No particle, however small, is ever lost in the great household of
Nature; but nowhere is her restless activity so conspicuous as in the
tropics, where the succession of vegetable decay and life is so much
more rapid than it is in colder climes; and which will strike the
reflecting student more especially in the wide, forest-clad valleys of
tropical America, and on the Amazon and its affluents.
On the heights of the Cordillera the process is already at work. The
waste of the mountain-slopes, broken off by rills and torrents, and
carried by them into the main river, slowly drifts down-stream in the
form of gravel-banks, until, scattered and rent asunder in a thousand
ways, it finally takes permanent form as light-green islands, which are
soon covered and protected with a dense coat of vegetation.
As every zone of geologic formation in the extensive valley adds its
tribute, these banks are a kind of mineralogical collection, which shows
samples of all the rocks on the river-banks, with the exception,
perhaps, of light pumice-stone, the produce of the volcanoes of the
Andes, which drifts down-stream in large pieces, and is highly prized by
the Tapuia population (on the lower course) for sharpening and cleaning
their weapons and tools. Even when not picked up by hunter or fisher, it
is not lost. It will be arrested by some snag or projection of the
shore, it will so get embedded in the newly-forming sediment, and
thousands of years hence its silicic acid will afford the necessary
material for the hard glassy bark of a bambusacea, or the sharp edge of
a reed. When the currents are not strong enough to move the larger
banks, they at least carry sand and earth with them, and deposit them as
shoals or new alluvion at less exposed spots....
The undermined concave shores are sometimes a serious danger to the
passing barque, as even the slight ripple of a canoe is sufficient to
bring down the loosely overhanging earth, often covered with gigantic
trunks. These concave sides, with their fallen trees and their clusters
of sinking javary-palms, supported sometimes by only a tangled net-work
of tough lianas, give to the scenery that peculiar character of primeval
wildness which is so charming to foreigners.
When one has climbed up the steep shore, often forming huge terrace-like
elevations, and has safely passed through a labyrinth of interwoven
roots and creepers into the interior of the forest, which is getting
freer from underwood at some distance from the river, he is oppressed
with the sensation of awe and wonder felt by man on entering one of the
venerable edifices of antiquity.
A mysterious twilight encompasses us, which serves to intensify the
radiance of the occasional sunbeam as it falls on a glossy palm-leaf, or
on a large bunch of purple orchid-flowers. Splendid trunks, some of them
from twenty to thirty feet in diameter, rise like so many pillars
supporting the dense green vault of foliage; and every variety of tall,
graceful palms, spare and bushy, and bearing heavy berries of bright
yellow or red, struggle to catch a glimpse of the light, from which they
are shut out by the neighboring giants, of which the figueira (or wild
fig-tree) is one of the most striking, in the dimensions of its crown
and stem, and in the strange shape of its roots, which project like huge
outworks. These seem to grow in all directions, forming props, stays,
and cross-bars wherever they are wanted, just as if the whole were a
soft plastic mass, the sole purpose of which was to supply, with a
minimum of material, as much stability as possible to the trunk, whose
wood is of extreme softness and whose roots are not deep. The
pachiuba-palm (_Iriartea exorhiza_) and some species of Cecropiae exhibit
other extravagances in their roots. They appear as if standing on
stilts, the real trunks only beginning at eight or ten feet above
ground.
But, more than all, it is the profusion of orchids and Bromeliae that
excites our admiration. These bright children of the tropics envelop
with dense foliage as well the fallen and mouldering trunks as those yet
upstanding in full vigor and bloom, thus forming hanging gardens of
astounding magnificence, which reveal leaves and flowers of the most
irregular shapes and colors. Everywhere, on the branches and on the
ground, and even from out the fissures of the bare rock, light ferns and
rich moss spring up and clothe the decaying trunks with fresh green. Of
mosses and ferns, especially tree-ferns, we found a greater exuberance
and a larger variety, in species as well as in individuals, in the
Southern provinces of the empire, Sao Paulo and Parana; but for splendid
palms and gigantic dicotyledons the North is decidedly the richer of the
two.
Without the aid of the pencil it is indeed scarcely possible to give an
adequate idea of the magnificence of this vegetation, especially of the
manner in which the different forms are grouped. We may see, it is true,
in our own hot-houses, well-trimmed palms, beautiful orchids with their
abnormal blossoms, and Aroideae with their bright, sappy, sometimes
regularly perforated, leaves; but how different is this from the virgin
forest, wherein Nature, undisturbed by man, has created her own
prodigies, and where no narrow pots separate her children from the
maternal soil, and where no dim roof of glass intervenes between them
and the blue ether! Nor, in our carefully tended hot-houses, is the eye
ever gratified with such agreeable contrasts as are afforded by the
silver-gray and rust-brown tints of the decayed leaf of the palm or the
fern-tree, or the black bark of the rotting trunk, with the blazing
scarlet of some heliconia blossom. How difficult it must be to give to
every plant, especially to orchids, the exact quantity of light, warmth,
and moisture it requires, can be understood only by those who have seen
clusters of them hidden in the deep shade of the tree-crowns, while
others are exposed to the scorching rays of the sun in the vicinity of a
river or in some clearer part of the forest; some species thriving on
the bare rock almost, and others clinging fast with their white rootlets
to the moist rotting bark of a tree....
But of far greater importance to the half-civilized riverines than
either palms or orchids, for whose beauties they have no eye, are the
cacao and the caoutchouc-tree (_Siphonia elastica_), products of the
virgin forest essential to the future prosperity of the whole country.
Although India contributes to the supply of caoutchouc, the precious
resin which is transformed into a thousand different shapes every year
in the factories of Europe and North America, and sent to the ends of
the earth, it cannot compete with Brazil, which takes the first place
among the rubber-producing countries, in respect as well of the vastness
of its export of the material as of its superior quality.
On the shores of the Amazon its production, it is true, has already been
diminished by unreasonable treatment of the trees; the idea of replacing
the old ones by young saplings never having presented itself,
apparently, to the mind of the indolent population; but the seringaes,
or woods of rubber-trees, on the banks of the Madeira, the Purus, and
other tributaries of the main river, still continue to furnish
extraordinary quantities of it. The province of Amazon alone exports
more than fifty thousand arrobas (one million six hundred thousand
pounds) yearly, while the total of the exports of the whole basin
slightly exceeds four hundred thousand arrobas, or twelve million eight
hundred thousand pounds, per annum....
Unfortunately, there has not been until now the slightest attempt made
to cultivate this useful tree; and all the caoutchouc exported from Para
is still obtained from the original seringa groves. The trees of course
suffer, as they naturally would under the best of treatment, from the
repeated tapping and drawing-off of their sap, and the rubber
collectors, therefore, must look about for new groves of the tree in the
unexplored valleys of the more distant interior.
The planting of the _Siphonia elastica_ would be a more profitable
investment, as it yields the precious milk in the comparatively short
space of twenty or twenty-five years; but, under the combined influence
of the indolence of the Mestitzoes and the shortsightedness of the
government, measures to that end will be adopted and carried into effect
only when the rubber exportation shall have diminished with the
destruction of the trees, and when European and North American
manufacturers shall have found out a more or less appropriate substitute
for the too costly resin.
Near the Praia de Tamandua we acquainted ourselves with all the
particulars respecting the collection and preparation of the caoutchouc
at the cottage of a Bolivian seringueiro, Don Domingo Leigue. As I have
already stated, the Siphonia grows, or at least thrives, only on a soil
wherein its stem is annually submerged by the floods to the height of
three feet or more. The best ground for it, therefore, is the _igapo_,
the lowest and most recent deposit of the river; and there, in the
immediate vicinity of the seringaes, may be seen the low thatches of the
gatherers' huts, wretched hovels mostly, rendered tenantable during the
inundations by the device of raising the floors on wooden piles of
seven feet height, in which the canoe, the seringueiro's indispensable
horse, also finds a protected harbor. Unenviable truly must be the life
of the happy proprietor, who has nothing to do in the seringal during
the wet season, and who then has ample leisure to calculate exactly the
intervals between his fits of ague, and to let himself be devoured by
_carapanas_, _piums_, _motucas_, and _mucuims_; under which euphonious
names are known some of the most terrible of insect pests.
Narrow paths lead from the cottage, through the dense underwood, to each
separate tree; and, as soon as the dry season sets in, the inmate of the
palace just described betakes himself with his hatchet into the
seringal, to cut little holes in the bark. The milk-white sap
immediately begins to exude into pieces of bamboo tied below, over
little clay cups set under the gashes to prevent their trickling down
the stems. The collector travels thus from trunk to trunk; and, to
facilitate operations, on his return visit he pours the contents of the
bamboos into a large calabash provided with liana straps, which he
empties at home into one of those large turtle-shells so auxiliary to
housekeeping in these regions, serving as they do for troughs, basins,
etc.
Without any delay he sets about the smoking process, as the resinous
parts will separate after a while, and the quality of the rubber so
become inferior. An earthen jar, without bottom and with a narrow neck,
is set by way of chimney over a fire of dry urucury, or uauassu
palm-nuts, whose smoke alone, strange to say, has the effect of
instantly coagulating the caoutchouc sap, which, in this state, greatly
resembles rich cow's milk. The workman, sitting beside this "chimney,"
through which roll dense clouds of a smothering white smoke, from a
small calabash pours a little of the milk on a sort of light wooden
shovel, always careful, by proper management of the latter, to
distribute it evenly over the surface. Thrusting the shovel into the
thick smoke over the opening of the jar, he turns it several times to
and fro with great rapidity, when the milk is seen to consolidate and to
take a grayish-yellow tinge.
Thus he puts layer upon layer, until at last the caoutchouc on both
sides of the wood has reached about an inch in thickness, when he thinks
the "plancha" ready. Cutting it on one side, he takes it off the shovel
and suspends it in the sun to dry, as there is always some water between
the several layers, which should, if possible, evaporate. A good workman
is thus able to prepare five or six pounds of solid seringa in an hour.
The plancha, from its initial color of a clear silver-gray, turns
shortly into a yellow, and finally becomes the well-known dark brown of
the rubber, such as it is exported.
The more uniform, the denser and freer of bubbles, the whole mass is
found to be, the better is its quality and the higher the price it
fetches. Almost double the value is obtained for the first-rate article
over that of the most inferior quality, the so-called sernamby or cabeca
de negro (negro's head); which is nothing but the drops collected at the
foot of the trees, with the remains of the milk scraped out of the
bottoms of the calabashes. The rubber of India is said to be much like
this sernamby, and, like it, to be mixed with sand and small pieces of
bark. By way of testing the quality, every plancha is cut through again
at Para; by which means discovery is made, not only of the bubbles, but
also of any adulteration that might be effected with the milk of the
mangaba, that fine plant with dark glossy leaves, now found so often in
European saloons under the erroneous name of rubber-plant....
The wild cacao, with its large lancet-shaped hanging leaves, and its
cucumber-like fruit springing directly from the stem, is one of the
characteristic features of the _virgem_ [or solid soil] on which it
often forms dense thickets, which are all the more impenetrable that the
boughs--exhibiting frequently at the same time the small reddish flowers
and the ripe golden fruit, in which the seeds lie embedded in a sweet
white marrow--bend to the ground and there take root again.
But the india-rubber and the cacao are not the only treasures worth
collecting in these forests. Even now the export of the Para nuts, the
fruit of the _Bertholletia excelsa_, yields an annual revenue of two
hundred thousand dollars; and the copaiba oil and the urucu, the seeds
of the _Bixa orellana_, used for dyeing, about one hundred thousand
dollars. These sums seem small enough, it is true, but there are perhaps
a hundred times those values of the rich-flavored nuts rotting unheeded
in the forests, and above a score of other rich oily seeds, at present
collected only for the use of the natives, not to mention several resins
which yield the finest varnishes, plants giving the most brilliant hues,
and others with fibres that would serve not only for the finest
weavings, but also for the strongest ropes; besides about forty of the
most indispensable drugs, all which might become most valuable articles
of export....
Notwithstanding the fertility of tropical vegetation, I doubt whether
any other part of the world, in the same latitude, can offer as great a
number of useful plants as does the Amazon Valley; and now, when
all-transforming steam is about to open up to us this rich emporium,
European industry should take advantage of the hitherto neglected
treasures. What might not be done with the fibres, some of which surpass
our hemp and flax in all respects? The curaua, for example, a sort of
wild pine-apple, gives a delicate transparent flax of a silky lustre,
such as is used in the Philippine Islands, on a large scale, it
appears. It is sold under the name of _palha_ at Rio de Janeiro. The
tucum and the javary would make excellent ropes, cords, nets, etc., well
calculated to resist moisture and rot; and the piassaba, the murity,
etc., would readily supply solid brushes, brooms, hammocks, hats,
baskets, mats; while the snow-white bast of others would give excellent
paper.
The lianas or cipos of these countries are, besides their minor uses,
quite indispensable to the half-civilized natives for the construction
of their light cottages, taking the place (as they do) of our nails and
cramp-irons, beams, posts, and rafters. The whole palm-leaf roof is
fastened, and artificially interwoven and intertwined, with tough
creepers of nearly an inch thickness....
In the hot lowlands of the Amazon, in the shade of endless forest, there
is many an herb of mysterious virtue, as yet known only to wild Indian
tribes, while the fame of others has already spread over the ocean. Who
has not heard of the _urary_, or _curare_, the quick arrow-poison which,
in the hands of clever physiologists and physicians, promises not only
to become a valuable drug, but to give us interesting disclosures on the
activity of the nerves?
The wondrous tales of former travellers regarding the preparation of
this urary have been rectified long ago. The venom of snakes is not used
for it, but the juice of the bruised stems and leaves of several kinds
of strychnos and apocyneas is simply boiled over a coal fire, mixed with
tobacco-juice and capsicum (Spanish pepper), and thickened with the
sticky milk of some Euphorbiacea to a hard mass. This manipulation,
moreover, is not undertaken by the old squaws of the tribe, devoting
themselves to a painful death thereby, as the old stories ran, but, as
there is no danger whatever, by the young wives of the warriors, who
look upon it as part of their household duties, or by the men
themselves. There are about eight or ten different poisons of similar,
but not identical, composition and preparation, of which the urary of
the Macusi Indians, and the curare, from Venezuela and New Granada, are
considered the most powerful.
This dark-brown, pitchy substance, usually kept in little earthen pots,
is lightly spread over the points of the weapons,--their long arrows,
their light spears, and the thin wooden shafts, of about a foot long,
which they shoot through immense blow-tubes (_sarabacanas_). Immediately
upon the diffusion in the blood of the slightest portion of the poison,
the limbs, one by one, refuse to work, as if overcome with torpor, while
the mind apparently retains its activity until death ensues, which it
does in a few minutes' time, from palsy of the lungs. It is strange that
only those nerves are affected which regulate the movements depending on
our own will, whereas those movements we cannot control--the beating of
the heart, for example--continue unaltered to the very last. Experiments
made by French physicians upon animals have shown that, if the lungs are
artificially kept in activity for several hours, the poison will be
rejected by natural means, and no bad consequences will ensue. Of late
the principal objection to the employment of the urary in medicine--its
unequal strength--has been completely overcome by the effective
alkaloid--the curarin--being extracted. This is about twenty times as
powerful as the urary, and has been used successfully in the treatment
of tetanus. The Indians shoot birds and monkeys, which they wish to
tame, with very weak curare, rousing them from the lethargy which
overpowers them with large doses of salt or sugar-juice; and this
treatment is said to be very effective, also, in the reduction of their
wildness....
The gurana, prepared from the fruit of the _Paullinia sorbilis_, is a
hard, chocolate-brown mass, of a slightly bitter taste, and of no smell
whatever. It is usually sold in cylindric pieces of from ten inches to a
foot in length, in which the half-bruised almond-like seeds are still
distinguishable; the more homogeneous and the harder the mass, the
better is its quality. To render it eatable, or rather drinkable, it is
rasped as fine as possible on the rough, bony roof of the mouth of the
_Sudis gigas_ (pira-rucu), and mixed with a little sugar and water. A
teaspoonful in a cup of warm water is said to be an excellent remedy in
slight attacks of ague.
The taste of this beverage, reminding one slightly of almonds, is very
palatable; still, it scarcely accounts for the passionate liking
entertained for it by the inhabitants of the greater part of South
America. It must be the stimulating effects of the paullinin it contains
(an alkaloid like caffeine and theine) that render it so indispensable
to those who have been accustomed to it. All the boats that come lightly
freighted with ipecacuanha and deer- or tiger-hides, from Mato Grosso
down the Arinos and the Tapajoz, in face of the considerable cataracts
and rapids of the latter, take their full loads of guarana at Santarem;
and the heavy boats of the Madeira also convey large quantities of it to
Bolivia; for at Cuyaba, as well as at Santa Cruz de la Sierra and
Cochabamba, there are many who cannot do without their guarana, for
which they often have to pay thirty francs the pound, and who prefer all
the rigors of fasting to abstinence from their favorite beverage. On the
other hand, the mestizo population on the Amazon, where it is prepared
on a large scale by the half-civilized tribes of the Mauhes and
Mundurucus and sold at about three francs the pound, are not so
passionately attached to it; they rather take coffee and a sort of
coarse chocolate, which they manufacture for themselves.
CANOE- AND CAMP-LIFE ON THE MADEIRA.
FRANZ KELLER.
[To the extract just made from Keller's "Amazon and Madeira
Rivers," we add the following, in which an interesting account
of camp-life in the forest and river regions of Brazil is
given.]
The lower course of the Madeira presents, for more than four hundred
and sixty miles, a picture of grand simplicity, and, it must be owned,
monotony, which, magnificent as it appears at first, wearies the eye
and sickens the heart at last,--a dead calm on an unruffled, mirror-like
sheet of water glaring in the sun, and, as far as the eye can reach,
two walls of dark green forest, with the dark-blue firmament above them;
in the foreground, slender palms and gigantic orchid-covered trunks,
with blooming creepers hanging from the wave-worn shore, with its
red earthslips, down into the turbid floods. No hill breaks the
finely-indented line of the foliage, which everywhere bounds the
horizon, only here and there a few palm-covered sheds peep out of the
green; and still more rarely do we sight one of their quiet dark
inmates. Stately kingfishers looking thoughtfully into the river, white
herons standing for hours on one leg, and alligators lying so motionless
at the mouth of some rivulet that their jaggy tails and scarcely
protruding skulls might easily be taken for some half-sunken trunks, are
the only animals to be seen, and certainly they do not increase the
liveliness of the scene. Dreary and monotonous as the landscape, the
days, too, pass in unvaried succession.
With the first dawn of day, before the white mist that hides the smooth
surface of the river has disappeared with the rays of the rising sun,
the day's work begins. The boatswains call their respective crews; the
tents are broken up as quickly as possible; the cooking apparatus, the
hammocks and hides that served as beds, are taken on board, together
with our arms and mathematical instruments, and every one betakes
himself to his post. The _pagaias_ (paddles) are dipped into the water,
and the prows of our heavy boats turn slowly from the shore to the
middle of the stream. Without the loss of a minute, the oars are plied
for three or four hours at a steady but rather quick rate, until a spot
on shore is discovered easy of access and offering a dry fire-place and
some fuel for the preparation of breakfast. If it be on one of the long
sand-banks, a roof is made of one of the sails, that rarely serve for
anything else; if in the wood, the undergrowth, in the shade of some
large tree, is cleared for the reception of our little table and
tent-chairs.
The functions of the culinary _chef_ for the white faces, limited to the
preparation of a dish of black beans, with some fish or turtle, are
simple enough, but, to be appreciated, certainly require the hearty
appetite acquired by active life in the open air. The Indians have to
cook by turns for their respective boats' crews; their unalterable bill
of fare being a pap of flour of Indian corn or mandioca, with fresh or
dried fish, or a piece of _jacare_ (alligator).