family of the bignoniae, which M. Bonpland has made known by the name
of Bignonia chica. It climbs up and clings to the tallest trees by the
aid of tendrils. Its bilabiate flowers are an inch long, of a fine
violet colour, and disposed by twos or threes. The bipinnate leaves
become reddish in drying. The fruit is a pod, filled with winged
seeds, and is two feet long. This plant grows spontaneously, and in
great abundance, near Maypures; and in going up the Orinoco, beyond
the mouth of the Guaviare, from Santa Barbara to the lofty mountain of
Duida, particularly near Esmeralda. We also found it on the banks of
the Cassiquiare. The red pigment of chica is not obtained from the
fruit, like the onoto, but from the leaves macerated in water. The
colouring matter separates in the form of a light powder. It is
collected, without being mixed with turtle-oil, into little lumps
eight or nine inches long, and from two to three high, rounded at the
edges. These lumps, when heated, emit an agreeable smell of benzoin.
When the chica is subjected to distillation, it yields no sensible
traces of ammonia. It is not, like indigo, a substance combined with
azote. It dissolves slightly in sulphuric and muriatic acids, and even
in alkalis. Ground with oil, the chica furnishes a red colour that has
a tint of lake. Applied to wool, it might be confounded with
madder-red. There is no doubt but that the chica, unknown in Europe
before our travels, may be employed usefully in the arts. The nations
on the Orinoco, by whom this pigment is best prepared, are the
Salivas, the Guipunaves,* (* Or Guaypunaves; they call themselves
Uipunavi.) the Caveres, and the Piraoas. The processes of infusion and
maceration are in general very common among all the nations on the
Orinoco. Thus the Maypures carry on a trade of barter with the little
loaves of puruma, which is a vegetable fecula, dried in the manner of
indigo, and yielding a very permanent yellow colour. The chemistry of
the savage is reduced to the preparation of pigments, that of poisons,
and the dulcification of the amylaceous roots, which the aroides and
the euphorbiaceous plants afford.
Most of the missionaries of the Upper and Lower Orinoco permit the
Indians of their Missions to paint their skins. It is painful to add,
that some of them speculate on this barbarous practice of the natives.
In their huts, pompously called conventos,* (* In the Missions, the
priest's house bears the name of the convent.) I have often seen
stores of chica, which they sold as high as four francs the cake. To
form a just idea of the extravagance of the decoration of these naked
Indians, I must observe, that a man of large stature gains with
difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight, to procure in exchange
the chica necessary to paint himself red. Thus as we say, in temperate
climates, of a poor man, "he has not enough to clothe himself," you
hear the Indians of the Orinoco say, "that man is so poor, that he has
not enough to paint half his body." The little trade in chica is
carried on chiefly with the tribes of the Lower Orinoco, whose country
does not produce the plant which furnishes this much-valued substance.
The Caribs and the Ottomacs paint only the head and the hair with
chica, but the Salives possess this pigment in sufficient abundance to
cover their whole bodies. When the missionaries send on their own
account small cargoes of cacao, tobacco, and chiquichiqui* (* Ropes
made with the petioles of a palm-tree with pinnate leaves.) from the
Rio Negro to Angostura, they always add some cakes of chica, as being
articles of merchandise in great request.
The custom of painting is not equally ancient among all the tribes of
the Orinoco. It has increased since the time when the powerful nation
of the Caribs made frequent incursions into those countries. The
victors and the vanquished were alike naked; and to please the
conqueror it was necessary to paint like him, and to assume his
colour. The influence of the Caribs has now ceased, and they remain
circumscribed between the rivers Carony, Cuyuni, and Paraguamuzi; but
the Caribbean fashion of painting the whole body is still preserved.
The custom has survived the conquest.
Does the use of the anato and chica derive its origin from the desire
of pleasing, and the taste for ornament, so common among the most
savage nations? or must we suppose it to be founded on the
observation, that these colouring and oily matters with which the skin
is plastered, preserve it from the sting of the mosquitos? I have
often heard this question discussed in Europe; but in the Missions of
the Orinoco, and wherever, within the tropics, the air is filled with
venomous insects, the inquiry would appear absurd. The Carib and the
Salive, who are painted red, are not less cruelly tormented by the
mosquitos and the zancudos, than the Indians whose bodies are
plastered with no colour. The sting of the insect causes no swelling
in either; and scarcely ever produces those little pustules which
occasion such smarting and itching to Europeans recently arrived. But
the native and the White suffer equally from the sting, till the
insect has withdrawn its sucker from the skin. After a thousand
useless essays, M. Bonpland and myself tried the expedient of rubbing
our hands and arms with the fat of the crocodile, and the oil of
turtle-eggs, but we never felt the least relief, and were stung as
before. I know that the Laplanders boast of oil and fat as the most
useful preservatives; but the insects of Scandinavia are not of the
same species as those of the Orinoco. The smoke of tobacco drives away
our gnats, while it is employed in vain against the zancudos. If the
application of fat and astringent* substances preserved the
inhabitants of these countries from the torment of insects, as Father
Gumilla alleges, why has not the custom of painting the skin become
general on these shores? (* The pulp of the anato, and even the chica,
are astringent and slightly purgative.) Why do so many naked natives
paint only the face, though living in the neighbourhood of those who
paint the whole body?* (* The Caribs, the Salives, the Tamanacs, and
the Maypures.)
We are struck with the observation, that the Indians of the Orinoco,
like the natives of North America, prefer the substances that yield a
red colour to every other. Is this predilection founded on the
facility with which the savage procures ochreous earths, or the
colouring fecula of anato and of chica? I doubt this much. Indigo
grows wild in a great part of equinoctial America. This plant, like so
many other leguminous plants, would have furnished the natives
abundantly with pigments to colour themselves blue like the ancient
Britons.* (* The half-clad nations of the temperate zone often paint
their skin of the same colour as that with which their clothes are
dyed.) Yet we see no American tribe painted with indigo. It appears to
me probable, as I have already hinted above, that the preference given
by the Americans to the red colour is generally founded on the
tendency which nations feel to attribute the idea of beauty to
whatever characterises their national physiognomy. Men whose skin is
naturally of a brownish red, love a red colour. If they be born with a
forehead little raised, and the head flat, they endeavour to depress
the foreheads of their children. If they be distinguished from other
nations by a thin beard, they try to eradicate the few hairs that
nature has given them. They think themselves embellished in proportion
as they heighten the characteristic marks of their race, or of their
national conformation.
We were surprised to see, that, in the camp of Pararuma, the women far
advanced in years were more occupied with their ornaments than the
youngest women. We saw an Indian female of the nation of the Ottomacs
employing two of her daughters in the operation of rubbing her hair
with the oil of turtles' eggs, and painting her back with anato and
caruto. The ornament consisted of a sort of lattice-work formed of
black lines crossing each other on a red ground. Each little square
had a black dot in the centre. It was a work of incredible patience.
We returned from a very long herborization, and the painting was not
half finished. This research of ornament seems the more singular when
we reflect that the figures and marks are not produced by the process
of tattooing, but that paintings executed with so much care are
effaced,* if the Indian exposes himself imprudently to a heavy shower.
(* The black and caustic pigment of the caruto (Genipa americana)
however, resists a long time the action of water, as we found with
regret, having one day, in sport with the Indians, caused our faces to
be marked with spots and strokes of caruto. When we returned to
Angostura, in the midst of Europeans, these marks were still visible.)
There are some nations who paint only to celebrate festivals; others
are covered with colour during the whole year: and the latter consider
the use of anato as so indispensable, that both men and women would
perhaps be less ashamed to present themselves without a guayaco* than
destitute of paint. (* A word of the Caribbean language. The perizoma
of the Indians of the Orinoco is rather a band than an apron.) These
guayucos of the Orinoco are partly bark of trees, and partly
cotton-cloth. Those of the men are broader than those worn by the
women, who, the missionaries say, have in general a less lively
feeling of modesty. A similar observation was made by Christopher
Columbus. May we not attribute this in difference, this want of
delicacy in women belonging to nations of which the manners are not
much depraved, to that rude state of slavery to which the sex is
reduced in South America by male injustice and tyranny?
When we speak in Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselves
a man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the
macaw, the toucan, and the humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors
have long since regarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks
of an American. We were surprised at not finding in the Chayma
Missions, in the encampments of Uruana and of Pararuma (I might almost
say on all the shores of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare) those fine
plumes, those feathered aprons, which are so often brought by
travellers from Cayenne and Demerara. These tribes for the most part,
even those whose intellectual faculties are most expanded, who
cultivate alimentary plants, and know how to weave cotton, are
altogether as naked,* as poor, and as destitute of ornaments as the
natives of New Holland. (* For instance, the Macos and the Piraoas.
The Caribs must be excepted, whose perizoma is a cotton cloth, so
broad that it might cover the shoulders.) The excessive heat of the
air, the profuse perspiration in which the body is bathed at every
hour of the day and a great part of the night, render the use of
clothes insupportable. Their objects of ornament, and particularly
their plumes of feathers, are reserved for dances and solemn
festivals. The plumes worn by the Guipunaves* are the most celebrated;
being composed of the fine feathers of manakins and parrots. (* These
came originally from the banks of the Inirida, one of the rivers that
fall into the Guaviare.)
The Indians are not always satisfied with one colour uniformly spread;
they sometimes imitate, in the most whimsical manner, in painting
their skin, the form of European garments. We saw some at Pararuma,
who were painted with blue jackets and black buttons. The missionaries
related to us that the Guaynaves of the Rio Caura are accustomed to
stain themselves red with anato, and to make broad transverse stripes
on the body, on which they stick spangles of silvery mica. Seen at a
distance, these naked men appear to be dressed in laced clothes. If
painted nations had been examined with the same attention as those who
are clothed, it would have been perceived that the most fertile
imagination, and the most mutable caprice, have created the fashions
of painting, as well as those of garments.
Painting and tattooing are not restrained, in either the New or the
Old World, to one race or one zone only. These ornaments are most
common among the Malays and American races; but in the time of the
Romans they were also employed by the white race in the north of
Europe. As the most picturesque garments and modes of dress are found
in the Grecian Archipelago and western Asia, so the type of beauty in
painting and tattooing is displayed by the islanders of the Pacific.
Some clothed nations still paint their hands, their nails, and their
faces. It would seem that painting is then confined to those parts of
the body that remain uncovered; and while rouge, which recalls to mind
the savage state of man, is disappearing by degrees in Europe, in some
towns of the province of Peru the ladies think they embellish their
delicate skins by covering them with colouring vegetable matter,
starch, white-of-egg, and flour. After having lived a long time among
men painted with anato and chica, we are singularly struck with these
remains of ancient barbarism retained amidst all the usages of
civilization.
The encampment at Pararuma afforded us an opportunity of examining
several animals in their natural state, which, till then, we had seen
only in the collections of Europe. These little animals form a branch
of commerce for the missionaries. They exchange tobacco, the resin
called mani, the pigment of chica, gallitos (rock-manakins), orange
monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and other species of monkeys in great
request on the coast, for cloth, nails, hatchets, fishhooks, and pins.
The productions of the Orinoco are bought at a low price from the
Indians, who live in dependence on the monks; and these same Indians
purchase fishing and gardening implements from the monks at a very
high price, with the money they have gained at the egg-harvest. We
ourselves bought several animals, which we kept with us throughout the
rest of our passage on the river, and studied their manners.
The gallitos, or rock-manakins, are sold at Pararuma in pretty little
cages made of the footstalks of palm-leaves. These birds are
infinitely more rare on the banks of the Orinoco, and in the north and
west of equinoctial America, than in French Guiana. They have hitherto
been found only near the Mission of Encaramada, and in the Raudales or
cataracts of Maypures. I say expressly IN the cataracts, because the
gallitos choose for their habitual dwelling the hollows of the little
granitic rocks that cross the Orinoco and form such numerous cascades.
We sometimes saw them appear in the morning in the midst of the foam
of the river, calling their females, and fighting in the manner of our
cocks, folding the double moveable crest that decorates the crown of
the head. As the Indians very rarely take the full-grown gallitos, and
those males only are valued in Europe, which from the third year have
beautiful saffron-coloured plumage, purchasers should be on their
guard not to confound young females with young males. Both the male
and female gallitos are of an olive-brown; but the pollo, or young
male, is distinguishable at the earliest age, by its size and its
yellow feet. After the third year the plumage of the males assumes a
beautiful saffron tint; but the female remains always of a dull dusky
brown colour, with yellow only on the wing-coverts and tips of the
wings.* (* Especially the part which ornithologists call the carpus.)
To preserve in our collections the fine tint of the plumage of a male
and full-grown rock-manakin, it must not be exposed to the light. This
tint grows pale more easy than in the other genera of the passerine
order. The young males, as in most other birds, have the plumage or
livery of their mother. I am surprised to see that so skilful a
naturalist as Le Vaillant can doubt whether the females always remain
of a dusky olive tint.* (* Oiseaux de Paradis volume 2 page 61.) The
Indians of the Raudales all assured me that they had never seen a
saffron-coloured female.
Among the monkeys, brought by the Indians to the fair of Pararuma, we
distinguished several varieties of the sai,* (* Simia capucina the
capuchin monkey.) belonging to the little groups of creeping monkeys
called matchi in the Spanish colonies; marimondes* (* Simia
belzebuth.), or ateles with a red belly; titis, and viuditas. The last
two species particularly attracted our attention, and we purchased
them to send to Europe.
The titi of the Orinoco (Simia sciurea), well-known in our
collections, is called bititeni by the Maypure Indians. It is very
common on the south of the cataracts. Its face is white; and a little
spot of bluish-black covers the mouth and the point of the nose. The
titis of the most elegant form, and the most beautiful colour (with
hair of a golden yellow), come from the banks of the Cassiquiare.
Those that are taken on the shores of the Guaviare are large and
difficult to tame. No other monkey has so much the physiognomy of a
child as the titi; there is the same expression of innocence, the same
playful smile, the same rapidity in the transition from joy to sorrow.
Its large eyes are instantly filled with tears, when it is seized with
fear. It is extremely fond of insects, particularly of spiders. The
sagacity of this little animal is so great, that one of those we
brought in our boat to Angostura distinguished perfectly the different
plates annexed to Cuvier's Tableau elementaire d'Histoire naturelle.
The engravings of this work are not coloured; yet the titi advanced
rapidly its little hand in the hope of catching a grasshopper or a
wasp, every time that we showed it the eleventh plate, on which these
insects are represented. It remained perfectly indifferent when it was
shown engravings of skeletons or heads of mammiferous animals.* (* I
may observe, that I have never heard of an instance in which a
picture, representing, in the greatest perfection, hares or deer of
their natural size, has made the least impression even on sporting
dogs, the intelligence of which appears the most improved. Is there
any authenticated instance of a dog having recognized a full length
picture of his master? In all these cases, the sight is not assisted
by the smell.) When several of these little monkeys, shut up in the
same cage, are exposed to the rain, and the habitual temperature of
the air sinks suddenly two or three degrees, they twist their tail
(which, however, is not prehensile) round their neck, and intertwine
their arms and legs to warm one another. The Indian hunters told us,
that in the forests they often met groups of ten or twelve of these
animals, whilst others sent forth lamentable cries, because they
wished to enter amid the group to find warmth and shelter. By shooting
arrows dipped in weak poison at one of these groups, a great number of
young monkeys are taken alive at once. The titi in falling remains
clinging to its mother, and if it be not wounded by the fall, it does
not quit the shoulder or the neck of the dead animal. Most of those
that are found alive in the huts of the Indians have been thus taken
from the dead bodies of their mothers. Those that are full grown, when
cured of a slight wound, commonly die before they can accustom
themselves to a domestic state. The titis are in general delicate and
timid little animals. It is very difficult to convey them from the
Missions of the Orinoco to the coast of Caracas, or of Cumana. They
become melancholy and dejected in proportion as they quit the region
of the forests, and enter the Llanos. This change cannot be attributed
to the slight elevation of the temperature; it seems rather to depend
on a greater intensity of light, a less degree of humidity, and some
chemical property of the air of the coast.
The saimiri, or titi of the Orinoco, the atele, the sajou, and other
quadrumanous animals long known in Europe, form a striking contrast,
both in their gait and habits, with the macavahu, called by the
missionaries viudita, or widow in mourning. The hair of this little
animal is soft, glossy, and of a fine black. Its face is covered with
a mask of a square form and a whitish colour tinged with blue. This
mask contains the eyes, nose, and mouth. The ears have a rim: they are
small, very pretty, and almost bare. The neck of the widow presents in
front a white band, an inch broad, and forming a semicircle. The feet,
or rather the hinder hands, are black like the rest of the body; but
the fore paws are white without, and of a glossy black within. In
these marks, or white spots, the missionaries think they recognize the
veil, the neckerchief, and the gloves of a widow in mourning. The
character of this little monkey, which sits up on its hinder
extremities only when eating, is but little indicated in its
appearance. It has a wild and timid air; it often refuses the food
offered to it, even when tormented by a ravenous appetite. It has
little inclination for the society of other monkeys. The sight of the
smallest saimiri puts it to flight. Its eye denotes great vivacity. We
have seen it remain whole hours motionless without sleeping, and
attentive to everything that was passing around. But this wildness and
timidity are merely apparent. The viudita, when alone, and left to
itself, becomes furious at the sight of a bird. It then climbs and
runs with astonishing rapidity; darts upon its prey like a cat; and
kills whatever it can seize. This rare and delicate monkey is found on
the right bank of the Orinoco, in the granite mountains which rise
behind the Mission of Santa Barbara. It inhabits also the banks of the
Guaviare, near San Fernando de Atabapo.
The viudita accompanied us on our whole voyage on the Cassiquiare and
the Rio Negro, passing the cataracts twice. In studying the manners of
animals, it is a great advantage to observe them during several months
in the open air, and not in houses, where they lose all their natural
vivacity.
The new canoe intended for us was, like all Indian boats, a trunk of a
tree hollowed out partly by the hatchet and partly by fire. It was
forty feet long, and three broad. Three persons could not sit in it
side by side. These canoes are so crank, and they require, from their
instability, a cargo so equally distributed, that when you want to
rise for an instant, you must warn the rowers to lean to the opposite
side. Without this precaution the water would necessarily enter the
side pressed down. It is difficult to form an idea of the
inconveniences that are suffered in such wretched vessels.
The missionary from the cataracts made the preparations for our voyage
with greater energy than we wished. Lest there might not be a
sufficient number of the Maco and Guahibe Indians, who are acquainted
with the labyrinth of small channels and cascades of which the
Raudales or cataracts are composed, two Indians were, during the
night, placed in the cepo--a sort of stocks in which they were made to
lie with their legs between two pieces of wood, notched and fastened
together by a chain with a padlock. Early in the morning we were
awakened by the cries of a young man, mercilessly beaten with a whip
of manatee skin. His name was Zerepe, a very intelligent young Indian,
who proved highly useful to us in the sequel, but who now refused to
accompany us. He was born in the Mission of Atures; but his father was
a Maco, and his mother a native of the nation of the Maypures. He had
returned to the woods (al monte), and having lived some years with the
unsubdued Indians, he had thus acquired the knowledge of several
languages, and the missionary employed him as an interpreter. We
obtained with difficulty the pardon of this young man. "Without these
acts of severity," we were told, "you would want for everything. The
Indians of the Raudales and the Upper Orinoco are a stronger and more
laborious race than the inhabitants of the Lower Orinoco. They know
that they are much sought after at Angostura. If left to their own
will, they would all go down the river to sell their productions, and
live in full liberty among the whites. The Missions would be totally
deserted."
These reasons, I confess, appeared to me more specious than sound.
Man, in order to enjoy the advantages of a social state, must no doubt
sacrifice a part of his natural rights, and his original independence;
but, if the sacrifice imposed on him be not compensated by the
benefits of civilization, the savage, wise in his simplicity, retains
the wish of returning to the forests that gave him birth. It is
because the Indian of the woods is treated like a person in a state of
villanage in the greater part of the Missions, because he enjoys not
the fruit of his labours, that the Christian establishments on the
Orinoco remain deserts. A government founded on the ruins of the
liberty of the natives extinguishes the intellectual faculties, or
stops their progress.
To say that the savage, like the child, can be governed only by force,
is merely to establish false analogies. The Indians of the Orinoco
have something infantine in the expression of their joy, and the quick
succession of their emotions, but they are not great children; they
are as little so as the poor labourers in the east of Europe, whom the
barbarism of our feudal institutions has held in the rudest state. To
consider the employment of force as the first and sole means of the
civilization of the savage, is a principle as far from being true in
the education of nations as in the education of youth. Whatever may be
the state of weakness or degradation in our species, no faculty is
entirely annihilated. The human understanding exhibits only different
degrees of strength and development. The savage, like the child,
compares the present with the past; he directs his actions, not
according to blind instinct, but motives of interest. Reason can
everywhere enlighten reason; and its progress will be retarded in
proportion as the men who are called upon to bring up youth, or govern
nations, substitute constraint and force for that moral influence
which can alone unfold the rising faculties, calm the irritated
passions, and give stability to social order.
We could not set sail before ten on the morning of the 10th. To gain
something in breadth in our new canoe, a sort of lattice-work had been
constructed on the stern with branches of trees, that extended on each
side beyond the gunwale. Unfortunately, the toldo or roof of leaves,
that covered this lattice-work, was so low that we were obliged to lie
down, without seeing anything, or, if seated, to sit nearly double.
The necessity of carrying the canoe across the rapids, and even from
one river to another; and the fear of giving too much hold to the
wind, by making the toldo higher, render this construction necessary
for vessels that go up towards the Rio Negro. The toldo was intended
to cover four persons, lying on the deck or lattice-work of
brush-wood; but our legs reached far beyond it, and when it rained
half our bodies were wet. Our couches consisted of ox-hides or
tiger-skins, spread upon branches of trees, which were painfully felt
through so thin a covering. The fore part of the boat was filled with
Indian rowers, furnished with paddles, three feet long, in the form of
spoons. They were all naked, seated two by two, and they kept time in
rowing with a surprising uniformity, singing songs of a sad and
monotonous character. The small cages containing our birds and our
monkeys, the number of which augmented as we advanced, were hung some
to the toldo and others to the bow of the boat. This was our
travelling menagerie. Notwithstanding the frequent losses occasioned
by accidents, and above all by the fatal effects of exposure to the
sun, we had fourteen of these little animals alive at our return from
the Cassiquiare. Naturalists, who wish to collect and bring living
animals to Europe, might cause boats to be constructed expressly for
this purpose at Angostura, or at Grand Para, the two capitals situated
on the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, the fore-deck of which
boats might be fitted up with two rows of cages sheltered from the
rays of the sun. Every night, when we established our watch, our
collection of animals and our instruments occupied the centre; around
these were placed first our hammocks, then the hammocks of the
Indians; and on the outside were the fires which are thought
indispensable against the attacks of the jaguar. About sunrise the
monkeys in our cages answered the cries of the monkeys of the forest.
These communications between animals of the same species sympathizing
with one another, though unseen, one party enjoying that liberty which
the other regrets, have something melancholy and affecting.
In a canoe not three feet wide, and so incumbered, there remained no
other place for the dried plants, trunks, a sextant, a dipping-needle,
and the meteorological instruments, than the space below the
lattice-work of branches, on which we were compelled to remain
stretched the greater part of the day. If we wished to take the least
object out of a trunk, or to use an instrument, it was necessary to
row ashore and land. To these inconveniences were joined the torment
of the mosquitos which swarmed under the toldo, and the heat radiated
from the leaves of the palm-trees, the upper surface of which was
continually exposed to the solar rays. We attempted every instant, but
always without success, to amend our situation. While one of us hid
himself under a sheet to ward off the insects, the other insisted on
having green wood lighted beneath the toldo, in the hope of driving
away the mosquitos by the smoke. The painful sensations of the eyes,
and the increase of heat, already stifling, rendered both these
contrivances alike impracticable. With some gaiety of temper, with
feelings of mutual good-will, and with a vivid taste for the majestic
grandeur of these vast valleys of rivers, travellers easily support
evils that become habitual.
Our Indians showed us, on the right bank of the river, the place which
was formerly the site of the Mission of Pararuma, founded by the
Jesuits about the year 1733. The mortality occasioned by the smallpox
among the Salive Indians was the principal cause of the dissolution of
the mission. The few inhabitants who survived this cruel epidemic,
removed to the village of Carichana. It was at Pararuma, that,
according to the testimony of Father Roman, hail was seen to fall
during a great storm, about the middle of the last century. This is
almost the only instance of it I know in a plain that is nearly on a
level with the sea; for hail falls generally, between the tropics,
only at three hundred toises of elevation. If it form at an equal
height over plains and table-lands, we must suppose that it melts as
it falls, in passing through the lowest strata of the atmosphere, the
mean temperature of which is from 27.5 to 24 degrees of the centigrade
thermometer. I acknowledge it is very difficult to explain, in the
present state of meteorology, why it hails at Philadelphia, at Rome,
and at Montpelier, during the hottest months, the mean temperature of
which attains 25 or 26 degrees; while the same phenomenon is not
observed at Cumana, at La Guayra, and in general, in the equatorial
plains. In the United States, and in the south of Europe, the heat of
the plains (from 40 to 43 degrees latitude) is nearly the same as
within the tropics; and according to my researches the decrement of
caloric equally varies but little. If then the absence of hail within
the torrid zone, at the level of the sea, be produced by the melting
of the hailstones in crossing the lower strata of the air, we must
suppose that these hail-stones, at the moment of their formation, are
larger in the temperate than in the torrid zone. We yet know so little
of the conditions under which water congeals in a stormy cloud in our
climates, that we cannot judge whether the same conditions be
fulfilled on the equator above the plains. The clouds in which we hear
the rattling of the hailstones against one another before they fall,
and which move horizontally, have always appeared to me of little
elevation; and at these small heights we may conceive that
extraordinary refrigerations are caused by the dilatation of the
ascending air, of which the capacity for caloric augments; by currents
of cold air coming from a higher latitude, and above all, according to
M. Gay Lussac, by the radiation from the upper surface of the clouds.
I shall have occasion to return to this subject when speaking of the
different forms under which hail and hoar-frost appear on the Andes,
at two thousand and two thousand six hundred toises of height; and
when examining the question whether we may consider the stratum of
clouds that envelops the mountains as a horizontal continuation of the
stratum which we see immediately above us in the plains.
The Orinoco, full of islands, begins to divide itself into several
branches, of which the most western remain dry during the months of
January and February. The total breadth of the river exceeds two
thousand five hundred or three thousand toises. We perceived to the
East, opposite the island of Javanavo, the mouth of the Cano Aujacoa.
Between this Cano and the Rio Paruasi or Paruati, the country becomes
more and more woody. A solitary rock, of extremely picturesque aspect,
rises in the midst of a forest of palm-trees, not far from the
Orinoco. It is a pillar of granite, a prismatic mass, the bare and
steep sides of which attain nearly two hundred feet in height. Its
point, which overtops the highest trees of the forest, is terminated
by a shelf of rock with a horizontal and smooth surface. Other trees
crown this summit, which the missionaries call the peak, or Mogote de
Cocuyza. This monument of nature, in its simple grandeur recalls to
mind the Cyclopean remains of antiquity. Its strongly-marked outlines,
and the group of trees and shrubs by which it is crowned, stand out
from the azure of the sky. It seems a forest rising above a forest.
Further on, near the mouth of the Paruasi, the Orinoco narrows. On the
east is perceived a mountain with a bare top, projecting like a
promontory. It is nearly three hundred feet high, and served as a
fortress for the Jesuits. They had constructed there a small fort,
with three batteries of cannon, and it was constantly occupied by a
military detachment. We saw the cannon dismounted, and half-buried in
the sand, at Carichana and at Atures. This fort of the Jesuits has
been destroyed since the dissolution of their society; but the place
is still called El Castillo. I find it set down, in a manuscript map,
lately completed at Caracas by a member of the secular clergy, under
the denomination of Trinchera del despotismo monacal.* (*
Intrenchmnent of monachal despotism.)
The garrison which the Jesuits maintained on this rock, was not
intended merely to protect the Missions against the incursions of the
Caribs: it was employed also in an offensive war, or, as they say
here, in the conquest of souls (conquista de almas). The soldiers,
excited by the allurement of gain, made military incursions (entradas)
into the lands of the independent Indians. They killed all those who
dared to make any resistance, burnt their huts, destroyed their
plantations, and carried away the women, children, and old men, as
prisoners. These prisoners were divided among the Missions of the
Meta, the Rio Negro, and the Upper Orinoco. The most distant places
were chosen, that they might not be tempted to return to their native
country. This violent manner of conquering souls, though prohibited by
the Spanish laws, was tolerated by the civil governors, and vaunted by
the superiors of the society, as beneficial to religion, and the
aggrandizement of the Missions. "The voice of the Gospel is heard
only," said a Jesuit of the Orinoco, very candidly, in the Cartas
Edifiantes, "where the Indians have heard also the sound of fire-arms
(el eco de la polvora). Mildness is a very slow measure. By chastising
the natives, we facilitate their conversion." These principles, which
degrade humanity, were certainly not common to all the members of a
society which, in the New World, and wherever education has remained
exclusively in the hands of monks, has rendered service to letters and
civilization. But the entradas, the spiritual conquests with the
assistance of bayonets, was an inherent vice in a system, that tended
to the rapid aggrandizement of the Missions. It is pleasing to find
that the same system is not followed by the Franciscan, Dominican, and
Augustinian monks who now govern a vast portion of South America; and
who, by the mildness or harshness of their manners, exert a powerful
influence over the fate of so many thousands of natives. Military
incursions are almost entirely abolished; and when they do take place,
they are disavowed by the superiors of the orders. We will not decide
at present, whether this amelioration of the monachal system be owing
to want of activity and cold indolence; or whether it must be
attributed, as we would wish to believe, to the progress of knowledge,
and to feelings more elevated, and more conformable to the true spirit
of Christianity.
Beyond the mouth of the Rio Paruasi, the Orinoco again narrows. Full
of little islands and masses of granite rock, it presents rapids, or
small cascades (remolinos), which at first sight may alarm the
traveller by the continual eddies of the water, but which at no season
of the year are dangerous for boats. A range of shoals, that crosses
almost the whole river, bears the name of the Raudal de Marimara. We
passed it without difficulty by a narrow channel, in which the water
seems to boil up as it issues out impetuously* (* These places are
called chorreros in the Spanish colonies.) below the Piedra de
Marimara, a compact mass of granite eighty feet high, and three
hundred feet in circumference, without fissures, or any trace of
stratification. The river penetrates far into the land, and forms
spacious bays in the rocks. One of these bays, inclosed between two
promontories destitute of vegetation, is called the Port of
Carichana.* (* Piedra y puerto de Carichana.) The spot has a very wild
aspect. In the evening the rocky coasts project their vast shadows
over the surface of the river. The waters appear black from reflecting
the image of these granitic masses, which, in the colour of their
external surface, sometimes resemble coal, and sometimes lead-ore. We
passed the night in the small village of Carichana, where we were
received at the priest's house, or convento. It was nearly a fortnight
since we had slept under a roof.
To avoid the effects of the inundations, often so fatal to health, the
Mission of Carichana has been established at three quarters of a
league from the river. The Indians in this Mission are of the nation
of the Salives, and they have a disagreeable and nasal pronunciation.
Their language, of which the Jesuit Anisson has composed a grammar
still in manuscript, is, with the Caribbean, the Tamanac, the Maypure,
the Ottomac, the Guahive, and the Jaruro, one of the mother-tongues
most general on the Orinoco. Father Gili thinks that the Ature, the
Piraoa, and the Quaqua or Mapoye, are only dialects of the Salive. My
journey was much too rapid to enable me to judge of the accuracy of
this opinion; but we shall soon see that, in the village of Ature,
celebrated on account of its situation near the great cataracts,
neither the Salive nor the Ature is now spoken, but the language of
the Maypures. In the Salive of Carichana, man is called cocco; woman,
gnacu; water, cagua; fire, eyussa; the earth, seke; the sky, mumeseke
(earth on high); the jaguar, impii; the crocodile, cuipoo; maize,
giomu; the plantain, paratuna; cassava, peibe. I may here mention one
of those descriptive compounds that seem to characterise the infancy
of language, though they are retained in some very perfect idioms.*
(See volume 1 chapter 1.9.) Thus, as in the Biscayan, thunder is
called the noise of the cloud (odotsa); the sun bears the name, in the
Salive dialect, of mume-seke-cocco, the man (cocco) of the earth
(seke) above (mume).
The most ancient abode of the Salive nation appears to have been on
the western banks of the Orinoco, between the Rio Vichada* and the
Guaviare, and also between the Meta and the Rio Paute. (* The Salive
mission, on the Rio Vichada, was destroyed by the Caribs.) Salives are
now found not only at Carichana, but in the Missions of the province
of Casanre, at Cabapuna, Guanapalo, Cabiuna, and Macuco. They are a
social, mild, almost timid people; and more easy, I will not say to
civilize, but to subdue, than the other tribes on the Orinoco. To
escape from the dominion of the Caribs, the Salives willingly joined
the first Missions of the Jesuits. Accordingly these fathers
everywhere in their writings praise the docility and intelligence of
that people. The Salives have a great taste for music: in the most
remote times they had trumpets of baked earth, four or five feet long,
with several large globular cavities communicating with one another by
narrow pipes. These trumpets send forth most dismal sounds. The
Jesuits have cultivated with success the natural taste of the Salives
for instrumental music; and even since the destruction of the society,
the missionaries of Rio Meta have continued at San Miguel de Macuco a
fine church choir, and musical instruction for the Indian youth. Very
lately a traveller was surprised to see the natives playing on the
violin, the violoncello, the triangle, the guitar, and the flute.
We found among these Salive Indians, at Carichana, a white woman, the
sister of a Jesuit of New Grenada. It is difficult to define the
satisfaction that is felt when, in the midst of nations of whose
language we are ignorant, we meet with a being with whom we can
converse without an interpreter. Every mission has at least two
interpreters (lenguarazes). They are Indians, a little less stupid
than the rest, through whose medium the missionaries of the Orinoco,
who now very rarely give themselves the trouble of studying the idioms
of the country, communicate with the neophytes. These interpreters
attended us in all our herborizations; but they rather understand than
speak Castilian. With their indolent indifference, they answer us by
chance, but always with an officious smile, "Yes, Father; no, Father,"
to every question addressed to them.
The vexation that arises from such a style of conversation continued
for months may easily be conceived, when you wish to be enlightened
upon objects in which you take the most lively interest. We were often
forced to employ several interpreters at a time, and several
successive translators, in order to communicate with the natives.* (*
To form a just idea of the perplexity of these communications by
interpreters, we may recollect that, in the expedition of Lewis and
Clarke to the river Columbia, in order to converse with the Chopunnish
Indians, Captain Lewis addressed one of his men in English; that man
translated the question into French to Chaboneau; Chaboneau translated
it to his Indian wife in Minnetaree; the woman translated it into
Shoshonee to a prisoner; and the prisoner translated it into
Chopunnish. It may be feared that the sense of the question was a
little altered by these successive translations.)
"After leaving my Mission," said the good monk of Uruana, "you will
travel like mutes." This prediction was nearly accomplished; and, not
to lose the advantage we might derive from intercourse even with the
rudest Indians, we sometimes preferred the language of signs. When a
native perceives that you will not employ an interpreter; when you
interrogate him directly, showing him the objects; he rouses himself
from his habitual apathy, and manifests an extraordinary capacity to
make himself comprehended. He varies his signs, pronounces his words
slowly, and repeats them without being desired. The consequence
conferred upon him, in suffering yourself to be instructed by him,
flatters his self-love. This facility in making himself comprehended
is particularly remarkable in the independent Indian. It cannot be
doubted that direct intercourse with the natives is more instructive
and more certain than the communication by interpreters, provided the
questions be simplified, and repeated to several individuals under
different forms. The variety of idioms spoken on the banks of the
Meta, the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is so
prodigious, that a traveller, however great may be his talent for
languages, can never hope to learn enough to make himself understood
along the navigable rivers, from Angostura to the small fort of San
Carlos del Rio Negro. In Peru and Quito it is sufficient to know the
Quichua, or the Inca language; in Chile, the Araucan; and in Paraguay,
the Guarany; in order to be understood by most of the population. But
it is different in the Missions of Spanish Guiana, where nations of
various races are mingled in the village. It is not even sufficient to
have learned the Caribee or Carina, the Guamo, the Guahive, the
Jaruro, the Ottomac, the Maypure, the Salive, the Marivitan, the
Maquiritare, and the Guaica, ten dialects, of which there exist only
imperfect grammars, and which have less affinity with each other than
the Greek, German, and Persian languages.
The environs of the Mission of Carichana appeared to us to be
delightful. The little village is situated in one of those plains
covered with grass that separate all the links of the granitic
mountains, from Encaramada to beyond the Cataracts of Maypures. The
line of the forests is seen only in the distance. The horizon is
everywhere bounded by mountains, partly wooded and of a dark tint,
partly bare, with rocky summits gilded by the beams of the setting
sun. What gives a peculiar character to the scenery of this country
are banks of rock (laxas) nearly destitute of vegetation, and often
more than eight hundred feet in circumference, yet scarcely rising a
few inches above the surrounding savannahs. They now make a part of
the plain. We ask ourselves with surprise, whether some extraordinary
revolutions may have carried away the earth and plants; or whether the
granite nucleus of our planet shows itself bare, because the germs of
life are not yet developed on all its points. The same phenomenon
seems to be found also in the desert of Shamo, which separates
Mongolia from China. Those banks of solitary rock in the desert are
called tsy. I think they would be real table-lands, if the surrounding
plains were stripped of the sand and mould that cover them, and which
the waters have accumulated in the lowest places. On these stony flats
of Carichana we observed with interest the rising vegetation in the
different degrees of its development. We there found lichens cleaving
the rock, and collected in crusts more or less thick; little portions
of sand nourishing succulent plants; and lastly layers of black mould
deposited in the hollows, formed from the decay of roots and leaves,
and shaded by tufts of evergreen shrubs.
At the distance of two or three leagues from the Mission, we find, in
these plains intersected by granitic hills, a vegetation no less rich
than varied. On comparing the site of Carichana with that of all the
villages above the Great Cataracts, we are surprised at the facility
with which we traverse the country, without following the banks of the
rivers, or being stopped by the thickness of the forests. M. Bonpland
made several excursions on horseback, which furnished him with a rich
harvest of plants. I shall mention only the paraguatan, a magnificent
species of the macrocnemum, the bark of which yields a red dye;* (*
Macrocnemum tinctorium.) the guaricamo, with a poisonous root;* (*
Ityania coccidea.) the Jacaranda obtusifolia; and the serrape, or
jape* (* Dipterix odorata, Willd. or Baryosma tongo of Gaertner. The
jape furnishes Carichana with excellent timber.) of the Salive
Indians, which is the Coumarouna of Aublet, so celebrated throughout
Terra Firma for its aromatic fruit. This fruit, which at Caracas is
placed among linen, as in Europe it is in snuff, under the name of
tonca, or Tonquin bean, is regarded as poisonous. It is a false
notion, very general in the province of Cumana, that the excellent
liqueur fabricated at Martinique owes its peculiar flavour to the
jape. In the Missions it is called simaruba; a name that may occasion
serious mistakes, the true simaruba being a febrifuge species of the
Quassia genus, found in Spanish Guiana only in the valley of Rio
Caura, where the Paudacot Indians give it the name of achecchari.
I found the dip of the magnetic needle, in the great square at
Carichana, 33.7 degrees (new division). The intensity of the magnetic
action was expressed by two hundred and twenty-seven oscillations in
ten minutes of time; an increase of force that would seem to indicate
some local attraction. Yet the blocks of the granite, blackened by the
waters of the Orinoco, have no perceptible action upon the needle.
The river had risen several inches during the day on the 10th of
April; this phenomenon surprised the natives so much the more, as the
first swellings are almost imperceptible, and are usually followed in
the month of April by a fall for some days. The Orinoco was already
three feet higher than the level of the lowest waters. The natives
showed us on a granite wall the traces of the great rise of the waters
of late years. We found them to be forty-two feet high, which is
double the mean rise of the Nile. But this measure was taken in a
place where the bed of the Orinoco is singularly hemmed in by rocks,
and I could only notice the marks shown me by the natives. It may
easily be conceived that the effect and the height of the increase
differs according to the profile of the river, the nature of the banks
more or less elevated, the number of rivers flowing in that collect
the pluvial waters, and the length of ground passed over. It is an
unquestionable fact that at Carichana, at San Borja, at Atures, and at
Maypures, wherever the river has forced its way through the mountains,
you see at a hundred, sometimes at a hundred and thirty feet, above
the highest present swell of the river, black bands and erosions, that
indicate the ancient levels of the waters. Is then this river, which
appears to us so grand and so majestic, only the feeble remains of
those immense currents of fresh water which heretofore traversed the
country at the east of the Andes, like arms of inland seas? What must
have been the state of those low countries of Guiana that now undergo
the effects of annual inundations? What immense numbers of crocodiles,
manatees, and boas must have inhabited these vast spaces of land,
converted alternately into marshes of stagnant water, and into barren
and fissured plains! The more peaceful world which we inhabit has then
succeeded to a world of tumult. The bones of mastodons and American
elephants are found dispersed on the table-lands of the Andes. The
megatherium inhabited the plains of Uruguay. On digging deep into the
ground, in high valleys, where neither palm-trees nor arborescent
ferns can grow, strata of coal are discovered, that still show
vestiges of gigantic monocotyledonous plants.
There was a remote period then, in which the classes of plants were
otherwise distributed, when the animals were larger, and the rivers
broader and of greater depth. There end those records of nature, that
it is in our power to consult. We are ignorant whether the human race,
which at the time of the discovery of America scarcely formed a few
feeble tribes on the east of the Cordilleras, had already descended
into the plains; or whether the ancient tradition of the great waters,
which is found among the nations of the Orinoco, the Erevato, and the
Caura, belong to other climates, whence it has been propagated to this
part of the New Continent.
On the 11th of April, we left Carichana at two in the afternoon, and
found the course of the river more and more encumbered by blocks of
granite rocks. We passed on the west the Cano Orupe, and then the
great rock known by the name of Piedra del Tigre. The river is there
so deep, that no bottom can be found with a line of twenty-two
fathoms. Towards evening the weather became cloudy and gloomy. The
proximity of the storm was marked by squalls alternating with dead
calms. The rain was violent, and the roof of foliage, under which we
lay, afforded but little shelter. Happily these showers drove away the
mosquitos, at least for some time. We found ourselves before the
cataract of Cariven, and the impulse of the waters was so strong, that
we had great difficulty in gaining the land. We were continually
driven back to the middle of the current. At length two Salive
Indians, excellent swimmers, leaped into the water, and having drawn
the boat to shore by means of a rope, made it fast to the Piedra de
Carichana Vieja, a shelf of bare rock, on which we passed the night.
The thunder continued to roll during a part of the night; the swell of
the river became considerable; and we were several times afraid that
our frail bark would be driven from the shore by the impetuosity of
the waves.
The granitic rock on which we lay is one of those, where travellers on
the Orinoco have heard from time to time, towards sunrise,
subterraneous sounds, resembling those of the organ. The missionaries
call these stones laxas de musica. "It is witchcraft (cosa de
bruxas)," said our young Indian pilot, who could speak Spanish. We
never ourselves heard these mysterious sounds, either at Carichana
Vieja, or in the Upper Orinoco; but from information given us by
witnesses worthy of belief, the existence of a phenomenon that seems
to depend on a certain state of the atmosphere, cannot be denied. The
shelves of rock are full of very narrow and deep crevices. They are
heated during the day to 48 or 50 degrees. I several times found their
temperature at the surface, during the night, at 39 degrees, the
surrounding atmosphere being at 28 degrees. It may easily be
conceived, that the difference of temperature between the subterranean
and the external air attains its maximum about sunrise, or at that
moment which is at the same time farthest from the period of the
maximum of the heat of the preceding day. May not these organ-like
sounds, which are heard when a person lays his ear in contact with the
stone, be the effect of a current of air that issues out through the
crevices? Does not the impulse of the air against the elastic spangles
of mica that intercept the crevices, contribute to modify the sounds?
May we not admit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing
incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same observation on
some rock of the Thebaid; and that the music of the rocks there led to
the jugglery of the priests in the statue of Memnon? Perhaps, when,
"the rosy-fingered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon,
vocal,"* (* These are the words of an inscription, which attests that
sounds were heard on the 13th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year
of the reign of Antoninus. See Monuments de l'Egypte Ancienne.) the
voice was that of a man hidden beneath the pedestal of the statue; but
the observation of the natives of the Orinoco, which we relate, seems
to explain in a natural manner what gave rise to the Egyptian belief
of a stone that poured forth sounds at sunrise.
Almost at the same period at which I communicated these conjectures to
some of the learned of Europe, three French travellers, MM. Jomard,
Jollois, and Devilliers, were led to analogous ideas. They heard, at
sunrise, in a monument of granite, at the centre of the spot on which
stands the palace of Karnak, a noise resembling that of a string
breaking. Now this comparison is precisely that which the ancients
employed in speaking of the voice of Memnon. The French travellers
thought, like me, that the passage of rarefied air through the
fissures of a sonorous stone might have suggested to the Egyptian
priests the invention of the juggleries of the Memnomium.
We left the rock at four in the morning. The missionary had told us
that we should have great difficulty in passing the rapids and the
mouth of the Meta. The Indians rowed twelve hours and a half without
intermission, and during all that time, they took no other nourishment
than cassava and plantains. When we consider the difficulty of
overcoming the force of the current, and of passing the cataracts;
when we reflect on the constant employment of the muscular powers
during a navigation of two months; we are equally surprised at the
constitutional vigour and the abstinence of the Indians of the Orinoco
and the Amazon. Amylaceous and saccharine substances, sometimes fish
and the fat of turtles' eggs, supply the place of food drawn from the
first two classes of the animal kingdom, those of quadrupeds and
birds.
We found the bed of the river, to the length of six hundred toises,
full of granite rocks. Here is what is called the Raudal de Cariven.
We passed through channels that were not five feet broad. Our canoe
was sometimes jammed between two blocks of granite. We sought to avoid
these passages, into which the waters rushed with a fearful noise; but
there is really little danger, in a canoe steered by a good Indian
pilot. When the current is too violent to be resisted the rowers leap
into the water, and fasten a rope to the point of a rock, to warp the
boat along. This manoeuvre is very tedious; and we sometimes availed
ourselves of it, to climb the rocks among which we were entangled.
They are of all dimensions, rounded, very black, glossy like lead, and
destitute of vegetation. It is an extraordinary phenomenon to see the
waters of one of the largest rivers on the globe in some sort
disappear. We perceived, even far from the shore, those immense blocks
of granite, rising from the ground, and leaning one against another.
The intervening channels in the rapids are more than twenty-five
fathoms deep; and are the more difficult to be observed, as the rocks
are often narrow toward their bases, and form vaults suspended over
the surface of the river. We perceived no crocodiles in the raudal;
these animals seem to shun the noise of cataracts.
From Cabruta to the mouth of the Rio Sinaruco, a distance of nearly
two degrees of latitude, the left bank of the Orinoco is entirely
uninhabited; but to the west of the Raudal de Cariven an enterprising
man, Don Felix Relinchon, had assembled some Jaruro and Ottomac
Indians in a small village. It is an attempt at civilization, on which
the monks have had no direct influence. It is superfluous to add, that
Don Felix lives at open war with the missionaries on the right bank of
the Orinoco.
Proceeding up the river we arrived, at nine in the morning, before the
mouth of the Meta, opposite the spot where the Mission of Santa
Teresa, founded by the Jesuits, was heretofore situated.
Next to the Guaviare, the Meta is the most considerable river that
flows into the Orinoco. It may be compared to the Danube, not for the
length of its course, but for the volume of its waters. Its mean depth
is thirty-six feet, and it sometimes reaches eighty-four. The union of
these two rivers presents a very impressive spectacle. Lonely rocks
rise on the eastern bank. Blocks of granite, piled upon one another,
appear from afar like castles in ruins. Vast sandy shores keep the
skirting of the forest at a distance from the river; but we discover
amid them, in the horizon, solitary palm-trees, backed by the sky, and
crowning the tops of the mountains. We passed two hours on a large
rock, standing in the middle of the Orinoco, and called the Piedra de
la Paciencia, or the Stone of Patience, because the canoes, in going
up, are sometimes detained there two days, to extricate themselves
from the whirlpool caused by this rock.
The Rio Meta, which traverses the vast plains of Casanare, and which
is navigable as far as the foot of the Andes of New Grenada, will one
day be of great political importance to the inhabitants of Guiana and
Venezuela. From the Golfo Triste and the Boca del Drago a small fleet
may go up the Orinoco and the Meta to within fifteen or twenty leagues
of Santa Fe de Bogota. The flour of New Grenada may be conveyed the
same way. The Meta is like a canal of communication between countries
placed in the same latitude, but differing in their productions as
much as France and Senegal. The Meta has its source in the union of
two rivers which descend from the paramos of Chingasa and Suma Paz.
The first is the Rio Negro, which, lower down, receives the
Pachaquiaro; the second is the Rio de Aguas Blancas, or Umadea. The
junction takes place near the port of Marayal. It is only eight or ten
leagues from the Passo de la Cabulla, where you quit the Rio Negro, to
the capital of Santa Fe. From the villages of Xiramena and Cabullaro
to those of Guanapalo and Santa Rosalia de Cabapuna, a distance of
sixty leagues, the banks of the Meta are more inhabited than those of
the Orinoco. We find in this space fourteen Christian settlements, in
part very populous; but from the mouths of the rivers Pauto and
Casanare, for a space of more than fifty leagues, the Meta is infested
by the Guahibos, a race of savages.* (* I find the word written
Guajibos, Guahivos, and Guagivos. They call themselves Gua-iva.)
The navigation of this river was much more active in the time of the
Jesuits, and particularly during the expedition of Iturriaga, in 1756,
than it is at present. Missionaries of the same order then governed
the banks of the Meta and of the Orinoco. The villages of Macuco,
Zurimena, and Casimena, were founded by the Jesuits, as well as those
of Uruana, Encaramada, and Carichana.
These Fathers had conceived the project of forming a series of
Missions from the junction of the Casanare with the Meta to that of
the Meta with the Orinoco. A narrow zone of cultivated land would have
crossed the vast steppes that separate the forests of Guiana from the
Andes of New Grenada.
At the period of the harvest of turtles' eggs, not only the flour of
Santa Fe descended the river, but the salt of Chita,* (* East of
Labranza Grande, and the north-west of Pore, now the capital of the
province of Casanare.) the cotton cloth of San Gil, and the printed
counterpanes of Socorro. To give some security to the little traders
who devoted themselves to this inland commerce, attacks were made from
time to time from the castillo or fort of Carichana, on the Guahibos.
To keep these Guahibos in awe, the Capuchin missionaries, who
succeeded the Jesuits in the government of the Missions of the
Orinoco, formed the project of founding a city at the mouth of the
Meta, under the name of the Villa de San Carlos. Indolence, and the
dread of tertian fevers, have prevented the execution of this project;
and all that has ever existed of the city of San Carlos, is a coat of
arms painted on fine parchment, with an enormous cross erected on the
bank of the Meta. The Guahibos, who, it is said, are some thousands in
number, have become so insolent, that, at the time of our passage by
Carichana, they sent word to the missionary that they would come on
rafts, and burn his village. These rafts (valzas), which we had an
opportunity of seeing, are scarcely three feet broad, and twelve feet
long. They carry only two or three Indians; but fifteen or sixteen of
these rafts are fastened to each other with the stems of the
paullinia, the dolichos, and other creeping plants. It is difficult to
conceive how these small craft remain tied together in passing the
rapids. Many fugitives from the villages of the Casanare and the Apure
have joined the Guahibos, and taught them the practice of eating beef,
and preparing hides. The farms of San Vicente, Rubio, and San Antonio,
have lost great numbers of their horned cattle by the incursions of
the Indians, who also prevent travellers, as far as the junction of
the Casanare, from sleeping on the shore in going up the Meta. It
often happens, while the waters are low, that the traders of New
Grenada, some of whom still visit the encampment of Pararuma, are
killed by the poisoned arrows of the Guahibos.
From the mouth of the Meta, the Orinoco appeared to us to be freer of
shoals and rocks. We navigated in a channel five hundred toises broad.
The Indians remained rowing in the boat, without towing or pushing it
forward with their arms, and wearying us with their wild cries. We
passed the Canos of Uita and Endava on the west. It was night when we
reached the Raudal de Tabaje. The Indians would not hazard passing the
cataract; and we slept on a very incommodious spot, on the shelf of a
rock, with a slope of more than eighteen degrees, and of which the
crevices sheltered a swarm of bats. We heard the cries of the jaguar
very near us during the whole night. They were answered by our great
dog in lengthened howlings. I waited the appearance of the stars in
vain: the sky was exceedingly black; and the hoarse sounds of the
cascades of the Orinoco mingled with the rolling of the distant
thunder.
Early in the morning of the 13th April we passed the rapids of Tabaje,
and again disembarked. Father Zea, who accompanied us, desired to
perform mass in the new Mission of San Borja, established two years
before. We there found six houses inhabited by uncatechised Guahibos.
They differ in nothing from the wild Indians. Their eyes, which are
large and black, have more vivacity than those of the Indians who
inhabit the ancient missions. We in vain offered them brandy; they
would not even taste it. The faces of all the young girls were marked
with round black spots; like the patches by which the ladies of Europe
formerly imagined they set off the whiteness of their skins. The
bodies of the Guahibos were not painted. Several of them had beards,
of which they seemed proud; and, taking us by the chin, showed us by
signs, that they were made like us. Their shape was in general
slender. I was again struck, as I had been among the Salives and the
Macos, with the little uniformity of features to be found among the
Indians of the Orinoco. Their look is sad and gloomy; but neither
stern nor ferocious. Without having any notion of the practices of the
Christian religion, they behaved with the utmost decency at church.
The Indians love to exhibit themselves; and will submit temporarily to
any restraint or subjection, provided they are sure of drawing
attention. At the moment of the consecration, they made signs to one
another, to indicate beforehand that the priest was going to raise the
chalice to his lips. With the exception of this gesture, they remained
motionless and in imperturbable apathy.
The interest with which we examined these poor savages became perhaps
the cause of the destruction of the mission. Some among them, who
preferred a wandering life to the labours of agriculture, persuaded
the rest to return to the plains of the Meta. They told them, that the
white men would come back to San Borja, to take them away in the
boats, and sell them as poitos, or slaves, at Angostura. The Guahibos
awaited the news of our return from the Rio Negro by the Cassiquiare;
and when they heard that we were arrived at the first great cataract,
that of Atures, they all deserted, and fled to the savannahs that
border the Orinoco on the west. The Jesuit Fathers had already formed
a mission on this spot, and bearing the same name. No tribe is more
difficult to fix to the soil than the Guahibos. They would rather feed
on stale fish, scolopendras, and worms, than cultivate a little spot
of ground. The other Indians say, that a Guahibo eats everything that
exists, both on and under the ground.
In ascending the Orinoco more to the south, the heat, far from
increasing, became more bearable. The air in the day was at 26 or 27.5
degrees; and at night, at 23.7. The water of the Orinoco retained its
habitual temperature of 27.7 degrees. The torment of the mosquitos
augmented severely, notwithstanding the decrease of heat. We never
suffered so much from them as at San Borja. We could neither speak nor
uncover our faces without having our mouths and noses filled with
insects. We were surprised not to find the thermometer at 35 or 36
degrees; the extreme irritation of the skin made us believe that the
air was scorching. We passed the night on the beach of Guaripo. The
fear of the little caribe fish prevented us from bathing. The
crocodiles we had met with this day were all of an extraordinary size,
from twenty-two to twenty-four feet.
Our sufferings from the zancudos made us depart at five o'clock on the
morning of the 14th. There are fewer insects in the strata of air
lying immediately on the river, than near the edge of the forests. We
stopped to breakfast at the island of Guachaco, or Vachaco, where the
granite is immediately covered by a formation of sandstone, or
conglomerate. This sandstone contains fragments of quartz, and even of
feldspar, cemented by indurated clay. It exhibits little veins of
brown iron-ore, which separate in laminae, or plates, of one line in
thickness. We had already found these plates on the shores between
Encaramada and Baraguan, where the missionaries had sometimes taken
them for an ore of gold, and sometimes for tin. It is probable, that
this secondary formation occupied formerly a larger space. Having
passed the mouth of the Rio Parueni, beyond which the Maco Indians
dwell, we spent the night on the island of Panumana. I could with
difficulty take the altitudes of Canopus, in order to fix the
longitude of the point, near which the river suddenly turns towards
the west. The island of Panumana is rich in plants. We there again
found those shelves of bare rock, those tufts of melastomas, those
thickets of small shrubs, the blended scenery of which had charmed us
in the plains of Carichana. The mountains of the Great Cataracts
bounded the horizon towards the south-east. In proportion as we
advanced, the shores of the Orinoco exhibited a more imposing and
picturesque aspect.