year of my wanderings, about which no more
need be told.
A more miserable place than Manapuri for a man to be ill of a low fever
in could not well be imagined. The settlement, composed of mean hovels,
with a few large structures of mud, or plastered wattle, thatched
with palm leaves, was surrounded by water, marsh, and forest, the
breeding-place of myriads of croaking frogs and of clouds of mosquitoes;
even to one in perfect health existence in such a place would have
been a burden. The inhabitants mustered about eighty or ninety, mostly
Indians of that degenerate class frequently to be met with in small
trading outposts. The savages of Guayana are great drinkers, but not
drunkards in our sense, since their fermented liquors contain so
little alcohol that inordinate quantities must be swallowed to produce
intoxication; in the settlements they prefer the white man’s more potent
poisons, with the result that in a small place like Manapuri one can see
enacted, as on a stage, the last act in the great American tragedy. To
be succeeded, doubtless, by other and possibly greater tragedies. My
thoughts at that period of suffering were pessimistic in the extreme.
Sometimes, when the almost continuous rain held up for half a day, I
would manage to creep out a short distance; but I was almost past making
any exertion, scarcely caring to live, and taking absolutely no interest
in the news from Caracas, which reached me at long intervals. At the end
of two months, feeling a slight improvement in my health, and with it a
returning interest in life and its affairs, it occurred to me to get
out my diary and write a brief account of my sojourn at Manapuri. I had
placed it for safety in a small deal box, lent to me for the purpose
by a Venezuelan trader, an old resident at the settlement, by name
Pantaleon--called by all Don Panta--one who openly kept half a dozen
Indian wives in his house, and was noted for his dishonesty and greed,
but who had proved himself a good friend to me. The box was in a corner
of the wretched palm-thatched hovel I inhabited; but on taking it out I
discovered that for several weeks the rain had been dripping on it, and
that the manuscript was reduced to a sodden pulp. I flung it upon the
floor with a curse and threw myself back on my bed with a groan.
In that desponding state I was found by my friend Panta, who was
constant in his visits at all hours; and when in answer to his anxious
inquiries I pointed to the pulpy mass on the mud floor, he turned it
over with his foot, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, kicked it out,
remarking that he had mistaken the object for some unknown reptile that
had crawled in out of the rain. He affected to be astonished that I
should regret its loss. It was all a true narrative, he exclaimed; if
I wished to write a book for the stay-at-homes to read, I could easily
invent a thousand lies far more entertaining than any real experiences.
He had come to me, he said, to propose something. He had lived twenty
years at that place, and had got accustomed to the climate, but it would
not do for me to remain any longer if I wished to live. I must go away
at once to a different country--to the mountains, where it was open and
dry. “And if you want quinine when you are there,” he concluded, “smell
the wind when it blows from the south-west, and you will inhale it into
your system, fresh from the forest.” When I remarked despondingly that
in my condition it would be impossible to quit Manapuri, he went on to
say that a small party of Indians was now in the settlement; that they
had come, not only to trade, but to visit one of their own tribe, who
was his wife, purchased some years ago from her father. “And the money
she cost me I have never regretted to this day,” said he, “for she is a
good wife not jealous,” he added, with a curse on all the others. These
Indians came all the way from the Queneveta mountains, and were of the
Maquiritari tribe. He, Panta, and, better still, his good wife would
interest them on my behalf, and for a suitable reward they would take me
by slow, easy stages to their own country, where I would be treated well
and recover my health.
This proposal, after I had considered it well, produced so good an
effect on me that I not only gave a glad consent, but, on the following
day, I was able to get about and begin the preparations for my journey
with some spirit.
In about eight days I bade good-bye to my generous friend Panta, whom I
regarded, after having seen much of him, as a kind of savage beast that
had sprung on me, not to rend, but to rescue from death; for we
know that even cruel savage brutes and evil men have at times sweet,
beneficent impulses, during which they act in a way contrary to their
natures, like passive agents of some higher power. It was a continual
pain to travel in my weak condition, and the patience of my Indians
was severely taxed; but they did not forsake me; and at last the entire
distance, which I conjectured to be about sixty-five leagues, was
accomplished; and at the end I was actually stronger and better in
every way than at the start. From this time my progress towards complete
recovery was rapid. The air, with or without any medicinal virtue blown
from the cinchona trees in the far-off Andean forest, was tonic; and
when I took my walks on the hillside above the Indian village, or later
when able to climb to the summits, the world as seen from those
wild Queneveta mountains had a largeness and varied glory of scenery
peculiarly refreshing and delightful to the soul.
With the Maquiritari tribe I passed some weeks, and the sweet sensations
of returning health made me happy for a time; but such sensations seldom
outlast convalescence. I was no sooner well again than I began to feel
a restless spirit stirring in me. The monotony of savage life in this
place became intolerable. After my long listless period the reaction had
come, and I wished only for action, adventure--no matter how dangerous;
and for new scenes, new faces, new dialects. In the end I conceived the
idea of going on to the Casiquiare river, where I would find a few small
settlements, and perhaps obtain help from the authorities there which
would enable me to reach the Rio Negro. For it was now in my mind to
follow that river to the Amazons, and so down to Para and the Atlantic
coast.
Leaving the Queneveta range, I started with two of the Indians as guides
and travelling companions; but their journey ended only half-way to the
river I wished to reach; and they left me with some friendly savages
living on the Chunapay, a tributary of the Cunucumana, which flows to
the Orinoco. Here I had no choice but to wait until an opportunity of
attaching myself to some party of travelling Indians going south-west
should arrive; for by this time I had expended the whole of my small
capital in ornaments and calico brought from Manapuri, so that I could
no longer purchase any man’s service. And perhaps it will be as well
to state at this point just what I possessed. For some time I had worn
nothing but sandals to protect my feet; my garments consisted of a
single suit, and one flannel shirt, which I washed frequently, going
shirtless while it was drying. Fortunately I had an excellent blue cloth
cloak, durable and handsome, given to me by a friend at Angostura, whose
prophecy on presenting it, that it would outlast ME, very nearly came
true. It served as a covering by night, and to keep a man warm and
comfortable when travelling in cold and wet weather no better garment
was ever made. I had a revolver and metal cartridge-box in my broad
leather belt, also a good hunting-knife with strong buckhorn handle and
a heavy blade about nine inches long. In the pocket of my cloak I had a
pretty silver tinder-box, and a match-box--to be mentioned again in this
narrative--and one or two other trifling objects; these I was determined
to keep until they could be kept no longer.
During the tedious interval of waiting on the Chunapay I was told a
flattering tale by the village Indians, which eventually caused me
to abandon the proposed journey to the Rio Negro. These Indians wore
necklets, like nearly all the Guayana savages; but one, I observed,
possessed a necklet unlike that of the others, which greatly aroused my
curiosity. It was made of thirteen gold plates, irregular in form, about
as broad as a man’s thumb-nail, and linked together with fibres. I was
allowed to examine it, and had no doubt that the pieces were of pure
gold, beaten flat by the savages. When questioned about it, they said
it was originally obtained from the Indians of Parahuari, and Parahuari,
they further said, was a mountainous country west of the Orinoco. Every
man and woman in that place, they assured me, had such a necklet. This
report inflamed my mind to such a degree that I could not rest by night
or day for dreaming golden dreams, and considering how to get to that
rich district, unknown to civilized men. The Indians gravely shook their
heads when I tried to persuade them to take me. They were far enough
from the Orinoco, and Parahuari was ten, perhaps fifteen, days’ journey
further on--a country unknown to them, where they had no relations.
In spite of difficulties and delays, however, and not without pain and
some perilous adventures, I succeeded at last in reaching the upper
Orinoco, and, eventually, in crossing to the other side. With my life
in my hand I struggled on westward through an unknown difficult country,
from Indian village to village, where at any moment I might have been
murdered with impunity for the sake of my few belongings. It is hard for
me to speak a good word for the Guayana savages; but I must now say this
of them, that they not only did me no harm when I was at their mercy
during this long journey, but they gave me shelter in their villages,
and fed me when I was hungry, and helped me on my way when I could make
no return. You must not, however, run away with the idea that there is
any sweetness in their disposition, any humane or benevolent instincts
such as are found among the civilized nations: far from it. I regard
them now, and, fortunately for me, I regarded them then, when, as I have
said, I was at their mercy, as beasts of prey, plus a cunning or low
kind of intelligence vastly greater than that of the brute; and, for
only morality, that respect for the rights of other members of the same
family, or tribe, without which even the rudest communities cannot hold
together. How, then, could I do this thing, and dwell and travel freely,
without receiving harm, among tribes that have no peace with and no
kindly feelings towards the stranger, in a district where the white
man is rarely or never seen? Because I knew them so well. Without that
knowledge, always available, and an extreme facility in acquiring new
dialects, which had increased by practice until it was almost like
intuition, I should have fared badly after leaving the Maquiritari
tribe. As it was, I had two or three very narrow escapes.
To return from this digression. I looked at last on the famous Parahuari
mountains, which, I was greatly surprised to find, were after all
nothing but hills, and not very high ones. This, however, did not
impress me. The very fact that Parahuari possessed no imposing feature
in its scenery seemed rather to prove that it must be rich in gold: how
else could its name and the fame of its treasures be familiar to people
dwelling so far away as the Cunucumana?
But there was no gold. I searched through the whole range, which was
about seven leagues long, and visited the villages, where I talked much
with the Indians, interrogating them, and they had no necklets of
gold, nor gold in any form; nor had they ever heard of its presence in
Parahuari or in any other place known to them.
The very last village where I spoke on the subject of my quest, albeit
now without hope, was about a league from the western extremity of the
range, in the midst of a high broken country of forest and savannah and
many swift streams; near one of these, called the Curicay, the village
stood, among low scattered trees--a large building, in which all the
people, numbering eighteen, passed most of their time when not hunting,
with two smaller buildings attached to it. The head, or chief, Runi by
name, was about fifty years old, a taciturn, finely formed, and somewhat
dignified savage, who was either of a sullen disposition or not well
pleased at the intrusion of a white man. And for a time I made no
attempt to conciliate him. What profit was there in it at all? Even
that light mask, which I had worn so long and with such good effect,
incommoded me now: I would cast it aside and be myself--silent and
sullen as my barbarous host. If any malignant purpose was taking form
in his mind, let it, and let him do his worst; for when failure first
stares a man in the face, it has so dark and repellent a look that not
anything that can be added can make him more miserable; nor has he any
apprehension. For weeks I had been searching with eager, feverish
eyes in every village, in every rocky crevice, in every noisy mountain
streamlet, for the glittering yellow dust I had travelled so far to
find. And now all my beautiful dreams--all the pleasure and power to
be--had vanished like a mere mirage on the savannah at noon.
It was a day of despair which I spent in this place, sitting all day
indoors, for it was raining hard, immersed in my own gloomy thoughts,
pretending to doze in my seat, and out of the narrow slits of my
half-closed eyes seeing the others, also sitting or moving about, like
shadows or people in a dream; and I cared nothing about them, and wished
not to seem friendly, even for the sake of the food they might offer me
by and by.
Towards evening the rain ceased; and rising up I went out a short
distance to the neighbouring stream, where I sat on a stone and, casting
off my sandals, laved my bruised feet in the cool running water. The
western half of the sky was blue again with that tender lucid blue
seen after rain, but the leaves still glittered with water, and the wet
trunks looked almost black under the green foliage. The rare loveliness
of the scene touched and lightened my heart. Away back in the east
the hills of Parahuari, with the level sun full on them, loomed with a
strange glory against the grey rainy clouds drawing off on that side,
and their new mystic beauty almost made me forget how these same hills
had wearied, and hurt, and mocked me. On that side, also to the north
and south, there was open forest, but to the west a different prospect
met the eye. Beyond the stream and the strip of verdure that fringed it,
and the few scattered dwarf trees growing near its banks, spread a brown
savannah sloping upwards to a long, low, rocky ridge, beyond which rose
a great solitary hill, or rather mountain, conical in form, and clothed
in forest almost to the summit. This was the mountain Ytaioa, the chief
landmark in that district. As the sun went down over the ridge, beyond
the savannah, the whole western sky changed to a delicate rose colour
that had the appearance of rose-coloured smoke blown there by some far
off-wind, and left suspended--a thin, brilliant veil showing through it
the distant sky beyond, blue and ethereal. Flocks of birds, a kind of
troupial, were flying past me overhead, flock succeeding flock, on their
way to their roosting-place, uttering as they flew a clear, bell-like
chirp; and there was something ethereal too in those drops of melodious
sound, which fell into my heart like raindrops falling into a pool to
mix their fresh heavenly water with the water of earth.
Doubtless into the turbid tarn of my heart some sacred drops had
fallen--from the passing birds, from that crimson disk which had now
dropped below the horizon, the darkening hills, the rose and blue of
infinite heaven, from the whole visible circle; and I felt purified
and had a strange sense and apprehension of a secret innocence and
spirituality in nature--a prescience of some bourn, incalculably distant
perhaps, to which we are all moving; of a time when the heavenly rain
shall have washed us clean from all spot and blemish. This unexpected
peace which I had found now seemed to me of infinitely greater value
than that yellow metal I had missed finding, with all its possibilities.
My wish now was to rest for a season at this spot, so remote and lovely
and peaceful, where I had experienced such unusual feelings and such a
blessed disillusionment.
This was the end of my second period in Guayana: the first had been
filled with that dream of a book to win me fame in my country, perhaps
even in Europe; the second, from the time of leaving the Queneveta
mountains, with the dream of boundless wealth--the old dream of gold
in this region that has drawn so many minds since the days of Francisco
Pizarro. But to remain I must propitiate Runi, sitting silent with
gloomy brows over there indoors; and he did not appear to me like one
that might be won with words, however flattering. It was clear to
me that the time had come to part with my one remaining valuable
trinket--the tinder-box of chased silver.
I returned to the house and, going in, seated myself on a log by the
fire, just opposite to my grim host, who was smoking and appeared not
to have moved since I left him. I made myself a cigarette, then drew out
the tinder-box, with its flint and steel attached to it by means of
two small silver chains. His eyes brightened a little as they curiously
watched my movements, and he pointed without speaking to the glowing
coals of fire at my feet. I shook my head, and striking the steel, sent
out a brilliant spray of sparks, then blew on the tinder and lit my
cigarette.
This done, instead of returning the box to my pocket I passed the chain
through the buttonhole of my cloak and let it dangle on my breast as
an ornament. When the cigarette was smoked, I cleared my throat in the
orthodox manner and fixed my eyes on Runi, who, on his part, made a
slight movement to indicate that he was ready to listen to what I had to
say.
My speech was long, lasting at least half an hour, delivered in
a profound silence; it was chiefly occupied with an account of my
wanderings in Guayana; and being little more than a catalogue of names
of all the places I had visited, and the tribes and chief or head men
with whom I had come in contact, I was able to speak continuously, and
so to hide my ignorance of a dialect which was still new to me.
The Guayana savage judges a man for his staying powers. To stand as
motionless as a bronze statue for one or two hours watching for a
bird; to sit or lie still for half a day; to endure pain, not seldom
self-inflicted, without wincing; and when delivering a speech to pour
it out in a copious stream, without pausing to take breath or hesitating
over a word--to be able to do all this is to prove yourself a man, an
equal, one to be respected and even made a friend of. What I really
wished to say to him was put in a few words at the conclusion of my
well-nigh meaningless oration. Everywhere, I said, I had been the
Indian’s friend, and I wished to be his friend, to live with him at
Parahuari, even as I had lived with other chiefs and heads of villages
and families; to be looked on by him, as these others had looked on me,
not as a stranger or a white man, but as a friend, a brother, an Indian.
I ceased speaking, and there was a slight murmurous sound in the room,
as of wind long pent up in many lungs suddenly exhaled; while Runi,
still unmoved, emitted a low grunt. Then I rose, and detaching the
silver ornament from my cloak, presented it to him. He accepted it; not
very graciously, as a stranger to these people might have imagined; but
I was satisfied, feeling sure that I had made a favourable impression.
After a little he handed the box to the person sitting next to him, who
examined it and passed it on to a third, and in this way it went round
and came back once more to Runi. Then he called for a drink. There
happened to be a store of casserie in the house; probably the women had
been busy for some days past in making it, little thinking that it was
destined to be prematurely consumed. A large jarful was produced; Runi
politely quaffed the first cup; I followed; then the others; and the
women drank also, a woman taking about one cupful to a man’s three.
Runi and I, however, drank the most, for we had our positions as the two
principal personages there to maintain. Tongues were loosened now; for
the alcohol, small as the quantity contained in this mild liquor is, had
begun to tell on our brains. I had not their pottle-shaped stomach, made
to hold unlimited quantities of meat and drink; but I was determined on
this most important occasion not to deserve my host’s contempt--to be
compared, perhaps, to the small bird that delicately picks up six drops
of water in its bill and is satisfied. I would measure my strength
against his, and if necessary drink myself into a state of
insensibility.
At last I was scarcely able to stand on my legs. But even the seasoned
old savage was affected by this time. In vino veritas, said the
ancients; and the principle holds good where there is no vinum, but only
mild casserie. Runi now informed me that he had once known a white man,
that he was a bad man, which had caused him to say that all white men
were bad; even as David, still more sweepingly, had proclaimed that all
men were liars. Now he found that it was not so, that I was a good man.
His friendliness increased with intoxication. He presented me with a
curious little tinder-box, made from the conical tail of an armadillo,
hollowed out, and provided with a wooden stopper--this to be used in
place of the box I had deprived myself of. He also furnished me with a
grass hammock, and had it hung up there and then, so that I could lie
down when inclined. There was nothing he would not do for me. And at
last, when many more cups had been emptied, and a third or fourth jar
brought out, he began to unburthen his heart of its dark and dangerous
secrets. He shed tears--for the “man without a tear” dwells not in the
woods of Guayana: tears for those who had been treacherously slain long
years ago; for his father, who had been killed by Tripica, the father
of Managa, who was still above ground. But let him and all his people
beware of Runi. He had spilt their blood before, he had fed the fox and
vulture with their flesh, and would never rest while Managa lived with
his people at Uritay--the five hills of Uritay, which were two days’
journey from Parahuari. While thus talking of his old enemy he lashed
himself into a kind of frenzy, smiting his chest and gnashing his teeth;
and finally seizing a spear, he buried its point deep into the clay
floor, only to wrench it out and strike it into the earth again and
again, to show how he would serve Managa, and any one of Managa’s people
he might meet with--man, woman, or child. Then he staggered out from the
door to flourish his spear; and looking to the north-west, he shouted
aloud to Managa to come and slay his people and burn down his house, as
he had so often threatened to do.
“Let him come! Let Managa come!” I cried, staggering out after him. “I
am your friend, your brother; I have no spear and no arrows, but I have
this--this!” And here I drew out and flourished my revolver. “Where is
Managa?” I continued. “Where are the hills of Uritay?” He pointed to
a star low down in the south-west. “Then,” I shouted, “let this bullet
find Managa, sitting by the fire among his people, and let him fall and
pour out his blood on the ground!” And with that I discharged my pistol
in the direction he had pointed to. A scream of terror burst out from
the women and children, while Runi at my side, in an access of fierce
delight and admiration, turned and embraced me. It was the first and
last embrace I ever suffered from a naked male savage, and although
this did not seem a time for fastidious feelings, to be hugged to his
sweltering body was an unpleasant experience.
More cups of casserie followed this outburst; and at last, unable to
keep it up any longer, I staggered to my hammock; but being unable to
get into it, Runi, overflowing with kindness, came to my assistance,
whereupon we fell and rolled together on the floor. Finally I was raised
by the others and tumbled into my swinging bed, and fell at once into a
deep, dreamless sleep, from which I did not awake until after sunrise on
the following morning.