The last of my pleasant rides, and one which would have been perhaps
the pleasantest of all, had I had (as on other occasions) the
company of my host, was to the Cocal, or Coco-palm grove, of the
east coast, taking on my way the Savanna of Aripo. It had been our
wish to go up the Orinoco, as far as Ciudad Bolivar (the Angostura
of Humboldt's travels), to see the new capital of Southern
Venezuela, fast rising into wealth and importance under the wise and
pacific policy of its president, Senor Dalla Costa, a man said to
possess a genius and an integrity far superior to the average of
South American Republicans--of which latter the less said the
better; to push back, if possible, across those Llanos which
Humboldt describes in his Personal Narrative, vol. iv. p. 295; it
may be to visit the Falls of the Caroni. But that had to be done by
others, after we were gone. My days in the island were growing
short; and the most I could do was to see at Aripo a small specimen
of that peculiar Savanna vegetation, which occupies thousands of
square miles on the mainland.
If, therefore, the reader cares nothing for botanical and geological
speculations, he will be wise to skip this chapter. But those who
are interested in the vast changes of level and distribution of land
which have taken place all over the world since the present forms of
animals and vegetables were established on it, may possibly find a
valuable fact or two in what I thought I saw at the Savanna of
Aripo.
My first point was, of course, the little city of San Josef. To an
Englishman, the place will be always interesting as the scene of
Raleigh's exploit, and the capture of Berreos; and, to one who has
received the kindness which I have received from the Spanish
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, a spot full of most grateful
memories. It lies pleasantly enough, on a rise at the southern foot
of the mountains, and at the mouth of a torrent which comes down
from the famous 'Chorro,' or waterfall, of Maraccas. In going up to
that waterfall, just at the back of the town, I found buried, in
several feet of earth, a great number of seemingly recent but very
ancient shells. Whether they be remnants of an elevated sea-beach,
or of some Indian 'kitchen-midden,' I dare not decide. But the
question is well worth the attention of any geologist who may go
that way. The waterfall, and the road up to it, are best described
by one who, after fourteen years of hard scientific work in the
island, now lies lonely in San Fernando churchyard, far from his
beloved Fatherland--he, or at least all of him that could die. I
wonder whether that of him which can never die, knows what his
Fatherland is doing now? But to the waterfall of Maraccas, or
rather to poor Dr. Krueger's description of it:--
'The northern chain of mountains, covered nearly everywhere with
dense forests, is intersected at various angles by numbers of
valleys presenting the most lovely character. Generally each valley
is watered by a silvery stream, tumbling here and there over rocks
and natural dams, ministering in a continuous rain to the strange-
looking river-canes, dumb-canes, and balisiers that voluptuously
bend their heads to the drizzly shower which plays incessantly on
their glistening leaves, off which the globules roll in a thousand
pearls, as from the glossy plumage of a stately swan.
'One of these falls deserves particular notice--the Cascade of
Maraccas--in the valley of that name. The high road leads up the
valley a few miles, over hills, and along the windings of the river,
exhibiting the varying scenery of our mountain district in the
fairest style. There, on the river-side, you may admire the
gigantic pepper-trees, or the silvery leaves of the Calathea, the
lofty bamboo, or the fragrant Pothos, the curious Cyclanthus, or
frowning nettles, some of the latter from ten to twelve feet high.
But how to describe the numberless treasures which everywhere strike
the eye of the wandering naturalist?
'To reach the Chorro, or Cascade, you strike to the right into a
"path" that brings you first to a cacao plantation, through a few
rice or maize fields, and then you enter the shade of the virgin
forest. Thousands of interesting objects now attract your
attention: here, the wonderful Norantea or the resplendent
Calycophyllum, a Tabernaemontana or a Faramea filling the air afar
off with the fragrance of their blossoms; there, a graceful
Heliconia winking at you from out some dark ravine. That shrubbery
above is composed of a species of Boehmeria or Ardisia, and that
scarlet flower belongs to our native Aphelandra. In the rear are
one or two Philodendrons--disagreeable guests, for their smell is
bad enough, and they blister when imprudently touched. There also
you may see a tree-fern, though a small one. Nearer to us, and low
down beneath our feet, that rich panicle of flowers belongs to a
Begonia; and here also is an assemblage of ferns of the genera
Asplenium, Hymenophyllum, and Trichomanes, as well as of Hepaticae
and Mosses. But what are those yellow and purple flowers hanging
above our heads? They are Bignonias and Mucunas--creepers straying
from afar which have selected this spot, where they may, under the
influence of the sun's beams, propagate their race. Those chain-
like, fantastic, strange-looking lianes, resembling a family of
boas, are Bauhinias; and beyond, through the opening you see, in the
abandoned ground of some squatter's garden, the trumpet-tree
(Cecropia) and the groo-groo, the characteristic plants of the
rastrajo.
'Now, let us proceed on our walk; we mean the cascade:--Here it is,
opposite to you, a grand spectacle indeed! From a perpendicular
wall of solid rock, of more than three hundred feet, down rushes a
stream of water, splitting in the air, and producing a constant
shower, which renders this lovely spot singularly and deliciously
cool. Nearly the whole extent of this natural wall is covered with
plants, among which you can easily discern numbers of ferns and
mosses, two species of Pitcairnia with beautiful red flowers, some
Aroids, various nettles, and here and there a Begonia. How
different such a spot would look in cold Europe! Below, in the
midst of a never-failing drizzle, grow luxuriant Ardisias, Aroids,
Ferns, Costas, Heliconias, Centropogons, Hydrocotyles, Cyperoids,
and Grasses of various genera, Tradescantias and Commelynas,
Billbergias, and, occasionally, a few small Rubiaceae and
Melastomaceae.'
The cascade, when I saw it, was somewhat disfigured above and below.
Above, the forest-fires of last year had swept the edge of the
cliff, and had even crawled half-way down, leaving blackened rocks
and gray stems; and below, loyal zeal had cut away only too much of
the rich vegetation, to make a shed or stable, in anticipation of a
visit from the Duke of Edinburgh, who did not come. A year or two,
however, in this climate will heal these temporary scars, and all
will be as luxuriant as ever. Indeed such scars heal only too fast
here. For the paths become impassable from brush and weeds every
six months, and have to be cutlassed out afresh; and when it was
known that we were going up to the waterfall, a gang had to be set
to work to save the lady of the party being wetted through by leaf-
dew up to her shoulders, as she sat upon her horse. Pretty it was--
a bit out of an older and more simple world--to see the yeoman-
gentleman who had contracted for the mending of the road, and who
counts among his ancestors the famous Ponce de Leon, meeting us
half-way on our return; dressed more simply, and probably much
poorer, than an average English yeoman: but keeping untainted the
stately Castilian courtesy, as with hat in hand--I hope I need not
say that my hat was at my saddle-bow all the while--he inquired
whether La Senorita had found the path free from all obstructions,
and so forth.
'The old order changes, giving place to the new:
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.'
But when, two hundred years hence, there are no more such gentlemen
of the old school left in the world, what higher form of true
civilisation shall we have invented to put in its place? None as
yet. All our best civilisation, in every class, is derived from
that; from the true self respect which is founded on respect for
others.
From San Josef, I was taken on in the carriage of a Spanish
gentleman through Arima, a large village where an Indian colony
makes those baskets and other wares from the Arouma-leaf for which
Trinidad is noted; and on to his estate at Guanapo, a pleasant
lowland place, with wide plantations of Cacao, only fourteen years
old, but in full and most profitable bearing; rich meadows with huge
clumps of bamboo; and a roomy timber-house, beautifully thatched
with palm, which serves as a retreat, in the dry season, for him and
his ladies, when baked out of dusty San Josef. On my way there, by
the by, I espied, and gathered for the first and last time, a flower
very dear to me--a crimson Passion flower, rambling wild over the
bush.
When we arrived, the sun was still so high in heaven that the kind
owner offered to push on that very afternoon to the Savanna of
Aripo, some five miles off. Police-horses had arrived from Arima,
in one of which I recognised my trusty old brown cob of the Northern
Mountains, and laid hands on him at once; and away three or four of
us went, the squire leading the way on his mule, with cutlass and
umbrella, both needful enough.
We went along a sandy high road, bordered by a vegetation new to me.
Low trees, with wiry branches and shining evergreen leaves, which
belonged, I was told, principally to the myrtle tribe, were
overtopped by Jagua palms, and packed below with Pinguins; with wild
pine-apples, whose rose and purple flower-heads were very beautiful;
and with a species of palm of which I had often heard, but which I
had never seen before, at least in any abundance, namely, the Timit,
{256a} the leaves of which are used as thatch. A low tree, seldom
rising more than twenty or thirty feet, it throws out wedge shaped
leaves some ten or twelve feet long, sometimes all but entire,
sometimes irregularly pinnate, because the space between the
straight and parallel side nerves has not been filled up. These
flat wedge-shaped sheets, often six feet across, and the oblong
pinnae, some three feet long by six inches to a foot in breadth,
make admirable thatch; and on emergency, as we often saw that day,
good umbrellas. Bundles of them lay along the roadside, tied up,
ready for carrying away, and each Negro or Negress whom we passed
carried a Timit-leaf, and hooked it on to his head when a gush of
rain came down.
After a while we turned off the high road into a forest path, which
was sound enough, the soil being one sheet of poor sand and white
quartz gravel, which would in Scotland, or even Devonshire, have
carried nothing taller than heath, but was here covered with
impenetrable jungle. The luxuriance of this jungle, be it
remembered, must not delude a stranger, as it has too many ere now,
into fancying that the land would be profitable under cultivation.
As long as the soil is shaded and kept damp, it will bear an
abundant crop of woody fibre, which, composed almost entirely of
carbon and water, drains hardly any mineral constituents from the
soil. But if that jungle be once cleared off, the slow and careful
work of ages has been undone in a moment. The burning sun bakers up
everything; and the soil, having no mineral staple wherewith to
support a fresh crop if planted, is reduced to aridity and sterility
for years to come. Timber, therefore, I believe, and timber only,
is the proper crop for these poor soils, unless medicinal or
otherwise useful trees should be discovered hereafter worth the
planting. To thin out the useless timbers--but cautiously, for fear
of letting in the sun's rays--and to replace them by young plants of
useful timbers, is all that Government can do with the poorer bits
of these Crown lands, beyond protecting (as it does now to the best
of its power) the natural crop of Timit-leaves from waste and
destruction. So much it ought to do; and so much it can and will do
in Trinidad, which--happily for it--possesses a Government which
governs, instead of leaving every man, as in the Irishman's
paradise, to 'do what is right in the sight of his own eyes, and
what is wrong too, av he likes.' Without such wise regulation, and
even restraint, of the ignorant greediness of human toil, intent
only (as in the too exclusive cultivation of the sugar-cane and of
the cotton-plant) on present profits, without foresight or care for
the future, the lands of warmer climates will surely fall under that
curse, so well described by the venerable Elias Fries, of Lund.
{257a}
'A broad belt of waste land follows gradually in the steps of
cultivation. If it expands, its centre and its cradle dies, and on
the outer borders only do we find green shoots. But it is not
impossible, only difficult, for man, without renouncing the
advantage of culture itself, one day to make reparation for the
injury which he has inflicted; he is the appointed lord of creation.
True it is that thorns and thistles, ill-favoured and poisonous
plants, well named by botanists "rubbish-plants," mark the track
which man has proudly traversed through the earth. Before him lay
original Nature in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind him he
leaves the desert, a deformed and ruined land; for childish desire
of destruction or thoughtless squandering of vegetable treasures has
destroyed the character of Nature; and, terrified, man himself flies
from the arena of his actions, leaving the impoverished earth to
barbarous races or to animals, so long as yet another spot in virgin
beauty smiles before him. Here, again, in selfish pursuit of
profit, and, consciously or unconsciously, following the abominable
principle of the great moral vileness which one man has expressed--
"Apres nous le deluge"--he begins anew the work of destruction.
Thus did cultivation, driven out, leave the East, and perhaps the
Deserts formerly robbed of their coverings: like the wild hordes of
old over beautiful Greece, thus rolls the conquest with fearful
rapidity from east to west through America; and the planter now
often leaves the already exhausted land, the eastern climate becomes
infertile through the demolition of the forests, to introduce a
similar revolution into the far West.'
For a couple of miles or more we trotted on through this jungle,
till suddenly we saw light ahead; and in five minutes the forest
ended, and a scene opened before us which made me understand the
admiration which Humboldt and other travellers have expressed at the
far vaster Savannas of the Orinoco.
A large sheet of gray-green grass, bordered by the forest wall, as
far as the eye could see, and dotted with low bushes, weltered in
mirage; while stretching out into it, some half a mile off, a gray
promontory into a green sea, was an object which filled me with more
awe and admiration than anything which I had seen in the island.
It was a wood of Moriche palms; like a Greek temple, many hundred
yards in length, and, as I guessed, nearly a hundred feet in height;
and, like a Greek temple, ending abruptly at its full height. The
gray columns, perfectly straight and parallel, supported a dark roof
of leaves, gray underneath, and reflecting above, from their broad
fans, sheets of pale glittering-light. Such serenity of grandeur I
never saw in any group of trees; and when we rode up to it, and
tethered our horses in its shade, it seemed to me almost irreverent
not to kneel and worship in that temple not made with hands.
When we had gazed our fill, we set hastily to work to collect
plants, as many as the lateness of the hour and the scalding heat
would allow. A glance showed the truth of Dr. Krueger's words:--
'It is impossible to describe the feelings of the botanist when
arriving at a field like this, so much unlike anything he has seen
before. Here are full-blowing large Orchids, with red, white, and
yellow flowers; and among the grasses, smaller ones of great
variety, and as great scientific interest--Melastomaceous plants of
various genera; Utricularias, Droseras, rare and various grasses,
and Cyperoids of small sizes and fine kinds, with a species of
Cassytha; in the water, Ceratophyllum (the well-known hornwort of
the English ponds) and bog-mosses. Such a variety of forms and
colours is nowhere else to be met with in the island.'
Of the Orchids, we only found one in flower; and of the rest, of
course, we had time only to gather a very few of the more
remarkable, among which was that lovely cousin of the Clerodendrons,
the crimson Amasonia, which ought to be in all hothouses. The low
bushes, I found, were that curious tree the Chaparro, {259a} but not
the Chaparro {259b} so often mentioned by Humboldt as abounding on
the Llanos. This Chaparro is remarkable, first, for the queer
little Natural Order to which it belongs; secondly, for its tanning
properties; thirdly, for the very nasty smell of its flowers;
fourthly, for the roughness of its leaves, which make one's flesh
creep, and are used, I believe, for polishing steel; and lastly, for
its wide geographical range, from Isla de Pinos, near Cuba--where
Columbus, to his surprise, saw true pines growing in the Tropics--
all over the Llanos, and down to Brazil; an ancient, ugly, sturdy
form of vegetation, able to get a scanty living out of the poorest
soils, and consequently triumphant, as yet, in the battle of life.
The soil of the Savanna was a poor sandy clay, treacherous, and
often impassable for horses, being half dried above and wet beneath.
The vegetation grew, not over the whole, but in innumerable
tussocks, which made walking very difficult. The type of the rushes
and grasses was very English; but among them grew, here and there,
plants which excited my astonishment; above all, certain Bladder-
worts, {259c} which I had expected to find, but which, when found,
were so utterly unlike any English ones, that I did not recognise at
first what they were. Our English Bladder-worts, as everybody
knows, float in stagnant water on tangles of hair-like leaves,
something like those of the Water-Ranunculus, but furnished with
innumerable tiny bladders; and this raft supports the little scape
of yellow snapdragon-like flowers. There are in Trinidad and other
parts of South America Bladder-worts of this type. But those which
we found to-day, growing out of the damp clay, were more like in
habit to a delicate stalk of flax, or even a bent of grass, upright,
leafless or all but leafless, with heads of small blue or yellow
flowers, and carrying, in one species, a few very minute bladders
about the roots, in another none at all. A strange variation from
the normal type of the family; yet not so strange, after all, as
that of another variety in the high mountain woods, which, finding
neither ponds to float in nor swamp to root in, has taken to lodging
as a parasite among the wet moss on tree-trunks; not so strange,
either, as that of yet another, which floats, but in the most
unexpected spots, namely, in the water which lodges between the
leaf-sheaths of the wild pines, perched on the tree-boughs, a
parasite on parasites; and sends out long runners, as it grows,
along the bough, in search of the next wild pine and its tiny
reservoirs.
In the face of such strange facts, is it very absurd to guess that
these Utricularias, so like each other in their singular and highly
specialised flowers, so unlike each other in the habit of the rest
of the plant, have started from some one original type perhaps long
since extinct; and that, carried by birds into quite new situations,
they have adapted themselves, by natural selection, to new
circumstances, changing the parts which required change--the leaves
and stalks; but keeping comparatively unchanged those which needed
no change--the flowers?
But I was not prepared, as I should have been had I studied my
Griesbach's West Indian Flora carefully enough beforehand, for the
next proof of the wide distribution of water-plants. For as I
scratched and stumbled among the tussocks, 'larding the lean earth
as I stalked along,' my kind guide put into my hand, with something
of an air of triumph, a little plant, which was--there was no
denying it--none other than the long-leaved Sundew, {260a} with its
clammy-haired paws full of dead flies, just as they would have been
in any bog in Devonshire or in Hampshire, in Wales or in Scotland.
But how came it here? And more, how has it spread, not only over
the whole of Northern Europe, Canada, and the United States, but
even as far south as Brazil? Its being common to North America and
Europe is not surprising. It may belong to that comparatively
ancient Flora which existed when there was land way between the two
continents by way of Greenland, and the bison ranged from Russia to
the Rocky Mountains. But its presence within the Tropics is more
probably explained by supposing that it, like the Bladder-worts, has
been carried on the feet or in the crop of birds.
The Savanna itself, like those of Caroni and Piarco, offers, I
suspect, a fresh proof that a branch of the Orinoco once ran along
the foot of the northern mountains of Trinidad.
'It is impossible,' says Humboldt, {260b} 'to cross the burning
plains' (of the Orinocquan Savannas) 'without inquiring whether they
have always been in the same state; or whether they have been
stripped of their vegetation by some revolution of nature. The
stratum of mould now found on them is very thin. . . . The plains
were, doubtless, less bare in the fifteenth century than they are
now; yet the first Conquistadores, who came from Coro, described
them then as Savannas, where nothing could be perceived save the sky
and the turf; which were generally destitute of trees, and difficult
to traverse on account of the reverberation of heat from the soil.
Why does not the great forest of the Oroonoco extend to the north,
or the left bank of that river? Why does it not fill that vast
space that reaches as far as the Cordillera of the coast, and which
is fertilised by various rivers? This question is connected with
all that relates to the history of our planet. If, indulging in
geological reveries, we suppose that the Steppes of America and the
desert of Sahara have been stripped of their vegetation by an
irruption of the ocean, or that they formed the bottom of an inland
lake'--(the Sahara, as is now well known, is the quite recently
elevated bed of a great sea continuous with the Atlantic)--'we may
conceive that thousands of years have not sufficed for the trees and
shrubs to advance toward the centre from the borders of the forests,
from the skirts of the plains either naked or covered with turf, and
darken so vast a space with their shade. It is more difficult to
explain the origin of bare savannas enclosed in forests, than to
recognise the causes which maintain forests and savannas within
their ancient limits like continents and seas.'
With these words in my mind, I could not but look on the Savanna of
Aripo as one of the last-made bits of dry land in Trinidad, still
unfurnished with the common vegetation of the island. The two
invading armies of tropical plants--one advancing from the north,
off the now almost destroyed land which connected Trinidad and the
Cordillera with the Antilles; the other from the south-west, off the
utterly destroyed land which connected Trinidad with Guiana--met, as
I fancy, ages since, on the opposite banks of a mighty river, or
estuary, by which the Orinoco entered the ocean along the foot of
the northern mountains. As that river-bed rose and became dry land,
the two Floras crossed and intermingled. Only here and there, as at
Aripo, are left patches, as it were, of a third Flora, which once
spread uninterruptedly along the southern base of the Cordillera and
over the lowland which is now the Gulf of Paria, along the alluvial
flats of the mighty stream; and the Moriche palms of Aripo may be
the lineal descendants of those which now inhabit the Llanos of the
main; as those again may be the lineal descendants of the Moriches
which Schomburgk found forming forests among the mountains of
Guiana, up to four thousand feet above the sea. Age after age the
Moriche apples floated down the stream, settling themselves on every
damp spot not yet occupied by the richer vegetation of the forests,
and ennobled, with their solitary grandeur, what without them would
have been a dreary waste of mud and sand.
These Savannas of Trinidad stand, it must be remembered, in the very
line where, on such a theory, they might be expected to stand, along
the newest deposit; the great band of sand, gravel, and clay rubbish
which stretches across the island at the mountain-foot, its highest
point in thirty-six miles being only two hundred and twenty feet--an
elevation far less than the corresponding depression of the Bocas,
which has parted Trinidad from the main Cordillera. That the
rubbish on this line was deposited by a river or estuary is as clear
to me as that the river was either a very rapid one, or subject to
violent and lofty floods, as the Orinoco is now. For so are best
explained, not merely the sheets of gravel, but the huge piles of
boulder which have accumulated at the mouth of the mountain gorges
on the northern side.
As for the southern shore of this supposed channel of the Orinoco,
it at once catches the eye of any one standing on the northern
range. He must see that he is on one shore of a vast channel, the
other shore of which is formed by the Montserrat, Tamana, and
Manzanilla hills; far lower now than the northern range, Tamana only
being over a thousand feet, but doubtless, in past ages, far higher
than now. No one can doubt this who has seen the extraordinary
degradation going on still about the summits, or who remembers that
the strata, whether tertiary or lower chalk, have been, over the
greater part of the island, upheaved, faulted, set on end, by the
convulsions seemingly so common during the Miocene epoch, and since
then sawn away by water and air into one rolling outline, quite
independent of the dip of the strata. The whole southern two thirds
of Trinidad represent a wear and tear which is not to be counted by
thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of years; and yet which, I
verily believe, has taken place since the average plants, trees, and
animals of the island dwelt therein.
This elevation may have well coincided with the depression of the
neighbouring Gulf of Paria. That the southern portion of that gulf
was once dry land; that the Serpent's Mouth did not exist when the
present varieties of plants and animals were created, is matter of
fact, proven by the identity of the majority of plants and animals
on both shores. How else--to give a few instances out of hundreds--
did the Mora, the Brazil-nut, the Cannon-ball tree: how else did
the Ant-eater, the Coendou, the two Cuencos, the Guazupita deer,
enter Trinidad? Humboldt--though, unfortunately, he never visited
the island--saw this at a glance. While he perceived that the
Indian story, how the Boca Drago to the north had been only lately
broken through, had a foundation of truth, 'It cannot be doubted,'
he says, 'that the Gulf of Paria was once an inland basin, and the
Punta Icacque (its south-western extremity) united to the Punta
Toleto, east of the Boca de Pedernales.' {262} In which case there
may well have been--one may almost say there must have been--an
outlet for that vast body of water which pours, often in tremendous
floods, from the Pedernales' mouth of the Orinoco, as well as from
those of the Tigre, Guanipa, Caroli, and other streams between it
and the Cordillera on the north; and this outlet probably lay along
the line now occupied by the northern Savannas of Trinidad.
So much this little natural park of Aripo taught, or seemed to teach
me. But I did not learn the whole of the lesson that afternoon, or
indeed till long after. There was no time then to work out such
theories. The sun was getting low, and more intolerable as he sank;
and to escape a sunstroke on the spot, or at least a dark ride home,
we hurried off into the forest shade, after one last look at the
never-to-be-forgotten Morichal, and trotted home to luxury and
sleep.