THE RIO NEGRO.
BOUNDARIES OF BRAZIL.
THE CASSIQUIARE.
BIFURCATION OF THE ORINOCO.
The Rio Negro, compared to the Amazon, the Rio de la Plata, or the
Orinoco, is but a river of the second order. Its possession has been
for ages of great political importance to the Spanish Government,
because it is capable of furnishing a rival power, Portugal, with an
easy passage into the missions of Guiana, and thereby disturbing the
Capitania general of Caracas in its southern limits. Three hundred
years have been spent in vain territorial disputes. According to the
difference of times, and the degree of civilization among the natives,
resource has been had sometimes to the authority of the Pope, and
sometimes the support of astronomy; and the disputants being generally
more interested in prolonging than in terminating the struggle, the
nautical sciences and the geography of the New Continent, have alone
gained by this interminable litigation. When the affairs of Paraguay,
and the possession of the colony of Del Sacramento, became of great
importance to the courts of Madrid and Lisbon, commissioners of the
boundaries were sent to the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Rio Plata.
The little that was known, up to the end of the last century, of the
astronomical geography of the interior of the New Continent, was owing
to these estimable and laborious men, the French and Spanish
academicians, who measured a meridian line at Quito, and to officers
who went from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres to join the expedition of
Malaspina. Those persons who know the inaccuracy of the maps of South
America, and have seen those uncultivated lands between the Jupura and
the Rio Negro, the Madeira and the Ucayale, the Rio Branco and the
coasts of Cayenne, which up to our own days have been gravely disputed
in Europe, can be not a little surprised at the perseverance with
which the possession of a few square leagues is litigated. These
disputed grounds are generally separated from the cultivated part of
the colonies by deserts, the extent of which is unknown. In the
celebrated conferences of Puente de Caya the question was agitated,
whether, in fixing the line of demarcation three hundred and seventy
Spanish leagues to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, the pope meant
that the first meridian should be reckoned from the centre of the
island of St. Nicholas, or (as the court of Portugal asserted) from
the western extremity of the little island of St. Antonio. In the year
1754, the time of the expedition of Iturriaga and Solano, negociations
were entered into respecting the possession of the then desert banks
of the Tuamini, and of a marshy tract which we crossed in one evening
going from Javita to Cano Pimichin. The Spanish commissioners very
recently would have placed the divisional line at the point where the
Apoporis falls into the Jupura, while the Portuguese astronomers
carried it back as far as Salto Grande.
The Rio Negro and the Jupuro are two tributary streams of the Amazon,
and may be compared in length to the Danube. The upper parts belong to
the Spaniards, while the lower are occupied by the Portuguese. The
Christian settlements are very numerous from Mocoa to the mouth of the
Caguan; while on the Lower Jupura the Portuguese have founded only a
few villages. On the Rio Negro, on the contrary, the Spaniards have
not been able to rival their neighbours. Steppes and forests nearly
desert separate, at a distance of one hundred and sixty leagues, the
cultivated part of the coast from the four missions of Marsa, Tomo,
Davipe, and San Carlos, which are all that the Spanish Franciscans
could establish along the Rio Negro. Among the Portuguese of Brazil
the military system, that of presides and capitanes pobladores, has
prevailed over the government of the missionaries. Grand Para is no
doubt far distant from the mouth of the Rio Negro: but the facility of
navigation on the Amazon, which runs like an immense canal in one
direction from west to east, has enabled the Portuguese population to
extend itself rapidly along the river. The banks of the Lower Maranon,
from Vistoza as far as Serpa, as well as those of the Rio Negro from
Fort da Bara to San Jose da Maravitanos, are embellished by rich
cultivation, and by a great number of large villages and towns.
These local considerations are combined with others, suggested by the
moral position of nations. The north-west coast of America furnishes
to this day no other stable settlements but Russian and Spanish
colonies. Before the inhabitants of the United States, in their
progressive movement from east to west, could reach the shore between
the latitude 41 and 50 degrees, which long separated the Spanish monks
and the Siberian hunters,* the latter had established themselves south
of the Columbia River. (* The hunters connected with military posts,
and dependent on the Russian Company, of which the principal
shareholders live at Irkutsk. In 1804 the little fortress (krepost) at
the bay of Jakutal was still six hundred leagues distant from the most
northern Mexican possessions.) Thus in New California the Franciscan
missionaries, men estimable for their morals, and their agricultural
activity, learnt with astonishment, that Greek priests had arrived in
their neighbourhood; and that two nations, who inhabit the eastern and
western extremities of Europe, were become neighbours on a coast of
America opposite to China. In Guiana circumstances were very
different: the Spaniards found on their frontiers those very
Portuguese, who, by their language, and their municipal institutions,
form with them one of the most noble remains of Roman Europe; but whom
mistrust, founded on unequal strength, and too great proximity, has
converted into an often hostile, and always rival power.
If two nations adjacent to each other in Europe, the Spaniards and the
Portuguese, have alike become neighbours in the New Continent, they
are indebted for that circumstance to the spirit of enterprise and
active courage which both displayed at the period of their military
glory and political greatness. The Castilian language is now spoken in
North and South America throughout an extent of more than one thousand
nine hundred leagues in length; if, however, we consider South America
apart, we there find the Portuguese language spread over a larger
space of ground, and spoken by a smaller number of individuals than
the Castilian. It would seem as if the bond that so closely connects
the fine languages of Camoens and Lope de Vega, had served only to
separate two nations, who have become neighbours against their will.
National hatred is not modified solely by a diversity of origin, of
manners, and of progress in civilization; whenever it is powerful, it
must be considered as the effect of geographical situation, and the
conflicting interests thence resulting. Nations detest each other the
less, in proportion as they are distant; and when, their languages
being radically different, they do not even attempt to combine
together. Travellers who have passed through New California, the
interior provinces of Mexico, and the northern frontiers of Brazil,
have been struck by these shades in the moral dispositions of
bordering nations.
When I was in the Spanish Rio Negro, the divergent politics of the
courts of Lisbon and Madrid had augmented that system of mistrust
which, even in calmer times, the commanders of petty neighbouring
forts love to encourage. Boats went up from Barcelos as far as the
Spanish missions, but the communications were of rare occurrence. A
commandant with sixteen or eighteen soldiers wearied the garrison by
measures of safety, which were dictated by the important state of
affairs; if he were attacked, he hoped to surround the enemy. When we
spoke of the indifference with which the Portuguese government
doubtless regarded the four little villages founded by the monks of
Saint Francisco, on the Upper Guainia, the inhabitants were hurt by
the motives which we alleged with the view to give them confidence. A
people who have preserved in vigour, through the revolutions of ages,
a national hatred, like occasions of giving it vent. The mind delights
in everything impassioned, in the consciousness of an energetic
feeling, in the affections, and in rival hatreds that are founded on
antiquated prejudices. Whatever constitutes the individuality of
nations flows from the mother-country to the most remote colonies; and
national antipathies are not effaced where the influence of the same
languages ceases. We know, from the interesting narrative of
Krusenstern's voyage, that the hatred of two fugitive sailors, one a
Frenchman and the other an Englishman, was the cause of a long war
between the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands. On the banks of the
Amazon and the Rio Negro, the Indians of the neighbouring Portuguese
and Spanish villages detest each other. These poor people speak only
the native tongues; they are ignorant of what passes on the other bank
of the ocean, beyond the great salt-pool; but the gowns of their
missionaries are of a different colour, and this displeases them
extremely.
I have stopped to paint the effects of national animosities, which
wise statesmen have endeavoured to calm, but have been unable entirely
to set at rest. This rivalry has contributed to the imperfection of
the geographical knowledge hitherto obtained respecting the tributary
rivers of the Amazon. When the communications of the natives are
impeded, and one nation is established near the mouth, and another in
the upper part of the same river, it is difficult for persons who
attempt to construct maps to acquire precise information. The
periodical inundations, and still more the portages, by which boats
are passed from one stream to another, the sources of which are in the
same neighbourhood, have led to erroneous ideas of the bifurcations
and branchings of rivers. The Indians of the Portuguese missions, for
instance, enter (as I was informed upon the spot) the Spanish Rio
Negro on one side by the Rio Guainia and the Rio Tomo; and the Upper
Orinoco on the other, by the portages between the Cababuri, the
Pacimoni, the Idapa, and the Macava, to gather the aromatic seeds of
the puchero laurel beyond the Esmeralda. The Indians, I repeat, are
excellent geographers; they outflank the enemy, notwithstanding the
limits traced upon the maps, in spite of the forts and the
estacamentos; and when the missionaries see them arrive from such
distances, and in different seasons, they begin to frame hypotheses of
supposed communications of rivers. Each party has an interest in
concealing what it knows with certainty; and that love of the
mysterious, so general among the ignorant, contributes to perpetuate
the doubt. It may also be observed that the various Indian nations,
who frequent this labyrinth of rivers, give them names entirely
different; and that these names are disguised and lengthened by
terminations that signify water, great water, and current. How often
have I been perplexed by the necessity of settling the synonyms of
rivers, when I have sent for the most intelligent natives, to
interrogate them, through an interpreter, respecting the number of
tributary streams, the sources of the rivers, and the portages. Three
or four languages being spoken in the same mission, it is difficult to
make the witnesses agree. Our maps are loaded with names arbitrarily
shortened or perverted. To examine how far they may be accurate, we
must be guided by the geographical situation of the confluent rivers,
I might almost say by a certain etymological tact. The Rio Uaupe, or
Uapes of the Portuguese maps, is the Guapue of the Spanish maps, and
the Ucayari of the natives. The Anava of the old geographers is the
Anauahu of Arrowsmith, and the Uanauhau or Guanauhu of the Indians.
The desire of leaving no void in the maps, in order to give them an
appearance of accuracy, has caused rivers to be created, to which
names have been applied that have not been recognized as synonymous.
It is only lately that travellers in America, in Persia, and in the
Indies, have felt the importance of being correct in the denomination
of places. When we read the travels of Sir Walter Raleigh, it is
difficult indeed to recognise in the lake of Mrecabo, the laguna of
Maracaybo, and in the Marquis Paraco the name of Pizarro, the
destroyer of the empire of the Incas.
The great tributary streams of the Amazon are designated by the
missionaries by different names in their upper and lower course. The
Iza is called, higher up, Putumayo, the Jupura towards its source
bears the name of Caqueta. The researches made in the missions of the
Andaquies on the real origin of the Rio Negro have been the more
fruitless because the Indian name of the river was unknown. I heard it
called Guainia at Javita, Maroa, and San Carlos. Southey, in his
history of Brazil, says expressly that the Rio Negro, in the lower
part of its course, is called Guiani, or Curana, by the natives; in
the upper part, Ueneya. It is the word Gueneya, instead of Guainia;
for the Indians of those countries say indifferently Guaranacua or
Ouaranacua, Guarapo or Uarapo.
The sources of the Rio Negro have long been an object of contention
among geographers. The interest we feel in this question is not merely
that which attaches to the origin of all great rivers, but is
connected with a crowd of other questions, that comprehend the
supposed bifurcations of the Caqueta, the communications between the
Rio Negro and the Orinoco, and the local fable of El Dorado, formerly
called Enim, or the empire of the Grand Paytiti. When we study with
care the ancient maps of these countries, and the history of their
geographical errors, we see how by degrees the fable of El Dorado has
been transported towards the west with the sources of the Orinoco. It
was at first fixed on the eastern declivity of the Andes, to the
south-west of the Rio Negro. The valiant Philip de Urre sought for the
great city of Manoa by traversing the Guaviare. Even now the Indians
of San Jose de Maravitanos relate that, on sailing to the north-east
for fifteen days, on the Guape or Uaupe, you reach a famous laguna de
oro, surrounded by mountains, and so large that the opposite shore
cannot be discerned. A ferocious nation, the Guanes, do not permit the
collecting of the gold of a sandy plain that surrounds the lake.
Father Acunha places the lake Manoa, or Yenefiti, between the Jupura
and the Rio Negro. Some Manoa Indians brought Father Fritz, in 1687,
several slips of beaten gold. This nation, the name of which is still
known on the banks of the Urarira, between Lamalongo and Moreira,
dwelt on the Yurubesh. La Condamine is right in saying that this
Mesopotamia, between the Caqueta, the Rio Negro, the Yurubesh, and the
Iquiare, was the first scene of El Dorado. But where shall we find the
names of Yurubesh and Iquiare, given by the Fathers Acunha and Fritz?
I think I recognise them in the rivers Urubaxi and Iguari,* on some
manuscript Portuguese maps which I possess. (* It may be written
Urubaji. The j and the x were the same as the German ch to Father
Fritz. The Urubaxi, or Hyurubaxi (Yurubesh), falls into the Rio Negro
near Santa Isabella; the Iguari (Iquiare?) runs into the Issana, which
is also a tributary of the Rio Negro.) I have long and assiduously
studied the geography of South America, north of the Amazon, from
ancient maps and unpublished materials. Desirous that my work should
preserve the character of a scientific performance, I ought not to
hesitate about treating of subjects on which I flatter myself that I
can throw some light; namely, on the questions respecting the sources
of the Rio Negro and the Orinoco, the communication between these
rivers and the Amazon, and the problem of the auriferous soil, which
has cost the inhabitants of the New World so much suffering and so
much blood.
In the distribution of the waters circulating on the surface of the
globe, as well as in the structure of organic bodies, nature has
pursued a much less complicated plan than has been believed by those
who have suffered themselves to be guided by vague conceptions and a
taste for the marvellous. We find, too, that all anomalies, all the
exceptions to the laws of hydrography, which the interior of America
displays, are merely apparent; that the course of running waters
furnishes phenomena equally extraordinary in the old world, but that
these phenomena, from their littleness, have less struck the
imagination of travellers. When immense rivers may be considered as
composed of several parallel furrows of unequal depth; when these
rivers are not enclosed in valleys; and when the interior of the great
continent is as flat as the shores of the sea with us; the
ramifications, the bifurcations, and the interlacings in the form of
net-work, must be infinitely multiplied. From what we know of the
equilibrium of the seas, I cannot think that the New World issued from
the waters later than the Old, and that organic life is there younger,
or more recent; but without admitting oppositions between the two
hemispheres of the same planet, we may conceive that in the hemisphere
most abundant in waters the different systems of rivers required more
time to separate themselves from one another, and establish their
complete independence. The deposits of mud, which are formed wherever
the running waters lose somewhat of their swiftness, contribute, no
doubt, to raise the beds of the great confluent streams, and augment
their inundations; but at length these deposits entirely obstruct the
branches of the rivers and the narrow channels that connect the
neighbouring streams. The substances washed down by rain-waters form
by their accumulation new bars, isthmuses of deposited earth, and
points of division that did not before exist. It hence results that
these natural channels of communication are by degrees divided into
two tributary streams, and from the effect of a transverse rising,
acquire two opposite slopes; a part of their waters is turned back
towards the principal recipient, and a buttress rises between the two
parallel basins, which occasions all traces of their ancient
communication to disappear. From this period the bifurcations no
longer connect different systems of rivers; and, where they continue
to take place at the time of great inundations, we see that the waters
diverge from the principal recipient only to enter it again after a
longer or shorter circuit. The limits, which at first appeared vague
and uncertain, begin to be fixed; and in the lapse of ages, from the
action of whatever is moveable on the surface of the globe, from that
of the waters, the deposits, and the sands, the basins of rivers
separate, as great lakes are subdivided, and as inland seas lose their
ancient communications.* (* The geological constitution of the soil
seems to indicate that, notwithstanding the actual difference of level
in their waters, the Black Sea, the Caspian, and lake Aral,
communicated with each other in an era anterior to historic times. The
overflowing of the Aral into the Caspian Sea seems even to be partly
of a more recent date, and independent of the bifurcation of the Gihon
(Oxus), on which one of the most learned geographers of our day, M.
Ritter, has thrown new light.)
The certainty acquired by geographers since the sixteenth century, of
the existence of several bifurcations, and the mutual dependence of
various systems of rivers in South America, have led them to admit an
intimate connection between the five great tributary streams of the
Orinoco and the Amazon; the Guaviare, the Inirida, the Rio Negro, the
Caqueta or Hyapura, and the Putumayo or Iza.
The Meta, the Guaviare, the Caqueta, and the Putumayo, are the only
great rivers that rise immediately from the eastern declivity of the
Andes of Santa Fe, Popayan, and Pasto. The Vichada, the Zama, the
Inirida, the Rio Negro, the Uaupe, and the Apoporis, which are marked
in our maps as extending westward as far as the mountains, take rise
at a great distance from them, either in the savannahs between the
Meta and the Guaviare, or in the mountainous country which, according
to the information given me by the natives, begins at four or five
days' journey westward of the missions of Javita and Maroa, and
extends through the Sierra Tuhuny, beyond the Xie, towards the banks
of the Issana.
It is remarkable that this ridge of the Cordilleras, which contains
the sources of so many majestic rivers (the Meta, the Guaviare, the
Caqueta, and the Putumayo), is as little covered with snow as the
mountains of Abyssinia from which flow the waters of the Blue Nile;
but, on the contrary, on going up the tributary streams which furrow
the plains, a volcano as found still in activity, before you reach the
Cordillera of the Andes. This phenomenon was discovered by the
Franciscan monks, who go down from Ceja by the Rio Fragua to Caqueta.
A solitary hill, emitting smoke night and day, is found on the
north-east of the mission of Santa Rosa, and west of the Puerto del
Pescado. This is the effect of a lateral action of the volcanoes of
Popayan and Pasto; as Guacamayo and Sangay, situated also at the foot
of the eastern declivity of the Andes, are the effect of a lateral
action produced by the system of the volcanoes of Quito. After having
closely inspected the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro, where
the granite everywhere pierces the soil; when we reflect on the total
absence of volcanoes in Brazil, Guiana, on the coast of Venezuela, and
perhaps in all that part of the continent lying eastward of the Andes;
we contemplate with interest the three burning volcanoes situated near
the sources of the Caqueta, the Napo, and the Rio de Macas or Morona.
The little group of mountains with which we became acquainted at the
sources of the Guainia, is remarkable from its being isolated in the
plain that extends to the south-west of the Orinoco. Its situation
with regard to longitude might lead to the belief that it stretches
into a ridge, which forms first the strait (angostura) of the
Guaviare, and then the great cataracts (saltos, cachoeiras) of the
Uaupe and the Jupura. Does this ground, composed probably of primitive
rocks, like that which I examined more to the east, contain
disseminated gold? Are there any gold-washings more to the south,
toward the Uaupe, on the Iquiare (Iguiari, Iguari), and on the
Yurubesh (Yurubach, Urubaxi)? It was there that Philip von Huten first
sought El Dorado, and with a handful of men fought the battle of
Omaguas, so celebrated in the sixteenth century. In separating what is
fabulous from the narratives of the Conquistadores, we cannot fail to
recognize in the names preserved on the same spots a certain basis of
historic truth. We follow the expedition of Huten beyond the Guaviare
and the Caqeta; we find in the Guaypes, governed by the cacique of
Macatoa, the inhabitants of the river of Uaupe, which also bears the
name of Guape, or Guapue; we call to mind, that Father Acunha calls
the Iquiari (Quiquiare) a gold river; and that fifty years later
Father Fritz, a missionary of great veracity, received, in the mission
of Yurimaguas, the Manaos (Manoas), adorned with plates of beaten
gold, coming from the country between the Uaupe and the Caqueta, or
Jupura. The rivers that rise on the eastern declivity of the Andes
(for instance the Napo) carry along with them a great deal of gold,
even when their sources are found in trachytic soils. Why may there
not be an alluvial auriferous soil to the east of the Cordilleras, as
there is to the west, in the Sonoro, at Choco, and at Barbacoas? I am
far from wishing to exaggerate the riches of this soil; but I do not
think myself authorized to deny the existence of precious metals in
the primitive mountains of Guiana, merely because in our journey
through that country we saw no metallic veins. It is somewhat
remarkable that the natives of the Orinoco have a name in their
languages for gold (carucuru in Caribbee, caricuri in Tamanac, cavitta
in Maypure), while the word they use to denote silver, prata, is
manifestly borrowed from the Spanish.* (* The Parecas say, instead of
prata, rata. It is the Castilian word plata ill-pronounced. Near the
Yurubesh there is another inconsiderable tributary stream of the Rio
Negro, the Curicur-iari. It is easy to recognize in this name the
Caribbee word carucur, gold. The Caribs extended their incursions from
the mouth of the Orinoco south-west toward the Rio Negro; and it was
this restless people who carried the fable of El Dorado, by the same
way, but in an opposite direction (from south-west to north-east),
from the Mesopotamia between the Rio Negro and the Jupura to the
sources of the Rio Branco.) The notions collected by Acunha, Father
Fritz, and La Condamine, on the gold-washings south and north of the
river Uaupe, agree with what I learnt of the auriferous soil of those
countries. However great we may suppose the communications that took
place between the nations of the Orinoco before the arrival of
Europeans, they certainly did not draw their gold from the eastern
declivity of the Cordilleras. This declivity is poor in mines,
particularly in mines anciently worked; it is almost entirely composed
of volcanic rocks in the provinces of Popayan, Pasto, and Quito. The
gold of Guiana probably came from the country east of the Andes. In
our days a lump of gold has been found in a ravine near the mission of
Encaramada, and we must not be surprised if, since Europeans settled
in these wild spots, we hear less of the plates of gold, gold-dust,
and amulets of jade-stone, which could heretofore be obtained from the
Caribs and other wandering nations by barter. The precious metals,
never very abundant on the banks of the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and
the Amazon, disappeared almost entirely when the system of the
missions caused the distant communications between the natives to
cease.
The banks of the Upper Guainia in general abound much less in
fishing-birds than those of Cassiquiare, the Meta, and the Arauca,
where ornithologists would find sufficient to enrich immensely the
collections of Europe. This scarcity of animals arises, no doubt, from
the want of shoals and flat shores, as well as from the quality of the
black waters, which (on account of their very purity) furnish less
aliment to aquatic insects and fish. However, the Indians of these
countries, during two periods of the year, feed on birds of passage,
which repose in their long migrations on the waters of the Rio Negro.
When the Orinoco begins to swell* after the vernal equinox, an
innumerable quantity of ducks (patos careteros) remove from the eighth
to the third degree of north latitude, to the first and fourth degree
of south latitude, towards the south-south-east. (* The swellings of
the Nile take place much later than those of the Orinoco; after the
summer solstice, below Syene; and at Cairo in the beginning of July.
The Nile begins to sink near that city generally about the 15th of
October, and continues sinking till the 20th of May.) These animals
then abandon the valley of the Orinoco, no doubt because the
increasing depth of waters, and the inundations of the shores, prevent
them from catching fish, insects, and aquatic worms. They are killed
by thousands in their passage across the Rio Negro. When they go
towards the equator they are very fat and savoury; but in the month of
September, when the Orinoco decreases and returns into its bed, the
ducks, warned either by the voices of the most experienced birds of
passage, or by that internal feeling which, not knowing how to define,
we call instinct, return from the Amazon and the Rio Branco towards
the north. At this period they are too lean to tempt the appetite of
the Indians of the Rio Negro, and escape pursuit more easily from
being accompanied by a species of herons (gavanes) which are excellent
eating. Thus the Indians eat ducks in March, and herons in September.
We could not learn what becomes of the gavanes during the swellings of
the Orinoco, and why they do not accompany the patos careteros in
their migration from the Orinoco to the Rio Branco. These regular
migrations of birds from one part of the tropics towards another, in a
zone which is during the whole year of the same temperature, are very
extraordinary phenomena. The southern coasts of the West India Islands
receive also every year, at the period of the inundations of the great
rivers of Terra Firma, numerous flights of the fishing-birds of the
Orinoco, and of its tributary streams. We must presume that the
variations of drought and humidity in the equinoctial zone have the
same influence as the great changes of temperature in our climates, on
the habits of animals. The heat of summer, and the pursuit of insects,
call the humming-birds into the northern parts of the United States,
and into Canada as far as the parallels of Paris and Berlin: in the
same manner a greater facility for fishing draws the web-footed and
long-legged birds from the north to the south, from the Orinoco
towards the Amazon. Nothing is more marvellous, and nothing is yet
known less clearly in a geographical point of view, than the
direction, extent, and term of the migrations of birds.
After having entered the Rio Negro by the Pimichin, and passed the
small cataract at the confluence of the two rivers, we discovered, at
the distance of a quarter of a league, the mission of Maroa. This
village, containing one hundred and fifty Indians, presented an
appearance of ease and prosperity. We purchased some fine specimens of
the toucan alive; a courageous bird, the intelligence of which is
developed like that of our domestic ravens. We passed on the right,
above Maroa, first the mouth of the Aquio* (Aqui, Aaqui, Ake, of the
most recent maps.), then that of the Tomo.* (* Tomui, Temujo, Tomon.)
On the banks of the latter river dwell the Cheruvichahenas, some
families of whom I have seen at San Francisco Solano. The Tomo lies
near the Rio Guaicia (Xie), and the mission of Tomo receives by that
way fugitive Indians from the Lower Guainia. We did not enter the
mission, but Father Zea related to us with a smile, that the Indians
of Tomo and Maroa had been one day in full insurrection, because an
attempt was made to force them to dance the famous dance of the
devils. The missionary had taken a fancy to have the ceremonies by
which the piaches (who are at once priests, physicians, and conjurors)
evoke the evil spirit Iolokiamo, represented in a burlesque manner. He
thought that the dance of the devils would be an excellent means of
proving to the neophytes that Iolokiamo had no longer any power over
them. Some young Indians, confiding in the promises of the missionary,
consented to act the devils, and were already decorated with black and
yellow plumes, and jaguar-skins with long sweeping tails. The place
where the church stands was surrounded by the soldiers who are
distributed in the missions, in order to add more effect to the
counsels of the monks; and those Indians who were not entirely
satisfied with respect to the consequences of the dance, and the
impotency of the evil spirit, were brought to the festivity. The
oldest and most timid of the Indians, however, imbued all the rest
with a superstitious dread; all resolved to flee al monte, and the
missionary adjourned his project of turning into derision the demon of
the natives. What extravagant ideas may sometimes enter the
imagination of an idle monk, who passes his life in the forests, far
from everything that can recall human civilization to his mind. The
violence with which the attempt was made to execute in public at Tomo
the mysterious dance of the devils is the more strange, as all the
books written by the missionaries relate the efforts they have used to
prevent the funereal dances, the dances of the sacred trumpet, and
that ancient dance of serpents, the Queti, in which these wily animals
are represented as issuing from the forests, and coming to drink with
the men in order to deceive them, and carry off the women.
After two hours' navigation from the mouth of the Tomo we arrived at
the little mission of San Miguel de Davipe, founded in 1775, not by
monks, but by a lieutenant of militia, Don Francisco Bobadilla. The
missionary of the place, Father Morillo, with whom we spent some
hours, received us with great hospitality. He even offered us Madeira
wine, but, as an object of luxury, we should have preferred wheaten
bread. The want of bread becomes more sensibly felt in length of time
than that of a strong liquor. The Portuguese of the Amazon carry small
quantities of Madeira wine, from time to time, to the Rio Negro; and
the word madera, signifying wood in the Castilian language, the monks,
who are not much versed in the study of geography, had a scruple of
celebrating mass with Madeira wine, which they took for a fermented
liquor extracted from the trunk of some tree, like palm-wine; and
requested the guardian of the missions to decide, whether the vino de
madera were wine from grapes, or the juice of a tree. At the beginning
of the conquest, the question was agitated, whether it were allowable
for the priests, in celebrating mass, to use any fermented liquor
analogous to grape-wine. The question, as might have been foreseen,
was decided in the negative.
At Davipe we bought some provisions, among which were fowls and a pig.
This purchase greatly interested our Indians, who had been a long
while deprived of meat. They pressed us to depart, in order to reach
the island of Dapa, where the pig was to be killed and roasted during
the night. We had scarcely time to examine in the convent (convento)
the great stores of mani resin, and cordage of the chiquichiqui palm,
which deserves to be more known in Europe. This cordage is extremely
light; it floats upon the water, and is more durable in the navigation
of rivers than ropes of hemp. It must be preserved at sea by being
often wetted, and little exposed to the heat of the tropical sun. Don
Antonio Santos, celebrated in the country for his journey in search of
lake Parima, taught the Indians of the Spanish Rio Negro to make use
of the petioles of the chiquichiqui, a palm-tree with pinnate leaves,
of which we saw neither the flowers nor the fruit. This officer is the
only white man who ever came from Angostura to Grand Para, passing by
land from the sources of the Rio Carony to those of the Rio Branco. He
had studied the mode of fabricating ropes from the chiquichiqui in the
Portuguese colonies; and, on his return from the Amazon, he introduced
this branch of industry into the missions of Guiana. It were to be
wished that extensive rope-walks could be established on the banks of
the Rio Negro and the Cassiquiare, in order to make these cables an
article of trade with Europe. A small quantity is already exported
from Angostura to the West Indies; and it costs from fifty to sixty
per cent less than cordage of hemp. Young palm-trees only being
employed, they must be planted and carefully cultivated.
A little above the mission of Davipe, the Rio Negro receives a branch
of the Cassiquiare, the existence of which is a very remarkable
phenomenon in the history of the branchings of rivers. This branch
issues from the Cassiquiare, north of Vasiva, bearing the name of the
Itinivini; and, after flowing for the length of twenty-five leagues
through a flat and almost uninhabited country, it falls into the Rio
Negro under the name of the Rio Conorichite. It appeared to me to be
more than one hundred and twenty toises broad near its mouth. Although
the current of the Conorichite is very rapid, this natural canal
abridges by three days the passage from Davipe to Esmeralda. We cannot
be surprised at a double communication between the Cassiquiare and the
Rio Negro when we recollect that so many of the rivers of America
form, as it were, deltas at their confluence with other rivers. Thus
the Rio Branco and the Rio Jupura enter by a great number of branches
into the Rio Negro and the Amazon. At the confluence of the Jupura
there is a much more extraordinary phenomenon. Before this river joins
the Amazon, the latter, which is the principal recipient, sends off
three branches called Uaranapu, Manhama, and Avateparana, to the
Jupura, which is but a tributary stream. The Portuguese astronomer,
Ribeiro, has proved this important fact. The Amazon gives waters to
the Jupura itself, before it receives that tributary stream.
The Rio Conorichite, or Itinivini, formerly facilitated the trade in
slaves carried on by the Portuguese in the Spanish territory. The
slave-traders went up by the Cassiquiare and the Cano Mee to
Conorichite; and thence dragged their canoes by a portage to the
rochelas of Manuteso, in order to enter the Atabapo. This abominable
trade lasted till about the year 1756; when the expedition of Solano,
and the establishment of the missions on the banks of the Rio Negro,
put an end to it. Old laws of Charles V and Philip III* (* 26 January
1523 and 10 October 1618.) had forbidden under the most severe
penalties (such as the being rendered incapable of civil employment,
and a fine of two thousand piastres), the conversion of the natives to
the faith by violent means, and sending armed men against them; but
notwithstanding these wise and humane laws, the Rio Negro, in the
middle of the last century, was no further interesting in European
politics, than as it facilitated the entradas, or hostile incursions,
and favoured the purchase of slaves. The Caribs, a trading and warlike
people, received from the Portuguese and the Dutch, knives,
fish-hooks, small mirrors, and all sorts of glass beads. They excited
the Indian chiefs to make war against each other, bought their
prisoners, and carried off, themselves, by stratagem or force, all
whom they found in their way. These incursions of the Caribs
comprehended an immense extent of land; they went from the banks of
the Essequibo and the Carony, by the Rupunuri and the Paraguamuzi on
one side, directly south towards the Rio Branco; and on the other, to
the south-west, following the portages between the Rio Paragua, the
Caura, and the Ventuario. The Caribs, when they arrived amid the
numerous tribes of the Upper Orinoco, divided themselves into several
bands, in order to reach, by the Cassiquiare, the Cababury, the
Itinivini, and the Atabapo, on a great many points at once, the banks
of the Guiainia or Rio Negro, and carry on the slave-trade with the
Portuguese. Thus the unhappy natives, before they came into immediate
contact with the Europeans, suffered from their proximity. The same
causes produce everywhere the same effects. The barbarous trade which
civilized nations have carried on, and still partially continue, on
the coast of Africa, extends its fatal influence even to regions where
the existence of white men is unknown.
Having quitted the mouth of the Conorichite and the mission of Davipe,
we reached at sunset the island of Dapa, lying in the middle of the
river, and very picturesquely situated. We were astonished to find on
this spot some cultivated ground, and on the top of a small hill an
Indian hut. Four natives were seated round a fire of brushwood, and
they were eating a sort of white paste with black spots, which much
excited our curiosity. These black spots proved to be vachacos, large
ants, the hinder parts of which resemble a lump of grease. They had
been dried, and blackened by smoke. We saw several bags of them
suspended above the fire. These good people paid but little attention
to us; yet there were more than fourteen persons in this confined hut,
lying naked in hammocks hung one above another. When Father Zea
arrived, he was received with great demonstrations of joy. The
military are in greater numbers on the banks of the Rio Negro than on
those of the Orinoco, owing to the necessity of guarding the
frontiers; and wherever soldiers and monks dispute for power over the
Indians, the latter are most attached to the monks. Two young women
came down from their hammocks, to prepare for us cakes of cassava. In
answer to some enquiries which we put to them through an interpreter,
they answered that cassava grew poorly on the island, but that it was
a good land for ants, and food was not wanting. In fact, these
vachacos furnish subsistence to the Indians of the Rio Negro and the
Guainia. They do not eat the ants as a luxury, but because, according
to the expression of the missionaries, the fat of ants (the white part
of the abdomen) is a very substantial food. When the cakes of cassava
were prepared, Father Zea, whose fever seemed rather to sharpen than
to enfeeble his appetite, ordered a little bag to be brought to him
filled with smoked vachacos. He mixed these bruised insects with flour
of cassava, which he pressed us to taste. It somewhat resembled rancid
butter mixed with crumb of bread. The cassava had not an acid taste,
but some remains of European prejudices prevented our joining in the
praises bestowed by the good missionary on what he called an excellent
ant paste.
The violence of the rain obliged us to sleep in this crowded hut. The
Indians slept only from eight till two in the morning; the rest of the
time they employed in conversing in their hammocks, and preparing
their bitter beverage of cupana. They threw fresh fuel on the fire,
and complained of cold, although the temperature of the air was at 21
degrees. This custom of being awake, and even on foot, four or five
hours before sunrise, is general among the Indians of Guiana. When, in
the entradas, an attempt is made to surprise the natives, the hours
chosen are those of the first sleep, from nine till midnight.
We left the island of Dapa long before daybreak; and notwithstanding
the rapidity of the current, and the activity of our rowers, our
passage to the fort of San Carlos del Rio Negro occupied twelve hours.
We passed, on the left, the mouth of the Cassiquiare, and, on the
right, the small island of Cumarai. The fort is believed in the
country to be on the equatorial line; but, according to the
observations which I made at the rocks of Culimacari, it is in 1
degree 54 minutes 11 seconds.
We lodged at San Carlos with the commander of the fort, a lieutenant
of militia. From a gallery in the upper part of the house we enjoyed a
delightful view of three islands of great length, and covered with
thick vegetation. The river runs in a straight line from north to
south, as if its bed had been dug by the hand of man. The sky being
constantly cloudy gives these countries a solemn and gloomy character.
We found in the village a few juvia-trees which furnish the triangular
nuts called in Europe the almonds of the Amazon, or Brazil-nuts. We
have made it known by the name of Bertholletia excelsa. The trees
attain after eight years' growth the height of thirty feet.
The military establishment of this frontier consisted of seventeen
soldiers, ten of whom were detached for the security of the
neighbouring missions. Owing to the extreme humidity of the air there
are not four muskets in a condition to be fired. The Portuguese have
from twenty-five to thirty men, better clothed and armed, at the
little fort of San Jose de Maravitanos. We found in the mission of San
Carlos but one garita,* a square house, constructed with unbaked
bricks, and containing six field-pieces. (* This word literally
signifies a sentry-box; but it is here employed in the sense of
store-house or arsenal.) The little fort, or, as they think proper to
call it here, the Castillo de San Felipe, is situated opposite San
Carlos, on the western bank of the Rio Negro.
The banks of the Upper Guainia will be more productive when, by the
destruction of the forests, the excessive humidity of the air and the
soil shall be diminished. In their present state of culture maize
scarcely grows, and the tobacco, which is of the finest quality, and
much celebrated on the coast of Caracas, is well cultivated only on
spots amid old ruins, remains of the huts of the pueblo viejo (old
town). Indigo grows wild near the villages of Maroa, Davipe, and Tomo.
Under a different system from that which we found existing in these
countries, the Rio Negro will produce indigo, coffee, cacao, maize,
and rice, in abundance.
The passage from the mouth of the Rio Negro to Grand Para occupying
only twenty or twenty-five days, it would not have taken us much more
time to have gone down the Amazon as far as the coast of Brazil, than
to return by the Cassiquiare and the Orinoco to the northern coast of
Caracas. We were informed at San Carlos that, on account of political
circumstances, it was difficult at that moment to pass from the
Spanish to the Portuguese settlements; but we did not know till after
our return to Europe the extent of the danger to which we should have
been exposed in proceeding as far as Barcellos. It was known at
Brazil, possibly through the medium of the newspapers, that I was
going to visit the missions of the Rio Negro, and examine the natural
canal which unites two great systems of rivers. In those desert
forests instruments had been seen only in the hands of the
commissioners of the boundaries; and at that time the subaltern agents
of the Portuguese government could not conceive how a man of sense
could expose himself to the fatigues of a long journey, to measure
lands that did not belong to him. Orders had been issued to seize my
person, my instruments, and, above all, those registers of
astronomical observations, so dangerous to the safety of states. We
were to be conducted by way of the Amazon to Grand Para, and thence
sent back to Lisbon. But fortunately for me, the government at Lisbon,
on being informed of the zeal of its subaltern agents, instantly gave
orders that I should not be disturbed in my operations; but that on
the contrary they should be encouraged, if I traversed any part of the
Portuguese possessions.
In going down the Guainia, or Rio Negro, you pass on the right the
Cano Maliapo, and on the left the Canos Dariba and Eny. At five
leagues distance, nearly in 1 degree 38 minutes of north latitude, is
the island of San Josef. A little below that island, in a spot where
there are a great number of orange-trees now growing wild, the
traveller is shown a small rock, two hundred feet high, with a cavern
called by the missionaries the Glorieta de Cocuy. This summer-house
(for such is the signification of the word glorieta in Spanish)
recalls remembrances that are not the most agreeable. It was here that
Cocuy, the chief of the Manitivitanos,* had his harem of women, and
where he devoured the finest and fattest. (* At San Carlos there is
still preserved an instrument of music, a kind of large drum,
ornamented with very rude Indian paintings, which relate to the
exploits of Cocuy.) The tradition of the harem and the orgies of Cocuy
is more current in the Lower Orinoco than on the banks of the Guainia.
At San Carlos the very idea that the chief of the Manitivitanos could
be guilty of cannibalism is indignantly rejected.
The Portuguese government has established many settlements even in
this remote part of Brazil. Below the Glorieta, in the Portuguese
territory, there are eleven villages in an extent of twenty-five
leagues. I know of nineteen more as far as the mouth of the Rio Negro,
beside the six towns of Thomare, Moreira (near the Rio Demenene, or
Uaraca, where dwelt anciently the Guiana Indians), Barcellos, San
Miguel del Rio Branco, near the river of the same name (so well known
in the fictions of El Dorado), Moura, and Villa de Rio Negro. The
banks of this tributary stream of the Amazon alone are consequently
ten times more thickly peopled than all the shores of the Upper and
Lower Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, and the Spanish Rio
Negro.
Among the tributary streams which the Rio Negro receives from the
north, three are particularly deserving of attention, because on
account of their branchings, their portages, and the situation of
their sources, they are connected with the often-discussed problem of
the origin of the Orinoco. The most southern of these tributary
streams are the Rio Branco,* which was long believed to issue
conjointly with the Orinoco from lake Parime (* The Portuguese name,
Rio Branco, signifies White Water. Rio Parime is a Caribbean name,
signifying Great Water. These names having also been applied to
different tributary streams, have caused many errors in geography. The
great Rio Branco, or Parime, often mentioned in this work, is formed
by the Urariquera and the Tacutu, and flows, between Carvoeyro and
Villa de Moura, into the Rio Negro. It is the Quecuene of the natives;
and forms at its confluence with the Rio Negro a very narrow delta,
between the principal trunk and the Amayauhau, which is a little
branch more to the west.), and the Rio Padaviri, which communicates by
a portage with the Mavaca, and consequently with the Upper Orinoco, to
the east of the mission of Esmeralda. We shall have occasion to speak
of the Rio Branco and the Padaviri, when we arrive in that mission; it
suffices here to pause at the third tributary stream of the Rio Negro,
the Cababury, the interbranchings of which with the Cassiquiare are
alike important in their connexion with hydrography, and with the
trade in sarsaparilla.
The lofty mountains of the Parime, which border the northern bank of
the Orinoco in the upper part of its course above Esmeralda, send off
a chain towards the south, of which the Cerro de Unturan forms one of
the principal summits. This mountainous country, of small extent but
rich in vegetable productions, above all, in the mavacure liana,
employed in preparing the wourali poison, in almond-trees (the juvia,
or Bertholletia excelsa), in aromatic pucheries, and in wild
cacao-trees, forms a point of division between the waters that flow to
the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro. The tributary streams
on the north, or those of the Orinoco, are the Mavaca and the
Daracapo; those on the west, or of the Cassiquiare, are the Idapa and
the Pacimoni; and those on the south, or of the Rio Negro, are the
Padaviri and the Cababuri. The latter is divided near its source into
two branches, the westernmost of which is known by the name of Baria.
The Indians of the mission of San Francisco Solano gave us the most
minute description of its course. It affords the very rare example of
a branch by which an inferior tributary stream, instead of receiving
the waters of the superior stream, sends to it a part of its own
waters in a direction opposite to that of the principal recipient.
The Cababuri runs into the Rio Negro near the mission of Nossa Senhora
das Caldas; but the rivers Ya and Dimity, which are higher tributary
streams, communicate also with the Cababuri; so that, from the little
fort of San Gabriel de Cachoeiras as far as San Antonio de Castanheira
the Indians of the Portuguese possessions can enter the territory of
the Spanish missions by the Baria and the Pacimoni.
The chief object of these incursions is the collection of sarsaparilla
and the aromatic seeds of the puchery-laurel (Laurus pichurim). The
sarsaparilla of these countries is celebrated at Grand Para,
Angostura, Cumana, Nueva Barcelona, and in other parts of Terra Firma,
by the name of zarza del Rio Negro. It is much preferred to the zarza
of the Province of Caracas, or of the mountains of Merida; it is dried
with great care, and exposed purposely to smoke, in order that it may
become blacker. This liana grows in profusion on the humid declivities
of the mountains of Unturan and Achivaquery. Decandolle is right in
suspecting that different species of smilax are gathered under the
name of sarsaparilla. We found twelve new species, among which the
Smilax siphylitica of the Cassiquaire, and the Smilax officinalis of
the river Magdalena, are most esteemed on account of their diuretic
properties. The quantity of sarsaparilla employed in the Spanish
colonies as a domestic medicine is very considerable. We see by the
works of Clusius, that at the beginning of the Conquista, Europe
obtained this salutary medicament from the Mexican coast of Honduras
and the port of Guayaquil. The trade in zarza is now more active in
those ports which have interior communications with the Orinoco, the
Rio Negro, and the Amazon.
The trials made in several botanical gardens of Europe prove that the
Smilax glauca of Virginia, which it is pretended is the S.
sarsaparilla of Linnaeus, may be cultivated in the open air, wherever
the mean winter temperature rises above six or seven degrees of the
centigrade thermometer*: but those species that possess the most
active virtues belong exclusively to the torrid zone, and require a
much higher degree of heat. (* The winter temperature at London and
Paris is 4.2 and 3.7; at Montpelier, 6.7; at Rome, 7.7 degrees. In
that part of Mexico, and the Terra Firma, where we saw the most active
species of the sarsaparilla growing (that which supplies the trade of
the Spanish and Portuguese colonies), the temperature is from twenty
to twenty-six degrees. The roots of another family of monocotyledons
(of some cyperaceae) possess also diaphoretic and resolvent
properties. The Carex arenaria, the C. hirta, etc. furnish the German
sarsaparilla of druggists. According to Clusius, Europe received the
first sarsaparilla from Yucatan, and the island of Puna, opposite
Guayaquil.) In reading the works of Clusius, it can scarcely be
conceived why our writers on the Materia Medica persist in considering
a plant of the United States as the most ancient type of the officinal
species of the genus smilax.
We found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio Negro some of
those green stones, known by the name of Amazon stones, because the
natives pretend, according to an ancient tradition, that they come
from the country of the women without husbands (Cougnantainsecouima),
or women living alone (Aikeambenano*). (* This word is of the Tamanac
language; these women are the sole Donne of the Italian missionaries.)
We were told at San Carlos, and in the neighbouring villages, that the
sources of the Orinoco, which we found east of the Esmeralda, and in
the missions of the Carony and at Angostura, that the sources of the
Rio Branco are the native spots of the green stones. These statements
confirm the report of an old soldier of the garrison of Cayenne
(mentioned by La Condamine), who affirmed that those mineral
substances were obtained from the country of women, west of the rapids
of the Oyapoc. The Indians who inhabit the fort of Topayos on the
Amazon five degrees east of the mouth of the Rio Negro, possessed
formerly a great number of these stones. Had they received them from
the north, that is, from the country pointed out by the Indians of the
Rio Negro, which extends from the mountains of Cayenne towards the
sources of the Essequibo, the Carony, the Orinoco, the Parime, and the
Rio Trombetas? or did they come from the south by the Rio Topayos,
which descends from the vast table-land of the Campos Parecis?
Superstition attaches great importance to these mineral substances:
they are worn suspended from the neck as amulets, because, according
to popular belief, they preserve the wearer from nervous complaints,
fevers, and the stings of venomous serpents. They have consequently
been for ages an article of trade among the natives, both north and
south of the Orinoco. The Caribs, who may be considered as the
Bucharians of the New World, made them known along the coasts of
Guiana; and the same stones, like money in circulation, passed
successively from nation to nation in opposite directions: their
quantity is perhaps not augmented, and the spot which produces them is
probably unknown rather than concealed. In the midst of enlightened
Europe, on occasion of a warm contest respecting native bark, a few
years ago, the green stones of the Orinoco were gravely proposed as a
powerful febrifuge. After this appeal to the credulity of Europeans,
we cannot be surprised to learn that the Spanish planters share the
predilection of the Indians for these amulets, and that they are sold
at a very considerable price. The form given to them most frequently
is that of the Babylonian cylinders,* longitudinally perforated, and
loaded with inscriptions and figures. (The price of a cylinder two
inches long is from twelve to fifteen piastres.) But this is not the
work of the Indians of our days, the natives of the Orinoco and the
Amazon, whom we find in the last degree of barbarism. The Amazon
stones, like the perforated and sculptured emeralds, found in the
Cordilleras of New Grenada and Quito, are vestiges of anterior
civilization. The present inhabitants of those countries, particularly
in the hot region, so little comprehend the possibility of cutting
hard stones (the emerald, jade, compact feldspar and rock-crystal),
that they imagine the green stone is soft when taken out of the earth,
and that it hardens after having been moulded by the hand.
The natural soil of the Amazon-stone is not in the valley of the river
Amazon. It does not derive its name from the river, but like the river
itself, the stone has been named after a nation of warlike women, whom
Father Acunha, and Oviedo, in his letter to cardinal Bembo, compare to
the Amazons of the ancient world. What we see in our cabinets under
the false denomination of Amazon-stone, is neither jade, nor compact
feldspar, but a common feldspar of an apple-green colour, that comes
from the Ural mountains and on lake Onega in Russia, but which I never
saw in the granitic mountains of Guiana. Sometimes also this very rare
and hard Amazon-stone is confounded with the hatchet-nephrite
(beilstein)* of Werner, which has much less tenacity. (* Punamustein
(jade axinien). The stone hatchets found in America, for instance in
Mexico, are not of beilstein, but of compact feldspar.) The substance
which I obtained from the hands of the Indians, belongs to the
saussurite,* (* Jade of Saussure, according to the system of
Brongniart; tenacious jade, and compact tenacious feldspar of Hauy;
some varieties of the variolithe of Werner.) to the real jade, which
resembles compact feldspar, and which forms one of the constituent
parts of the verde de Corsica, or gabbro.* (* Euphotide of Hauy, or
schillerfels, of Raumer.) It takes a fine polish, and passes from
apple-green to emerald-green; it is translucent at the edges,
extremely tenacious, and in a high degree sonorous. These Amazon
stones were formerly cut by the natives into very thin plates,
perforated at the centre, and suspended by a thread, and these plates
yield an almost metallic sound if struck by another hard body.* (* M.
Brongniart, to whom I showed these plates on my return to Europe, very
justly compared these jades of Parime to the sonorous stones employed
by the Chinese in their musical instruments called king.) This fact
confirms the connection which we find, notwithstanding the difference
of fracture and of specific gravity between the saussurite and the
siliceous basis of the porphyrschiefer, which is the phonolite
(klingstein). I have already observed, that, as it is very rare to
find in America nephrite, jade, or compact feldspar, in its native
place, we may well be astonished at the quantity of hatchets which are
everywhere discovered in digging the earth, from the banks of the Ohio
as far as Chile. We saw in the mountains of Upper Orinoco, or of
Parime, only granular granites containing a little hornblende,
granites passing into gneiss, and schistoid hornblendes. Has nature
repeated on the east of Esmeralda, between the sources of the Carony,
the Essequibo, the Orinoco, and the Rio Branco, the
transition-formation of Tucutunemo reposing on mica-schist? Does the
Amazon-stone come from the rocks of euphotide, which form the last
member of the series of primitive rocks?
We find among the inhabitants of both hemispheres, at the first dawn
of civilization, a peculiar predilection for certain stones; not only
those which, from their hardness, may be useful to man as cutting
instruments, but also for mineral substances, which, on account of
their colour and their natural form, are believed to bear some
relation to the organic functions, and even to the propensities of the
soul. This ancient worship of stones, these benign virtues attributed
to jade and haematite, belong to the savages of America as well as to
the inhabitants of the forests of Thrace. The human race, when in an
uncultivated state, believes itself to have sprung from the ground;
and feels as if it were enchained to the earth, and the substances
contained in her bosom. The powers of nature, and still more those
which destroy than those which preserve, are the first objects of its
worship. It is not solely in the tempest, in the sound that precedes
the earthquake, in the fire that feeds the volcano, that these powers
are manifested; the inanimate rock; stones, by their lustre and
hardness; mountains, by their mass and their solitude; act upon the
untaught mind with a force which, in a state of advanced civilization,
can no longer be conceived. This worship of stones, when once
established, is preserved amidst more modern forms of worship; and
what was at first the object of religious homage, becomes a source of
superstitious confidence. Divine stones are transformed into amulets,
which are believed to preserve the wearer from every ill, mental and
corporeal. Although a distance of five hundred leagues separates the
banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco from the Mexican table-land;
although history records no fact that connects the savage nations of
Guiana with the civilized nations of Anahuac, the monk Bernard de
Sahagun, at the beginning of the conquest, found preserved as relics
at Cholula, certain green stones which had belonged to Quetzalcohuatl.
This mysterious personage is the Mexican Buddha; he appeared in the
time of the Toltecs, founded the first religious associations, and
established a government similar to that of Meroe and of Japan.
The history of the jade, or the green stones of Guiana, is intimately
connected with that of the warlike women whom the travellers of the
sixteenth century named the Amazons of the New World. La Condamine has
produced many testimonies in favour of this tradition. Since my return
from the Orinoco and the river Amazon, I have often been asked, at
Paris, whether I embraced the opinion of that learned man, or
believed, like several of his contemporaries, that he undertook the
defence of the Cougnantainsecouima (the independent women who received
men into their society only in the month of April), merely to fix, in
a public sitting of the Academy, the attention of an audience somewhat
eager for novelties. I may take this opportunity of expressing my
opinion on a tradition which has so romantic an appearance; and I am
farther led to do this as La Condamine asserts that the Amazons of the
Rio Cayame* crossed the Maranon to establish themselves on the Rio
Negro. (* Orellana, arriving at the Maranon by the Rio Coca and the
Napo, fought with the Amazons, as it appears, between the mouth of the
Rio Negro and that of the Xingu. La Condamine asserts that in the
seventeenth century they passed the Maranon between Tefe and the mouth
of the Rio Puruz, near the Cano Cuchivara, which is a western branch
of the Puruz. These women therefore came from the banks of the Rio
Cayame, or Cayambe, consequently from the unknown country which
extends south of the Maranon, between the Ucayale and the Madeira.
Raleigh also places them on the south of the Maranon, but in the
province of Topayos, and on the river of the same name. He says they
were rich in golden vessels, which they had acquired in exchange for
the famous green stones, or piedras hijadas. (Raleigh means, no doubt,
piedros del higado, stones that cure diseases of the liver.) It is
remarkable enough that, one hundred and forty-eight years after, La
Condamine still found those green stones (divine stones), which differ
neither in colour nor in hardness from oriental jade, in greater
numbers among the Indians who live near the mouth of the Rio Topayos,
than elsewhere. The Indians said that they inherited these stones,
which cure the nephritic colic and epilepsy, from their fathers, who
received them from the women without husbands.) A taste for the
marvellous, and a wish to invest the descriptions of the New Continent
with some of the colouring of classic antiquity, no doubt contributed
to give great importance to the first narratives of Orellana. In
perusing the works of Vespucci, Fernando Columbus, Geraldini, Oviedo,
and Pietro Martyr, we recognize this tendency of the writers of the
sixteenth century to find among the newly discovered nations all that
the Greeks have related to us of the first age of the world, and of
the manners of the barbarous Scythians and Africans. But if Oviedo, in
addressing his letters to cardinal Bembo, thought fit to flatter the
taste of a man so familiar with the study of antiquity, Sir Walter
Raleigh had a less poetic aim. He sought to fix the attention of Queen
Elizabeth on the great empire of Guiana, the conquest of which he
proposed. He gave a description of the rising of that gilded king (el
dorado),* whose chamberlains, furnished with long tubes, blew powdered
gold every morning over his body, after having rubbed it over with
aromatic oils: but nothing could be better adapted to strike the
imagination of queen Elizabeth, than the warlike republic of women
without husbands, who resisted the Castilian heroes. (* The term el
dorado, which signifies the gilded, was not originally the name of the
country. The territory subsequently distinguished by that appellation
was at first known as the country of el Rey Dorado, the Gilded King.)
Such were the motives which prompted exaggeration on the part of those
writers who have given most reputation to the Amazons of America; but
these motives do not, I think, suffice for entirely rejecting a
tradition, which is spread among various nations having no
communications one with another.
Thirty years after La Condamine visited Quito, a Portuguese
astronomer, Ribeiro, who has traversed the Amazon, and the tributary
streams which run into that river on the northern side, has confirmed
on the spot all that the learned Frenchman had advanced. He found the
same traditions among the Indians; and he collected them with the
greater impartiality as he did not himself believe that the Amazons
formed a separate horde. Not knowing any of the tongues spoken on the
Orinoco and the Rio Negro, I could learn nothing certain respecting
the popular traditions of the women without husbands, or the origin of
the green stones, which are believed to be intimately connected with
them. I shall, however, quote a modern testimony of some weight, that
of Father Gili. "Upon inquiring," says this well-informed missionary,
"of a Quaqua Indian, what nations inhabited the Rio Cuchivero, he named
to me the Achirigotos, the Pajuros, and the Aikeambenanos.* (* In
Italian, Acchirecolti, Pajuri, and Aicheam-benano.) Being well
acquainted," pursues he, "with the Tamanac tongue, I instantly
comprehended the sense of this last word, which is a compound, and
signifies women living alone. The Indian confirmed my observation, and
related that the Aikeambenanos were a community of women, who
manufactured blow-tubes* (* Long tubes made from a hollow cane, which
the natives use to propel their poisoned arrows.), and other weapons
of war. They admit, once a year, the men of the neighbouring nation of
Vokearos into their society, and send them back with presents. All the
male children born in this horde of women are killed in their
infancy." This history seems framed on the traditions which circulate
among the Indians of the Maranon, and among the Caribs; yet the Quaqua
Indian, of whom Father Gili speaks, was ignorant of the Castilian
language; he had never had any communication with white men; and
certainly knew not, that south of the Orinoco there existed another
river, called the river of the Aikeambenanos, or Amazons.
What must we conclude from this narration of the old missionary of
Encaramada? Not that there are Amazons on the banks of the Cuchivero,
but that women in different parts of America, wearied of the state of
slavery in which they were held by the men, united themselves
together; that the desire of preserving their independence rendered
them warriors; and that they received visits from a neighbouring and
friendly horde. This society of women may have acquired some power in
one part of Guiana. The Caribs of the continent held intercourse with
those of the islands; and no doubt in this way the traditions of the
Maranon and the Orinoco were propagated toward the north. Before the
voyage of Orellana, Christopher Columbus imagined he had found the
Amazons in the Caribbee Islands. This great man was told, that the
small island of Madanino (Montserrat) was inhabited by warlike women,
who lived the greater part of the year separate from men. At other
times also, the conquistadores imagined that the women, who defended
their huts in the absence of their husbands, were republics of
Amazons; and, by an error less excusable, formed a like supposition
respecting the religious congregations, the convents of Mexican
virgins, who, far from admitting men at any season of the year into
their society, lived according to the austere rule of Quetzalcohuatl.
Such was the disposition of men's minds, that in the long succession
of travellers, who crowded on each other in their discoveries and in
narrations of the marvels of the New World, every one readily declared
he had seen what his predecessors had announced.