THE UPPER ORINOCO, FROM THE ESMERALDA TO THE CONFLUENCE OF THE
GUAVIARE.
SECOND PASSAGE ACROSS THE CATARACTS OF ATURES AND MAYPURES.
THE LOWER ORINOCO, BETWEEN THE MOUTH OF THE RIO APURE, AND ANGOSTURA
THE CAPITAL OF SPANISH GUIANA.
Opposite to the point where the Orinoco forms its bifurcation, the
granitic group of Duida rises in an amphitheatre on the right bank of
the river. This mountain, which the missionaries call a volcano, is
nearly eight thousand feet high. It is perpendicular on the south and
west, and has an aspect of solemn grandeur. Its summit is bare and
stony, but, wherever its less steep declivities are covered with mould
vast forests appear suspended on its flanks. At the foot of Duida is
the mission of Esmeralda, a little hamlet with eighty inhabitants,
surrounded by a lovely plain, intersected by rills of black but limpid
water. This plain is adorned with clumps of the mauritia palm, the
sago-tree of America. Nearer the mountain, the distance of which from
the cross of the mission I found to be seven thousand three hundred
toises, the marshy plain changes to a savannah, and spends itself
along the lower region of the Cordillera. Large pine-apples are there
found of a delicious flavour; that species of bromelia always grows
solitary among the gramina, like our Colchicum autumnale, while the B.
karatas, another species of the same genus, is a social plant, like
our whortleberries and heaths. The pine-apples of Esmeralda are
cultivated throughout Guiana. There are certain spots in America, as
in Europe, where different fruits attain their highest perfection. The
sapota-plum (achra) should be eaten at the Island of Margareta or at
Cumana: the chirimoya (very different from the custard-apple and
sweet-sop of the West India Islands) at Loxa in Peru; the grenadilla,
or parcha, at Caracas; and the pine-apple at Esmeralda, or in the
island of Cuba. The pine-apple forms the ornament of the fields near
the Havannah, where it is planted in parallel rows; on the sides of
the Duida it embellishes the turf of the savannahs, lifting its yellow
fruit, crowned with a tuft of silvery leaves, above the setaria, the
paspalum, and a few cyperaceae. This plant, which the Indians of the
Orinoco call ana-curua, has been propagated since the sixteenth
century in the interior of China,* and some English travellers found
it recently, together with other plants indubitably American (maize,
cassava, tobacco, and pimento), on the banks of the River Congo, in
Africa. (* No doubt remains of the American origin of the Bromelia
ananas. See Cayley's Life of Raleigh volume 1 page 61. Gili volume 1
pages 210 and 336. Robert Brown, Geogr. Observ. on the Plants of the
River Congo 1818 page 50.)
There is no missionary at Esmeralda; the monk appointed to celebrate
mass in that hamlet is settled at Santa Barbara, more than fifty
leagues distant; and he visits this spot but five or six times in a
year. We were cordially received by an old officer, who took us for
Catalonian shopkeepers, and who supposed that trade had led to the
missions. On seeing packages of paper intended for drying our plants,
he smiled at our simple ignorance. "You come," said he, "to a country
where this kind of merchandise has no sale; we write little here; and
the dried leaves of maize, the platano (plantain-tree), and the vijaho
(heliconia), serve us, like paper in Europe, to wrap up needles,
fish-hooks, and other little articles of which we are careful." This
old officer united in his person the civil and ecclesiastical
authority. He taught the children, I will not say the Catechism, but
the Rosary; he rang the bells to amuse himself; and impelled by ardent
zeal for the service of the church, he sometimes used his chorister's
wand in a manner not very agreeable to the natives.
Notwithstanding the small extent of the mission, three Indian
languages are spoken at Esmeralda; the Idapimanare, the Catarapenno,
and the Maquiritan. The last of these prevails on the Upper Orinoco,
from the confluence of the Ventuari as far as that of the Padamo (*
The Arivirianos of the banks of the Ventuari speak a dialect of the
language of the Maquiritares. The latter live, jointly with a tribe of
the Macos, in the savannahs that are by the Padamo. They are so
numerous, that they have even given their name to this tributary
stream of the Orinoco.); the Caribbee prevails on the Lower Orinoco;
the Ottomac, near the confluence of the Apure, at the Great Cataracts;
and the Maravitan, on the banks of the Rio Negro. These are the five
or six languages most generally spoken. We were surprised to find at
Esmeralda many zambos, mulattos, and copper-coloured people, who
called themselves Spaniards (Espanoles) and who fancy they are white,
because they are not so red as the Indians. These people live in the
most absolute misery; they have for the most part been sent hither in
banishment (desterrados). Solano, in his haste to found colonies in
the interior of the country, in order to guard its entrance against
the Portuguese, assembled in the Llanos, and as far as the island of
Margareta, vagabonds and malefactors, whom justice had vainly pursued,
and made them go up the Orinoco to join the unhappy Indians who had
been carried off from the woods. A mineralogical error gave celebrity
to Esmeralda. The granites of Duida and Maraguaca contain in open
veins fine rock-crystals, some of them of great transparency, others
coloured by chlorite or blended with actonite; these were mistaken for
diamonds and emeralds.
So near the sources of the Orinoco we heard of nothing in these
mountains but the proximity of El Dorado, the lake Parima, and the
ruins of the great city of Manoa. A man, still known in the country
for his credulity and his love of exaggeration, Don Apollinario Diez
de la Fuente, assumed the pompous title of capitan poblador, and cabo
militar (military commander) of the fort of Cassiquiare. This fort
consisted of a few trunks of trees, joined together by planks; and to
complete the deception, a demand was made at Madrid for the privileges
of a villa for the mission of Esmeralda, which but a hamlet with
twelve or fifteen huts. A colony composed of elements altogether
heterogeneous perished by degrees. The vagabonds of the Llanos had as
little taste for labour as the natives, who were compelled to live
within the sound of the bell. The former found a motive in their pride
to justify their indolence. In the missions, every mulatto who is not
decidedly black as an African, or copper-coloured as an Indian, calls
himself a Spaniard; he belongs to the gente de razon--the race endued
with reason; and that reason (sometimes, it must be admitted, arrogant
and indolent) persuaded the whites, and those who fancy they are so,
that to till the ground is a task fit only for slaves (poitos) and the
native neophytes. The colony of Esmeralda had been founded on the
principles of that of Australia; but it was far from being governed
with the same wisdom. The American colonists, being separated from
their native soil, not by seas, but by forests and savannahs,
dispersed; some taking the road northward, towards the Caura and the
Carony; others proceeding southward to the Portuguese possessions.
Thus the celebrity of this villa, and of the emerald-mines of Duida,
vanished in a few years; and Esmeralda, on account of the immense
number of insects that obscure the air at all seasons of the year, was
regarded by the monks as a place of banishment. The superior of the
missions, when he would make the lay-brothers mindful of their duty,
threatens sometimes to send them to Esmeralda; that is, say the monks,
to be condemned to the mosquitos; to be devoured by those buzzing
flies (zancudos gritones) which God appears to have created for the
torment and chastisement of man.* (* "Estos mosquitos que llaman
zancudos gritones los parece cria la naturaleza para castigo y
tormento de los hombres." "Those mosquitos which are called buzzing
zancudos, Nature seems to have created for the especial punishment and
torture of man." Fray Pedro Simon.) These strange punishments have not
always been confined to the lay-brothers. There happened in 1788 one
of those monastic revolutions, of which it is difficult to form a
conception in Europe, according to the ideas that prevail of the
peaceful state of the Christian settlements in the New World. For a
long period the Franciscan monks settled in Guiana had been desirous
of forming a separate republic, and rendering themselves independent
of the college of Piritu at Nueva Barcelona. Discontented with the
election of Fray Gutierez de Aguilera, chosen by a general chapter,
and confirmed by the king in the important office of president of the
missions, five or six monks of the Upper Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and
the Rio Negro, assembled together at San Fernando de Atabapo; chose
hastily a new superior from their own body; and caused the old one,
who, unfortunately for himself, had come to visit those parts, to be
arrested. They put him in irons, threw him into a boat, and conducted
him to Esmeralda, as to a place of proscription. This great distance
of the coast from the scene of this revolution led the monks to hope
that their crime would remain long unknown beyond the Great Cataracts.
They wished to gain time to intrigue, to negotiate, to frame acts of
accusation, and employ the little artifices by which, in every
country, the invalidity of a first election may be proved. Fray
Gutierez do Aguilera languished in his prison at Esmeralda, and fell
dangerously ill from the double influence of the excessive heat, and
the continual irritation of the mosquitos. Happily for the fallen
power the monks did not remain united. A missionary of the Cassiquiare
conceived serious alarms respecting the issue of this affair; he
dreaded being sent a prisoner to Cadiz, or, as they say in the
colonies, having his name on the list (baxo partido de registro). Fear
overcame his resolution, and he suddenly disappeared. Indians were
placed on the watch at the mouth of the Atabapo, at the Great
Cataracts, and wherever the fugitive was likely to pass on his way to
the Lower Orinoco. Notwithstanding these precautions, he arrived at
Angostura, and then reached the college of the missions of Piritu,
denounced his colleagues, and was appointed, in recompense of this
information, to arrest those with whom he had conspired against the
president of the missions.* (* Two of the missionaries, considered as
the leaders of the insurrection, were embarked at Angostura, in order
to be tried in Spain. The vessel in which they were conveyed became
leaky, and put into Spanish Harbour in the island of Trinidad. The
governor Chacon intereated himself in the fate of the monks; they were
pardoned a violent proceeding somewhat inconsistent with monastic
discipline, and were again employed in the missions. I was acquainted
with them both during my abode in South America.) At Esmeralda, where
the political events that have agitated Europe for thirty years past
have not yet been heard of, lively interest is still felt in an event
which is called the sedition of the monks, (el alboroto de los
frailes.) In this country, as in the East, no conception is formed of
any other revolutions than those that are made by rulers themselves;
and we have just seen that the effects are not very alarming.
If the villa of Esmeralda, with a population of twelve or fifteen
families, be at present considered as a frightful place of abode, this
must be attributed to the want of cultivation, the distance from every
other inhabited country, and the excessive quantity of mosquitos. The
site of the mission is highly picturesque; the surrounding country is
lovely, and of great fertility. I never saw plantains of so large a
size as these: and indigo, sugar, and cacao might be produced in
abundance, if any trouble were taken for their cultivation. The Cerro
Duida is surrounded with fine pasturage; and if the Observantins of
the college of Piritu partook a little of the industry of the
Catalonian Capuchins settled on the banks of the Carony, numerous
herds would be seen wandering between the Cunucunumo and the Padamo.
At present, not a cow or a horse is to be found; and the inhabitants,
victims of their own indolence, are often reduced to eat the flesh of
alouate monkeys, and flour made from the bones of fish, of which I
shall have occasion to speak hereafter. A little cassava and a few
plantains only are cultivated; and when the fishery is not abundant,
the natives of a country so favoured by nature are exposed to the most
cruel privations.
The pilots of the small number of boats that go from the Rio Negro to
Angostura by the Cassiquiare are afraid to ascend as far as Esmeralda,
and therefore that mission would have been much better placed at the
point of the bifurcation of the Orinoco. It is probable that this vast
country will not always be doomed to the desertion in which it has
hitherto been left, owing to the errors of monkish administration and
the spirit of monopoly that characterises corporations. We may even
predict on what points of the Orinoco industry and commerce will
become most active. In every zone, population is concentred at the
mouth of tributary streams. The Rio Apure, by which the productions of
the provinces of Varinas and Merida are exported, will give great
importance to the little town of Cabruta, which will then be in
rivalship with San Fernando de Apure, where all commerce has hitherto
centred. Higher up, a new settlement will be formed at the confluence
of the Meta, which communicates with New Grenada by the Llanos of
Casanare. The two missions of the Cataracts will increase, from the
activity to which the transport of boats at those points will give
rise; for an unhealthy and damp climate, and the swarming of
mosquitos, will as little impede the progress of cultivation at the
Orinoco as at the Rio Magdalena, whenever a powerful mercantile
interest shall call new settlers thither. Habitual evils are those
which are least felt; and men born in America do not suffer the same
intensity of pain as Europeans recently arrived. Perhaps, also, the
destruction of forests round the inhabited places, although slow, will
somewhat tend to diminish the torment of the tipulary insects. San
Fernando de Atabapo, Javita, San Carlos, and Esmeralda, appear (from
their situation at the mouth of the Guaviare, the portage between
Tuamini and the Rio Negro, the confluence of the Cassiquiare, and the
point of bifurcation of the Upper Orinoco) to promise a considerable
increase of population and prosperity. The same improvement will take
place in the fertile but uncultivated countries through which flow the
Guallaga, the Amazon, and the Orinoco; as well as at the isthmus of
Panama, the lake of Nicaragua, and the Rio Huasacualco, which furnish
a communication between the two oceans. The imperfection of political
institutions may for ages have converted into deserts places where the
commerce of the world should be found concentred; but the time
approaches when these obstacles shall exist no longer. A vicious
administration cannot always struggle against the united interest of
men; and civilization will be carried insensibly into those countries,
the great destinies of which nature itself proclaims, by the physical
configuration of the soil, the immense windings of the rivers, and the
proximity of two seas, that bathe the shores of Europe and of India.
Esmeralda is the most celebrated spot on the Orinoco for the
preparation of that active poison, which is employed in war, in the
chase, and, singularly enough, as a remedy for gastric derangements.
The poison of the ticunas of the Amazon, the upas-tieute of Java, and
the curare of Guiana, are the most deleterious substances that are
known. Raleigh, about the end of the sixteenth century, had heard of
urari* as being a vegetable substance with which arrows were envenomed
(* In Tamanac marana, in Maypure macuri.); yet no fixed notions of
this poison had reached Europe. The missionaries Gumilla and Gili had
not been able to penetrate into the country where the curare is
manufactured. Gumilla asserts that this preparation was enveloped in
great mystery; that its principal ingredient was furnished by a
subterranean plant with a tuberous root, which never puts forth
leaves, and which is called specially the root (raiz de si misma);
that the venomous exhalations which arise from the manufacture are
fatal to the lives of the old women who (being otherwise useless) are
chosen to watch over this operation; finally, that these vegetable
juices are never thought to be sufficiently concentrated till a few
drops produce at a distance a repulsive action on the blood. An Indian
wounds himself slightly; and a dart dipped in the liquid curare is
held near the wound. If it make the blood return to the vessels
without having been brought into contact with them, the poison is
judged to be sufficiently concentrated.
When we arrived at Esmeralda, the greater part of the Indians were
returning from an excursion which they had made to the east, beyond
the Rio Padamo, to gather juvias, or the fruit of the bertholletia,
and the liana which yields the curare. Their return was celebrated by
a festival, which is called in the mission la fiesta de las juvias,
and which resembles our harvest-homes and vintage-feasts. The women
had prepared a quantity of fermented liquor; and during two days the
Indians were in a state of intoxication. Among nations who attach
great importance to the fruit of the palm, and of some other trees
useful for the nourishment of man, the period when these fruits are
gathered is marked by public rejoicings, and time is divided according
to these festivals, which succeed one another in a course invariably
regular. We were fortunate enough to find an old Indian more temperate
than the rest, who was employed in preparing the curare poison from
freshly-gathered plants. He was the chemist of the place. We found at
his dwelling large earthen pots for boiling the vegetable juice,
shallower vessels to favour the evaporation by a larger surface, and
leaves of the plantain-tree rolled up in the shape of our filters, and
used to filtrate the liquids, more or less loaded with fibrous matter.
The greatest order and neatness prevailed in this hut, which was
transformed into a chemical laboratory. The old Indian was known
throughout the mission by the name of the poison-master (amo del
curare). He had that self-sufficient air and tone of pedantry of which
the pharmacopolists of Europe were formerly accused. "I know," said
he, "that the whites have the secret of making soap, and manufacturing
that black powder which has the defect of making a noise when used in
killing animals. The curare, which we prepare from father to son, is
superior to anything you can make down yonder (beyond sea). It is the
juice of an herb which kills silently, without any one knowing whence
the stroke comes."
This chemical operation, to which the old man attached so much
importance, appeared to us extremely simple. The liana (bejuco) used
at Esmeralda for the preparation of the poison, bears the same name as
in the forests of Javita. It is the bejuco de Mavacure, which is
gathered in abundance east of the mission, on the left bank of the
Orinoco, beyond the Rio Amaguaca, in the mountainous and rocky tracts
of Guanaya and Yumariquin. Although the bundles of bejuco which we
found in the hut of the Indian were entirely bare of leaves, we had no
doubt of their being produced by the same plant of the strychnos
family (nearly allied to the rouhamon of Aublet) which we had examined
in the forest of Pimichin.* (* I may here insert the description of
the curare or bejuco de Mavacure, taken from a manuscript, yet
unpublished, of my learned fellow-labourer M. Kunth, corresponding
member of the Institute. "Ramuli lignosi, oppositi, ramulo altero
abortivo, teretiusculi, fuscescenti-tomentosi, inter petiolos lineola
pilosa notati, gemmula aut processu filiformi (pedunculo?) terminati.
FOLIA opposita, bereviter petiolata, ovato-oblonga, acuminata,
intergerrima, reticulato-triplinervia, nervo medio subtus prominente,
membranacea, ciliata, utrinque glabra, nervo medio
fuscescente-tomentoso, lacte viridia, subtus pallidiora, 1 1/2 to 2
1/2 pollices longa, 8 to 9 lineas lata. PETIOLI lineam longi,
tomentosi, inarticulati.") The mavacure is employed fresh or dried
indifferently during several weeks. The juice of the liana, when it
has been recently gathered, is not regarded as poisonous; possibly it
is so only when strongly concentrated. It is the bark and a part of
the alburnum which contain this terrible poison. Branches of the
mavacure four or five lines in diameter are scraped with a knife, and
the bark that comes off is bruised, and reduced into very thin
filaments on the stone employed for grinding cassava. The venomous
juice being yellow, the whole fibrous mass takes that colour. It is
thrown into a funnel nine inches high, with an opening four inches
wide. This funnel was of all the instruments of the Indian laboratory
that of which the poison-master seemed to be most proud. He asked us
repeatedly if, por alla (out yonder, meaning in Europe) we had ever
seen anything to be compared to this funnel (embudo). It was a leaf of
the plantain-tree rolled up in the form of a cone, and placed within
another stronger cone made of the leaves of the palm-tree. The whole
of this apparatus was supported by slight frame-work made of the
petioles and ribs of palm-leaves. A cold infusion is first prepared by
pouring water on the fibrous matter which is the ground bark of the
mavacure. A yellowish water filters during several hours, drop by
drop, through the leafy funnel. This filtered water is the poisonous
liquor, but it acquires strength only when concentrated by
evaporation, like molasses, in a large earthen pot. The Indian from
time to time invited us to taste the liquid; its taste, more or less
bitter, decides when the concentration by fire has been carried
sufficiently far. There is no danger in tasting it, the curare being
deleterious only when it comes into immediate contact with the blood.
The vapours, therefore, which are disengaged from the pans are not
hurtful, notwithstanding all that has been asserted on this point by
the missionaries of the Orinoco. Fontana, in his experiments on the
poison of the ticuna of the Amazon, long since proved that the vapours
arising from this poison, when thrown on burning charcoal, may be
inhaled without danger and that the statement of La Condamine, that
Indian women, when condemned to death, have been killed by the vapours
of the poison of the ticuna, is incorrect.
The most concentrated juice of the mavacure is not thick enough to
stick to the darts; and therefore, to give a body to the poison,
another vegetable juice, extremely glutinous, drawn from a tree with
large leaves, called kiracaguero, is poured into the concentrated
infusion. As this tree grows at a great distance from Esmeralda, and
was at that period as destitute of flowers and fruits as the bejuco de
mavacure, we could not determine it botanically. I have several times
mentioned that kind of fatality which withholds the most interesting
plants from the examination of travellers, while thousands of others,
of the chemical properties of which we are ignorant, are found loaded
with flowers and fruits. In travelling rapidly, even within the
tropics, where the flowering of the ligneous plants is of such long
duration, scarcely one-eighth of the trees can be seen furnishing the
essential parts of fructification. The chances of being able to
determine, I do not say the family, but the genus and species, is
consequently as one to eight; and it may be conceived that this
unfavourable chance is felt most powerfully when it deprives us of the
intimate knowledge of objects which afford a higher interest than that
of descriptive botany.
At the instant when the glutinous juice of the kiracaguero-tree is
poured into the venomous liquor well concentrated, and kept in a state
of ebullition, it blackens, and coagulates into a mass of the
consistence of tar, or of a thick syrup. This mass is the curare of
commerce. When we hear the Indians say that the kiracaguero is as
necessary as the bejuco do mavacure in the manufacture of the poison,
we may be led into error by the supposition that the former also
contains some deleterious principle, while it only serves (as the
algarrobo, or any other gummy substance would do) to give more body to
the concentrated juice of the curare. The change of colour which the
mixture undergoes is owing to the decomposition of a hydruret of
carbon; the hydrogen is burned, and the carbon is set free. The curare
is sold in little calabashes; but its preparation being in the hands
of a few families, and the quantity of poison attached to each dart
being extremely small, the best curare, that of Esmeralda and
Mandavaca, is sold at a very high price. This substance, when dried,
resembles opium; but it strongly absorbs moisture when exposed to the
air. Its taste is an agreeable bitter, and M. Bonpland and myself have
often swallowed small portions of it. There is no danger in so doing,
if it be certain that neither lips nor gums bleed. In experiments made
by Mangili on the venom of the viper, one of his assistants swallowed
all the poison that could be extracted from four large vipers of
Italy, without being affected by it. The Indians consider the curare,
taken internally, as an excellent stomachic. The same poison prepared
by the Piraoas and Salives, though it has some celebrity, is not so
much esteemed as that of Esmeralda. The process of this preparation
appears to be everywhere nearly the same; but there is no proof that
the different poisons sold by the same name at the Orinoco and the
Amazon are identical, and derived from the same plants. Orfila,
therefore, in his excellent work On Poisons, has very judiciously
separated the wourali of Dutch Guiana, the curare of the Orinoco, the
ticuna of the Amazon, and all those substances which have been too
vaguely united under the name of American poisons. Possibly at some
future day, one and the same alkaline principle, similar to morphine
and strychnia, will be found in poisonous plants belonging to
different genera.
At the Orinoco the curare de raiz (of the root) is distinguished from
the curare de bejuco (of lianas, or of the bark of branches). We saw
only the latter prepared; the former is weaker, and much less
esteemed. At the river Amazon we learned to distinguish the poisons of
the Ticuna, Yagua, Peva, and Xibaro Indians, which being all obtained
from the same plant, perhaps differ only by a more or less careful
preparation. The Ticuna poison, to which La Condamine has given so
much celebrity in Europe, and which somewhat improperly begins to bear
the name of ticuna, is extracted from a liana which grows in the
island of Mormorote, on the Upper Maranon. This poison is employed
partly by the Ticunas, who remain independent on the Spanish territory
near the sources of the Yacarique; and partly by Indians of the same
tribe, inhabiting the Portuguese mission of Loreto. The poisons we
have just named differ totally from that of La Peca, and from the
poison of Lamas and of Moyobamba. I enter into these details because
the vestiges of plants which we were able to examine, proved to us
(contrary to the common opinion) that the three poisons of the
Ticunas, of La Peca, and of Moyobamba are not obtained from the same
species, probably not even from congeneric plants. In proportion as
the preparation of the curare is simple, that of the poison of
Moyobamba is a long and complicated process. With the juice of the
bejuco de ambihuasca, which is the principal ingredient, are mixed
pimento, tobacco, barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), sanango (Tabernae
montana), and the milk of some other apocyneae. The fresh juice of the
ambihuasca has a deleterious action when in contact with the blood;
the juice of the mavacure is a mortal poison only when it is
concentrated by fire; and ebullition deprives the juice of the root of
Jatropha manihot (the manioc) of all its baneful qualities. In rubbing
a long time between my fingers the liana which yields the potent
poison of La Peca, when the weather was excessively hot, my hands were
benumbed; and a person who was employed with me felt the same effects
from this rapid absorption by the uninjured integuments.
I shall not here enter into any detail on the physiological properties
of those poisons of the New World which kill with the same promptitude
as the strychneae of Asia,* (* The nux vomica, the upas tieute, and
the bean of St. Ignatius, Strychnos Ignatia.) but without producing
vomiting when they are received into the stomach, and without denoting
the approach of death by the violent excitement of the spinal marrow.
Scarcely a fowl is eaten on the banks of the Orinoco which has not
been killed with a poisoned arrow; and the missionaries allege that
the flesh of animals is never so good as when this method is employed.
Father Zea, who accompanied us, though ill of a tertian fever, every
morning had the live fowls allotted for our food brought to his
hammock together with an arrow, and he killed them himself; for he
would not confide this operation, to which he attached great
importance, to any other person. Large birds, a guan (pava de monte)
for instance, or a curassao (alector), when wounded in the thigh, die
in two or three minutes; but it is often ten or twelve minutes before
life is extinct in a pig or a peccary. M. Bonpland found that the same
poison, bought in different villages, varied much. We had procured at
the river Amazon some real Ticuna poison which was less potent than
any of the varieties of the curare of the Orinoco. Travellers, on
arriving in the missions, frequently testify their apprehension on
learning that the fowls, monkeys, guanas, and even the fish which they
eat, have been killed with poisoned arrows. But these fears are
groundless. Majendie has proved by his ingenious experiments on
transfusion, that the blood of animals on which the bitter strychnos
of India has produced a deleterious effect, has no fatal action on
other animals. A dog received a considerable quantity of poisoned
blood into his veins without any trace of irritation being perceived
in the spinal marrow.
I placed the most active curare in contact with the crural nerves of a
frog, without perceiving any sensible change in measuring the degree
of irritability of the organs, by means of an arc formed of
heterogeneous metals. Galvanic experiments succeeded upon birds, some
minutes after I had killed them with a poisoned arrow. These
observations are not uninteresting, when we recollect that a solution
of the upas-poison poured upon the sciatic nerve, or insinuated into
the texture of the nerve, produces also a sensible effect on the
irritability of the organs by immediate contact with the medullary
substance. The danger of the curare, as of most of the other
strychneae (for we continue to believe that the mavacure belongs to a
neighbouring family), results only from the action of the poison on
the vascular system. At Maypures, a zambo descended from an Indian and
a negro, prepared for M. Bonpland some of those poisoned arrows, that
are shot from blowing-tubes to kill small monkeys or birds. He was a
man of remarkable muscular strength. Having had the imprudence to rub
the curare between his fingers after being slightly wounded, he fell
on the ground seized with a vertigo, that lasted nearly half an hour.
Happily the poison was of that diluted kind which is used for very
small animals, that is, for those which it is believed can be recalled
to life by putting muriate of soda into the wound. During our passage
in returning from Esmeralda to Atures, I myself narrowly escaped an
imminent danger. The curare, having imbibed the humidity of the air,
had become fluid, and was spilt from an imperfectly closed jar upon
our linen. The person who washed the linen had neglected to examine
the inside of a stocking, which was filled with curare; and it was
only on touching this glutinous matter with my hand, that I was warned
not to draw on the poisoned stocking. The danger was so much the
greater, as my feet at that time were bleeding from the wounds made by
chegoes (Pulex penetrans), which had not been well extirpated. This
circumstance may warn travellers of the caution requisite in the
conveyance of poisons.
An interesting chemical and physiological investigation remains to be
accomplished in Europe on the poisons of the New World, when, by more
frequent communications, the curare de bejuco, the curare de raiz, and
the various poisons of the Amazon, Guallaga, and Brazil, can be
procured, without being confounded together, from the places where
they are prepared. Since the discovery of prussic acid,* (* First
obtained by Scheele in the year 1782. Gay-Lussac (to whom we are
indebted for the complete analysis of this acid) observes that it can
never become very dangerous to society, because its peculiar smell
(that of bitter almonds) betrays its presence, and the facility with
which it is decomposed makes it difficult to preserve.) and many other
new substances eminently deleterious, the introduction of poisons
prepared by savage nations is less feared in Europe; we cannot however
appeal too strongly to the vigilance of those who keep such noxious
substances in the midst of populous cities, the centres of
civilization, misery, and depravity. Our botanical knowledge of the
plants employed in making poison can be but very slowly acquired. Most
of the Indians who make poisoned arrows, are totally ignorant of the
nature of the venomous substances they use, and which they obtain from
other people. A mysterious veil everywhere covers the history of
poisons and of their antidotes. Their preparation among savages is the
monopoly of the piaches, who are at once priests, jugglers, and
physicians; it is only from the natives who are transplanted to the
missions, that any certain notions can be acquired on matters so
problematical. Ages elapsed before Europeans became acquainted through
the investigation of M. Mutis, with the bejuco del guaco (Mikania
guaco), which is the most powerful of all antidotes against the bite
of serpents, and of which we were fortunate enough to give the first
botanical description.
The opinion is very general in the missions that no cure is possible,
if the curare be fresh, well concentrated, and have stayed long in the
wound, to have entered freely into the circulation. Among the
specifics employed on the banks of the Orinoco, and in the Indian
Archipelago, the most celebrated is muriate of soda.* (* Oviedo,
Sommario delle Indie Orientali, recommends sea-water as an antidote
against vegetable poisons. The people in the missions never fail to
assure European travellers, that they have no more to fear from arrows
dipped in curare, if they have a little salt in their mouths, than
from the electric shocks of the gymnoti, when chewing tobacco. Raleigh
recommends as an antidote to the ourari (curare) the juice of garlick.
[But later experiments have completely proved that if the poison has
once fairly entered into combination with the blood there is no
remedy, either for man or any of the inferior animals. The wourali and
other poisons mentioned by Humboldt have, since the publication of
this work, been carefully analysed by the first chemists of Europe,
and experiments made on their symptoms and supposed remedies.
Artificial inflation of the lungs was found the most successful, but
in very few instances was any cure effected.]) The wound is rubbed
with this salt, which is also taken internally. I had myself no direct
and sufficiently convincing proof of the action of this specific; and
the experiments of Delille and Majendie rather tend to disprove its
efficacy. On the banks of the Amazon, the preference among the
antidotes is given to sugar; and muriate of soda being a substance
almost unknown to the Indians of the forests, it is probable that the
honey of bees, and that farinaceous sugar which oozes from plantains
dried in the sun, were anciently employed throughout Guiana. In vain
have ammonia and eau-de-luce been tried against the curare; it is now
known that these specifics are uncertain, even when applied to wounds
caused by the bite of serpents. Sir Everard Home has shown that a cure
is often attributed to a remedy, when it is owing only to the
slightness of the wound, and to a very circumscribed action of the
poison. Animals may with impunity be wounded with poisoned arrows, if
the wound be well laid open, and the point imbued with poison be
withdrawn immediately after the wound is made. If salt or sugar be
employed in these cases, people are tempted to regard them as
excellent specifics. Indians, who had been wounded in battle by
weapons dipped in the curare, described to us the symptoms they
experienced, which were entirely similar to those observed in the bite
of serpents. The wounded person feels congestion in the head, vertigo,
and nausea. He is tormented by a raging thirst, and numbness pervades
all the parts that are near the wound.
The old Indian, who was called the poison-master, seemed flattered by
the interest we took in his chemical processes. He found us
sufficiently intelligent to lead him to the belief that we knew how to
make soap, an art which, next to the preparation of curare, appeared
to him one of the finest of human inventions. When the liquid poison
had been poured into the vessels prepared for their reception, we
accompanied the Indian to the festival of the juvias. The harvest of
juvias, or fruits of the Bertholletia excelsa,* (* The Brazil-nut.)
was celebrated by dancing, and by excesses of wild intoxication. The
hut where the natives were assembled, displayed during several days a
very singular aspect. There was neither table nor bench; but large
roasted monkeys, blackened by smoke, were ranged in regular order
against the wall. These were the marimondes (Ateles belzebuth), and
those bearded monkeys called capuchins, which must not be confounded
with the weeper, or sai (Simia capucina of Buffon). The manner of
roasting these anthropomorphous animals contributes to render their
appearance extremely disagreeable in the eyes of civilized man. A
little grating or lattice of very hard wood is formed, and raised one
foot from the ground. The monkey is skinned, and bent into a sitting
posture; the head generally resting on the arms, which are meagre and
long; but sometimes these are crossed behind the back. When it is tied
on the grating, a very clear fire is kindled below. The monkey,
enveloped in smoke and flame, is broiled and blackened at the same
time. On seeing the natives devour the arm or leg of a roasted monkey,
it is difficult not to believe that this habit of eating animals so
closely resembling man in their physical organization, has, to a
certain degree, contributed to diminish the horror of cannibalism
among these people. Roasted monkeys, particularly those which have
very round heads, display a hideous resemblance to a child; and
consequently Europeans who are obliged to feed on them prefer
separating the head and the hands, and serve up only the rest of the
animal at their tables. The flesh of monkeys is so lean and dry, that
M. Bonpland has preserved in his collections at Paris an arm and hand,
which had been broiled over the fire at Esmeralda; and no smell has
arisen from them after the lapse of a great number of years.
We saw the Indians dance. The monotony of their dancing is increased
by the women not daring to take part in it. The men, young and old,
form a circle, holding each others' hands; and turn sometimes to the
right, sometimes to the left, for whole hours, with silent gravity.
Most frequently the dancers themselves are the musicians. Feeble
sounds, drawn from a series of reeds of different lengths, form a slow
and plaintive accompaniment. The first dancer, to mark the time, bends
both knees in a kind of cadence. Sometimes they all make a pause in
their places, and execute little oscillatory movements, bending the
body from one side to the other. The reeds ranged in a line, and
fastened together, resemble the Pan's pipes, as we find them
represented in the bacchanalian processions on Grecian vases. To unite
reeds of different lengths, and make them sound in succession by
passing them before the lips, is a simple idea, and has naturally
presented itself to every nation. We were surprised to see with what
promptitude the young Indians constructed and tuned these pipes, when
they found reeds on the bank of the river. Uncivilized men, in every
zone, make great use of these gramina with high stalks. The Greeks,
with truth, said that reeds had contributed to subjugate nations by
furnishing arrows, to soften men's manners by the charm of music, and
to unfold their understanding by affording the first instruments for
tracing letters. These different uses of reeds mark in some sort three
different periods in the life of nations. We must admit that the
tribes of the Orinoco are in the first stage of dawning civilization.
The reed serves them only as an instrument of war and of hunting; and
the Pan's pipes, of which we have spoken, have not yet, on those
distant shores, yielded sounds capable of awakening mild and humane
feelings.
We found in the hut allotted for the festival, several vegetable
productions which the Indians had brought from the mountains of
Guanaya, and which engaged our attention. I shall only here mention
the fruit of the juvia, reeds of a prodigious length, and shirts made
of the bark of marima. The almendron, or juvia, one of the most
majestic trees of the forests of the New World, was almost unknown
before our visit to the Rio Negro. It begins to be found after a
journey of four days east of Esmeralda, between the Padamo and Ocamo,
at the foot of the Cerro Mapaya, on the right bank of the Orinoco. It
is still more abundant on the left bank, at the Cerro Guanaja, between
the Rio Amaguaca and the Gehette. The inhabitants of Esmeralda assured
us, that in advancing above the Gehette and the Chiguire, the juvia
and cacao-trees become so common that the wild Indians (the Guaicas
and Guaharibos) do not disturb the Indians of the missions when
gathering in their harvests. They do not envy them the productions
with which nature has enriched their own soil. Scarcely any attempt
has been made to propagate the almendrones in the settlements of the
Upper Orinoco. To this the indolence of the inhabitants is a greater
obstacle than the rapidity with which the oil becomes rancid in the
amygdaliform seeds. We found only three trees of the kind at the
mission of San Carlos, and two at Esmeralda. These majestic trees were
eight or ten years old, and had not yet borne flowers.
As early as the sixteenth century, the seeds with ligneous and
triangular teguments (but not the great drupe like a cocoa-nut, which
contains the almonds,) were known in Europe. I recognise them in an
imperfect engraving of Clusius.* (* Clusius distinguishes very
properly the almendras del Peru, our Bertholletia excelsa, or juvia,
(fructus amygdalae-nucleo, triangularis, dorso lato, in bina latera
angulosa desinente, rugosus, paululum cuneiformis) from the pekea, or
Amygdala guayanica. Raleigh, who knew none of the productions of the
Upper Orinoco, does not speak of the juvia; but it appears that he
first brought to Europe the fruit of the mauritia palm, of which we
have so often spoken. (Fructus elegantissimus, squamosus, similis
palmae-pini.) This botanist designates them under the name of
almendras del Peru. They had no doubt been carried, as a very rare
fruit, to the Upper Maranon, and thence, by the Cordilleras, to Quito
and Peru. The Novus Orbis of Laet, in which I found the first account
of the cow-tree, furnishes also a description and a figure singularly
exact of the fruit of the bertholletia. Laet calls the tree totocke,
and mentions the drupe of the size of the human head, which contains
the almonds. The weight of these fruits, he says, is so enormous, that
the savages dare not enter the forests without covering their heads
and shoulders with a buckler of very hard wood. These bucklers are
unknown to the natives of Esmeralda, but they told us of the danger
incurred when the fruit ripens and falls from a height of fifty or
sixty feet. The triangular seeds of the juvia are sold in Portugal
under the vague appellation of chesnuts (castanas) of the Amazon, and
in England under the name of Brazil-nuts; and it was long believed
that, like the fruit of the pekea, they grew on separate stalks. They
have furnished an article of trade for a century past to the
inhabitants of Grand Para, by whom they are sent either directly to
Europe, or to Cayenne, where they are called touka. The celebrated
botanist, Correa de Serra, told us that this tree abounds in the
forests in the neighbourhood of Macapa, at the mouth of the Amazon;
that it there bears the name of capucaya, and that the inhabitants
gather the almonds, like those of the lecythis, to express the oil. A
cargo of almonds of the juvia, bought into Havre, captured by a
privateer, in 1807, was employed for the same purpose.
The tree that yields the Brazil-nuts is generally not more than two or
three feet in diameter, but attains one hundred or one hundred and
twenty feet in height. It does not resemble the mammee-tree, the
star-apple, and several other trees of the tropics, the branches of
which (as in the laurel-trees of the temperate zone) rise almost
straight towards the sky. The branches of the bertholletia are open,
very long, almost entirely bare towards the base, and loaded at their
summits with tufts of very close foliage. This disposition of the
semicoriaceous leaves, which are a little silvery on their under part,
and more than two feet long, makes the branches bend down toward the
ground, like the fronds of the palm-tree. We did not see this majestic
tree in blossom: it is not loaded with flowers* till in its fifteenth
year, and they appear about the end of March and the beginning of
April. (* According to accounts somewhat vague, they are yellow, very
large, and have some similitude to those of the Bombax ceiba. M.
Bonpland says, however, in his botanical journal written on the banks
of the Rio Negro, flos violaceus. It was thus the Indians of the river
had described to him the colour of the corolla.) The fruits ripen
towards the end of May, and some trees retain them till the end of
August. These fruits, which are as large as the head of a child, often
twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, make a very loud noise in
falling from the tops of the trees. Nothing is more fitted to fill the
mind with admiration of the force of organic action in the equinoctial
zone than the aspect of those great igneous pericarps, for instance,
the cocoa-tree (lodoicea) of the Maldives among the monocotyledons,
and the bertholletia and the lecythis among the dicotyledons. In our
climates only the cucurbitaceae produce in the space of a few months
fruits of an extraordinary size; but these fruits are pulpy and
succulent. Within the tropics, the bertholletia forms in less than
fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the ligneous part of which is half an
inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw with the sharpest
instruments. A great naturalist has observed, that the wood of fruits
attains in general a hardness which is scarcely to be found in the
wood of the trunks of trees. The pericarp of the bertholletia has
traces of four cells, and I have sometimes found even five. The seeds
have two very distinct coverings, and this circumstance renders the
structure of the fruit more complicated than in the lecythis, the
pekea or caryocar, and the saouvari. The first tegument is osseous or
ligneous, triangular, tuberculated on its exterior surface, and of the
colour of cinnamon. Four or five, and sometimes eight of these
triangular nuts, are attached to a central partition. As they are
loosened in time, they move freely in the large spherical pericarp.
The capuchin monkeys (Simia chiropotes) are singularly fond of the
Brazil nuts; and the noise made by the seeds, when the fruit is shaken
as it falls from the tree, excites the appetites of these animals in
the highest degree. I have most frequently found only from fifteen to
twenty-two nuts in each fruit. The second tegument of the almonds is
membranaceous, and of a brown-yellow. Their taste is extremely
agreeable when they are fresh; but the oil, with which they abound,
and which is so useful in the arts, becomes easily rancid. Although at
the Upper Orinoco we often ate considerable quantities of these
almonds for want of other food, we never felt any bad effects from so
doing. The spherical pericarp of the bertholletia, perforated at the
summit, is not dehiscent; the upper and swelled part of the columella
forms (according to M. Kunth) a sort of inner cover, as in the fruit
of the lecythis, but it seldom opens of itself. Many seeds, from the
decomposition of the oil contained in the cotyledons, lose the faculty
of germination before the rainy season, in which the ligneous
integument of the pericarp opens by the effect of putrefaction. A tale
is very current on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, that the capuchin
and cacajao monkeys (Simia chiropotes, and Simia melanocephala) place
themselves in a circle, and, by striking the shell with a stone,
succeed in opening it, so as to take out the triangular nuts. This
operation must, however, be impossible, on account of the extreme
hardness and thickness of the pericarp. Monkeys may have been seen
rolling along the fruit of the bertholletia, but though this fruit has
a small hole closed by the upper extremity of the columella, nature
has not furnished monkeys with the means of opening the ligneous
pericarp, as it has of opening the covercle of the lecythis, called in
the missions the covercle of the monkeys' cocoa.* (* La tapa del coco
de monos.) According to the report of several Indians, only the
smaller rodentia, particularly the cavies (the acuri and the lapa), by
the structure of their teeth, and the inconceivable perseverance with
which they pursue their destructive operations, succeed in perforating
the fruit of the juvia. As soon as the triangular nuts are spread on
the ground, all the animals of the forest, the monkeys, the manaviris,
the squirrels, the cavies, the parrots, and the macaws, hastily
assemble to dispute the prey. They have all strength enough to break
the ligneous tegument of the seed; they get out the kernel, and carry
it to the tops of the trees. "It is their festival also," said the
Indians who had returned from the harvest; and on hearing their
complaints of the animals, one may perceive that they think themselves
alone the lawful masters of the forest.
One of the four canoes, which had taken the Indians to the gathering
of the Juvias, was filled in great part with that species of reeds
(carices) of which the blow-tubes are made. These reeds were from
fifteen to seventeen feet long, yet no trace of a knot for the
insertion of leaves and branches was perceived. They were quite
straight, smooth externally, and perfectly cylindrical. These carices
come from the foot of the mountains of Yumariquin and Guanaja. They
are much sought after, even beyond the Orinoco, by the name of reeds
of Esmeralda. A hunter preserves the same blow-tube during his whole
life, and boasts of its lightness and precision, as we boast of the
same qualities in our fire-arms. What is the monocotyledonous plant*
that furnishes these admirable reeds? (* The smooth surface of these
tubes sufficiently proves that they are not furnished by a plant of
the family of umbelliferae.) Did we see in fact the internodes (parts
between the knots) of a gramen of the tribe of nastoides? or may this
carex be perhaps a cyperaceous plant* destitute of knots? (* The
caricillo del manati, which grows abundantly on the banks of the
Orinoco, attains from eight to ten feet in height.) I cannot solve
this question, or determine to what genus another plant belongs, which
furnishes the shirts of marima. We saw on the slope of the Cerra Duida
shirt-trees fifty feet high. The Indians cut off cylindrical pieces
two feet in diameter, from which they peel the red and fibrous bark,
without making any longitudinal incision. This bark affords them a
sort of garment, which resembles sacks of a very coarse texture, and
without a seam. The upper opening serves for the head; and two lateral
holes are cut for the arms to pass through. The natives wear these
shirts of marima in the rainy season: they have the form of the
ponchos and ruanas of cotton, which are so common in New Grenada, at
Quito, and in Peru. In these climates the riches and beneficence of
nature being regarded as the primary causes of the indolence of the
inhabitants, the missionaries say in showing the shirts of marima, in
the forests of the Orinoco garments are found ready-made on the trees.
We may also mention the pointed caps, which the spathes of certain
palm-trees furnish, and which resemble coarse network.
At the festival of which we were the spectators, the women, who were
excluded from the dance, and every sort of public rejoicing, were
daily occupied in serving the men with roasted monkey, fermented
liquors, and palm-cabbage. This last production has the taste of our
cauliflowers, and in no other country had we seen specimens of such an
immense size. The leaves that are not unfolded are united with the
young stem, and we measured cylinders of six feet long and five inches
in diameter. Another substance, which is much more nutritive, is
obtained from the animal kingdom: this is fish-flour (manioc de
pescado). The Indians throughout the Upper Orinoco fry fish, dry them
in the sun, and reduce them to powder without separating the bones. I
have seen masses of fifty or sixty pounds of this flour, which
resembles that of cassava. When it is wanted for eating, it is mixed
with water, and reduced to a paste. In every climate the abundance of
fish has led to the invention of the same means of preserving them.
Pliny and Diodorus Siculus have described the fish-bread of the
ichthyophagous nations, that dwelt on the Persian Gulf and the shores
of the Red Sea.* (* These nations, in a still ruder state than the
natives of the Orinoco, contented themselves with drying the raw fish
in the sun. They made up the fish-paste in the form of bricks, and
sometimes mixed with it the aromatic seed of paliurus (rhamnus), as in
Germany, and some other countries, cummin and fennel-seed are mixed
with wheaten bread.)
At Esmeralda, as everywhere else throughout the missions, the Indians
who will not be baptized, and who are merely aggregated in the
community, live in a state of polygamy. The number of wives differs
much in different tribes. It is most considerable among the Caribs,
and all the nations that have preserved the custom of carrying off
young girls from the neighbouring tribes. How can we imagine domestic
happiness in so unequal an association? The women live in a sort of
slavery, as they do in most nations which are in a state of barbarism.
The husbands being in the full enjoyment of absolute power, no
complaint is heard in their presence. An apparent tranquillity
prevails in the household; the women are eager to anticipate the
wishes of an imperious and sullen master; and they attend without
distinction to their own children and those of their rivals. The
missionaries assert, what may easily be believed, that this domestic
peace, the effect of fear, is singularly disturbed when the husband is
long absent. The wife who contracted the first ties then applies to
the others the names of concubines and servants. The quarrels continue
till the return of the master, who knows how to calm their passions by
the sound of his voice, by a mere gesticulation, or, if he thinks it
necessary, by means a little more violent. A certain inequality in the
rights of the women is sanctioned by the language of the Tamanacs. The
husband calls the second and third wife the companions of the first;
and the first treats these companions as rivals and enemies
(ipucjatoje), a term which truly expresses their position. The whole
weight of labour being supported by these unhappy women, we must not
be surprised if, in some nations, their number is extremely small.
Where this happens, a kind of polyandry is formed, which we find more
fully displayed in Thibet, and on the lofty mountains at the extremity
of the Indian peninsula. Among the Avanos and Maypures, brothers have
often but one wife. When an Indian, who lives in polygamy, becomes a
christian, he is compelled by the missionaries, to choose among his
wives her whom he prefers, and to reject the others. At the moment of
separation the new convert sometimes discovers the most valuable
qualities in the wives he is obliged to abandon. One understands
gardening perfectly; another knows how to prepare chiza, an
intoxicating beverage extracted from the root of cassava; all appear
to him alike clever and useful. Sometimes the desire of preserving his
wives overcomes in the Indian his inclination to christianity; but
most frequently, in his perplexity, the husband prefers submitting to
the choice of the missionary, as to a blind fatality.
The Indians, who from May to August take journeys to the east of
Esmeralda, to gather the vegetable productions of the mountains of
Yumariquin, gave us precise notions of the course of the Orinoco to
the east of the mission. This part of my itinerary may differ entirely
from the maps that preceded it. I shall begin the description of this
country with the granitic group of Duida, at the foot of which we
sojourned. This group is bounded on the west by the Rio Tamatama, and
on the east by the Rio Guapo. Between these two tributary streams of
the Orinoco, amid the morichales, or clumps of mauritia palm-trees,
which surround Esmeralda, the Rio Sodomoni flows, celebrated for the
excellence of the pine-apples that grow upon its banks. I measured, on
the 22nd of May, in the savannah at the foot of Duida, a base of four
hundred and seventy-five metres in length; the angle, under which the
summit of the mountain appeared at the distance of thirteen thousand
three hundred and twenty-seven metres, was still nine degrees. A
trigonometric measurement, made with great care, gave me for Duida
(that is, for the most elevated peak, which is south-west of the Cerro
Maraguaca) two thousand one hundred and seventy-nine metres, or one
thousand one hundred and eighteen toises, above the plain of
Esmeralda. The Cerro Duida thus yields but little in height (scarcely
eighty or one hundred toises) to the summit of St. Gothard, or the
Silla of Caracas on the shore of Venezuela. It is indeed considered as
a colossal mountain in those countries; and this celebrity gives a
precise idea of the mean height of Parima and of all the mountains of
eastern America. To the east of the Sierra Nevada de Merida, as well
as to the south-east of the Paramo de las Rosas, none of the chains
that extend in the same parallel line reach the height of the central
ridge of the Pyrenees.
The granitic summit of Duida is so nearly perpendicular that the
Indians have vainly attempted the ascent. It is a well-known fact that
mountains not remarkable for elevation are sometimes the most
inaccessible. At the beginning and end of the rainy season, small
flames, which seem to change their place, are seen on the top of
Duida. This phenomenon, the existence of which is borne out by
concurrent testimony, has caused this mountain to be improperly called
a volcano. As it stands nearly alone, it might be supposed that
lightning from time to time sets fire to the brushwood; but this
supposition loses its probability when we reflect on the extreme
difficulty with which plants are ignited in these damp climates. It
must be observed also that these flames are said to appear often where
the rock seems scarcely covered with turf, and that the same igneous
phenomena are visible, on days entirely exempt from storms, on the
summit of Guaraco or Murcielago, a hill opposite the mouth of the Rio
Tamatama, on the southern bank of the Orinoco. This hill is scarcely
elevated one hundred toises above the neighbouring plains. If the
statements of the natives be correct, it is probable that some
subterraneous cause produces these flames on the Duida and the
Guaraco; for they never appear on the lofty neighbouring mountains of
Jao and Maraguaca, so often wrapped in electric storms. The granite of
the Cerro Duida is full of veins, partly open, and partly filled with
crystals of quartz and pyrites. Gaseous and inflammable emanations,
either of hydrogen or of naphtha, may pass through these veins. Of
this the mountains of Caramania, of Hindookho, and of Himalaya,
furnish frequent examples. We saw the appearance of flames in many
parts of eastern America subject to earthquakes, even from secondary
rocks, as at Cuchivero, near Cumanacoa. The fire shows itself when the
ground, strongly heated by the sun, receives the first rains; or when,
after violent showers, the earth begins to dry. The first cause of
these igneous phenomena lies at immense depths below the secondary
rocks, in the primitive formations: the rains and the decomposition of
atmospheric water act only a secondary part. The hottest springs of
the globe issue immediately from granite. Petroleum gushes from
mica-schist; and frightful detonations are heard at Encaramada,
between the rivers Arauca and Cuchivero, in the midst of the granitic
soil of the Orinoco and the Sierra Parima. Here, as everywhere else on
the globe, the focus of volcanoes is in the most ancient soils; and it
appears that an intimate connection exists between the great phenomena
that heave up and liquify the crust of our planet, and those igneous
meteors which are seen from time to time on its surface, and which
from their littleness we are tempted to attribute solely to the
influence of the atmosphere.
Duida, though lower than the height assigned to it by popular belief,
is however the most prominent point of the whole group of mountains
that separate the basin of the Lower Orinoco from that of the Amazon.
These mountains lower still more rapidly on the north-east, toward the
Purunama, than on the east, toward the Padamo and the Rio Ocamo. In
the former direction the most elevated summits next to Duida are
Cuneva, at the sources of the Rio Paru (one of the tributary streams
of the Ventuari), Sipapo, Calitamini, which forms one group with
Cunavami and the peak of Umiana. East of Duida, on the right bank of
the Orinoco, Maravaca, or Sierra Maraguaca, is distinguished by its
elevation, between the Rio Caurimoni and the Padamo; and on the left
bank of the Orinoco rise the mountains of Guanaja and Yumariquin,
between the Rios Amaguaca and Gehette. It is almost superfluous to
repeat that the line which passes through these lofty summits (like
those of the Pyrenees, the Carpathian mountains, and so many other
chains of the old continent) is very distinct from the line that marks
the partition of the waters. This latter line, which separates the
tributary streams of the Lower and Upper Orinoco, intersects the
meridian of 64 degrees in latitude 4 degrees. After having separated
the sources of the Rio Branco and the Carony, it runs north-west,
sending off the waters of the Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari
towards the south, and the waters of the Arui, the Caura, and the
Cuchivero towards the north.
The Orinoco may be ascended without danger from Esmeralda as far as
the cataracts occupied by the Guaica Indians, who prevent all farther
progress of the Spaniards. This is a voyage of six days and a half. In
the first two days you arrive at the mouth of the Rio Padamo, or
Patamo, having passed, on the north, the little rivers of Tamatama,
Sodomoni, Guapo, Caurimoni, and Simirimoni; and on the south the Cuca,
situate between the rock of Guaraco, which is said to throw out
flames, and the Cerro Canclilla. Throughout this course the Orinoco
continues to be three or four hundred toises broad. The tributary
streams are most frequent on the right bank, because on that side the
river is bounded by the lofty cloud-capped mountains of Duida and
Maraguaca, while the left bank on the contrary is low and contiguous
to a plain, the general slope of which inclines to the south-west. The
northern Cordilleras are covered with fine timber. The growth of
plants is so enormous in this hot and constantly humid climate, that
the trunks of the Bombax ceiba are sixteen feet in diameter. From the
mouth of the Rio Padamo, which is of considerable breadth, the Indians
arrive, in a day and a half, at the Rio Mavaca. The latter takes its
rise in the lofty mountains of Unturan, and communicates with a lake,
on the banks of which the Portuguese* of the Rio Negro gather the
aromatic seeds of the Laurus pucheri, known in trade by the names of
the pichurim bean, and toda specie. (* The pichurim bean is the
puchiri of La Condamine, which abounds at the Rio Xingu, a tributary
stream of the Amazon, and on the banks of the Hyurubaxy, or Yurubesh,
which runs into the Rio Negro. The puchery, or pichurim, which is
grated like nutmeg, differs from another aromatic fruit (a laurel?)
known in trade at Grand Para by the names of cucheri, cuchiri, or
cravo (clavus) do Maranhao, and which, on account of its odour, is
compared with cloves.) Between the confluence of the Padamo and that
of the Mavaca, the Orinoco receives on the north the Ocamo, into which
the Rio Matacona falls. At the sources of the latter live the
Guainares, who are much less copper-coloured, or tawny, than the other
inhabitants of those countries. This is one of the tribes called by
the missionaries fair Indians (Indios blancos). Near the mouth of the
Ocamo, travellers are shown a rock, which is the wonder of the
country. It is a granite passing into gneiss, and remarkable for the
peculiar distribution of the black mica, which forms little ramified
veins. The Spaniards call this rock Piedra Mapaya (the map-stone). The
little fragment which I procured indicated a stratified rock, rich in
white feldspar, and containing, together with spangles of mica,
grouped in streaks, and variously twisted, some crystals of
hornblende. It is not a syenite, but probably a granite of new
formation, analogous to those to which the stanniferous granites
(hyalomictes) and the pegmatites, or graphic granites, belong.
Beyond the confluence of the Macava, the Orinoco suddenly diminishes
in breadth and depth, becoming extremely sinuous, like an Alpine
torrent. Its banks are surrounded by mountains, and the number of its
tributary streams on the south augments considerably, yet the
Cordillera on the north remains the most elevated. It requires two
days to go from the mouth of the Macava, to the Rio Gehette, the
navigation being very difficult, and the boats, on account of the want
of water, being often dragged along the shore. The tributary streams
along this distance are, on the south, the Daracapo and the Amaguaca;
which skirt on the west and east the mountains of Guanaya and
Yumariquin, where the bertholletias are gathered. The Rio Manaviche
flows down from the mountains on the north, the elevation of which
diminishes progressively from the Cerro Maraguaca. As we advance
further up the Orinoco, the whirlpools and little rapids (chorros y
remolinos) become more and more frequent; on the north lies the Cano
Chiquire, inhabited by the Guaicas, another tribe of white Indians;
and two leagues distant is the mouth of the Gehette, where there is a
great cataract. A dyke of granitic rocks crosses the Orinoco these
rocks are, as it were, the columns of Hercules, beyond which no white
man has been able to penetrate. It appears that this point, known by
the name of the great Raudal de Guaharibos, is three-quarters of a
degree west of Esmeralda, consequently in longitude 67 degrees 38
minutes. A military expedition, undertaken by the commander of the
fort of San Carlos, Don Francisco Bovadilla, to discover the sources
of the Orinoco, led to some information respecting the cataracts of
the Guaharibos. Bovadilla had heard that some fugitive negroes from
Dutch Guiana, proceeding towards the west (beyond the isthmus between
the sources of the Rio Carony and the Rio Branco) had joined the
independent Indians. He attempted an entrada (hostile incursion)
without having obtained the permission of the governor; the desire of
procuring African slaves, better fitted for labour than the
copper-coloured race, was a far more powerful motive than that of zeal
for the progress of geography. Bovadilla arrived without difficulty as
far as the little Raudal* opposite the Gehette (* It is called Raudal
de abaxo (Low Cataract) in opposition to the great Raudal de
Guaharibos, which is situated higher up toward the east.); but having
advanced to the foot of the rocky dike that forms the great cataract,
he was suddenly attacked, while he was breakfasting, by the Guaharibos
and Guaycas, two warlike tribes, celebrated for the virulence of the
curare with which their arrows are empoisoned. The Indians occupied
the rocks that rise in the middle of the river, and seeing the
Spaniards without bows, and having no knowledge of firearms, they
provoked the whites, whom they believed to be without defence. Several
of the latter were dangerously wounded, and Bovadilla found himself
forced to give the signal for battle. A fearful carnage ensued among
the natives, but none of the Dutch negroes, who, as was believed, had
taken refuge in those parts, were found. Notwithstanding a victory so
easily won, the Spaniards did not dare to advance eastward in a
mountainous country, and along a river inclosed by very high banks.
These white Guaharibos have constructed a bridge of lianas above the
cataract, supported on rocks that rise, as generally happens in the
pongos of the Upper Maranon, in the middle of the river. The existence
of this bridge, which is known to all the inhabitants of Esmeralda,*
seems to indicate that the Orinoco must be very narrow at this point.
(* The Amazon also is crossed twice on bridges of wood near its source
in the lake Lauricocha; first north of Chavin, and then below the
confluence of the Rio Aguamiras. These, the only two bridges that have
been thrown over the largest river we yet know, are called Puente de
Quivilla, and Puente de Guancaybamba.) It is generally estimated by
the Indians to be only two or three hundred feet broad. They say that
the Orinoco, above the Raudal of the Guaharibos, is no longer a river,
but a brook (riachuelo); while a well informed ecclesiastic, Fray Juan
Gonzales, who had visited those countries, assured me that the
Orinoco, in the part where its farther course is no longer known, is
two-thirds of the breadth of the Rio Negro near San Carlos. This
opinion appears to me hardly probable; but I relate what I have
collected, and affirm nothing positively.
In the rocky dike that crosses the Orinoco, forming the Raudal of the
Guaharibos, Spanish soldiers pretend to have found the fine kind of
saussurite (Amazon-stone), of which we have spoken. This tradition
however is very uncertain; and the Indians, whom I interrogated on the
subject, assured me that the green stones, called piedras de Macagua*
at Esmeralda, were purchased from the Guaicas and Guaharibos, who
traffic with hordes much farther to the east. (* The etymology of this
name, which is unknown to me, might lead to the knowledge of the spot
where these stones are found. I have sought in vain the name of
Macagua among the numerous tributary streams of the Tacutu, the Mahu,
the Rupunury, and the Rio Trombetas.) The same uncertainty prevails
respecting these stones, as that which attaches to many other valuable
productions of the Indies. On the coast, at the distance of some
hundred leagues, the country where they are found is positively named;
but when the traveller with difficulty penetrates into that country,
he discovers that the natives are ignorant even of the name of the
object of his research. It might be supposed that the amulets of
saussurite found in the possession of the Indians of the Rio Negro,
come from the Lower Maranon, while those that are received by the
missions of the Upper Orinoco and the Rio Carony come from a country
situated between the sources of the Essequibo and the Rio Branco. The
opinion that this stone is taken in a soft state like paste from the
little lake Amucu, though very prevalent at Angostura, is wholly
without foundation. A curious geognostic discovery remains to be made
in the eastern part of America, that of finding in a primitive soil a
rock of euphotide containing the piedra de Macagua.
I shall here proceed to give some information respecting the tribes of
dwarf and fair Indians, which ancient traditions have placed near the
sources of the Orinoco. I had an opportunity of seeing some of these
Indians at Esmeralda, and can affirm that the short stature of the
Guaicas, and the fair complexion of the Guaharibos, whom Father Caulin
calls Guaribos blancos, have been alike exaggerated. The Guaicas, whom
I measured, were in general from four feet seven inches to four feet
eight inches high (old measure of France).* (* About five feet three
inches English measure.) We were assured that the whole tribe were of
this diminutive size; but we must not forget that what is called a
tribe constitutes, properly speaking, but one family, owing to the
exclusion of all foreign connections. The Indians of the lowest
stature next to the Guaicas are the Guainares and the Poignaves. It is
singular, that all these nations are found in near proximity to the
Caribs, who are remarkably tall. They all inhabit the same climate,
and subsist on the same aliments. They are varieties in the race,
which no doubt existed previously to the settlement of these tribes
(tall and short, fair and dark brown) in the same country. The four
nations of the Upper Orinoco, which appeared to me to be the fairest,
are the Guaharibos of the Rio Gehette, the Guainares of the Ocamo, the
Guaicas of Cano Chiguire, and the Maquiritares of the sources of the
Padamo, the Jao, and the Ventuari. It being very extraordinary to see
natives with a fair skin beneath a burning sky, and amid nations of a
very dark hue, the Spaniards have attempted to explain this phenomenon
by the following hypotheses. Some assert, that the Dutch of Surinam
and the Rio Essequibo may have intermingled with the Guaharibos and
the Guainares; others insist, from hatred to the Capuchins of the
Carony, and the Observantins of the Orinoco, that the fair Indians are
what are called in Dalmatia muso di frate, children whose legitimacy
is somewhat doubtful. In either case the Indios blancos would be
mestizos, that is to say, children of an Indian woman and a white man.
Now, having seen thousands of mestizos, I can assert that this
supposition is altogether inaccurate. The individuals of the fair
tribes whom we examined, have the features, the stature, and the
smooth, straight, black hair which characterises other Indians. It
would be impossible to take them for a mixed race, like the
descendants of natives and Europeans. Some of these people are very
little, others are of the ordinary stature of the copper-coloured
Indians. They are neither feeble nor sickly, nor are they albinos; and
they differ from the copper-coloured races only by a much less tawny
skin. It would be useless, after these considerations, to insist on
the distance of the mountains of the Upper Orinoco from the shores
inhabited by the Dutch. I will not deny that descendants of fugitive
negroes may have been seen among the Caribs, at the sources of the
Essequibo; but no white man ever went from the eastern coast to the
Rio Gehette and the Ocamo, in the interior of Guiana. It must also be
observed, although we may be struck with the singularity of several
fair tribes being found at one point to the east of Esmeralda, it is
no less certain, that tribes have been found in other parts of
America, distinguished from the neighbouring tribes by the less tawny
colour of their skin. Such are the Arivirianos and Maquiritares of the
Rio Ventuario and the Padamo, the Paudacotos and Paravenas of the
Erevato, the Viras and Araguas of the Caura, the Mologagos of Brazil,
and the Guayanas of the Uruguay.* (* The Cumanagotos, the Maypures,
the Mapojos, and some hordes of the Tamanacs, are also fair, but in a
less degree than the tribes I have just named. We may add to this list
(which the researches of Sommering, Blumenbach, and Pritchard, on the
varieties of the human species, have rendered so interesting) the Ojes
of the Cuchivero, the Boanes (now almost destroyed) of the interior of
Brazil, and in the north of America, far from the north-west coast,
the Mandans and the Akanas (Walkenaer, Geogr. page 645. Gili volume 2
page 34. Vater, Amerikan. Sprachen page 81. Southey volume 1 page
603.) The most tawny, we might almost say the blackest of the American
race, are the Otomacs and the Guamos. These have perhaps given rise to
the confused notions of American negroes, spread through Europe in the
early times of the conquest. (Herrera Dec 1 lib 3 cap 9, volume 1 page
79. Garcia, Origen de los Americanos page 259.) Who are those Negros
de Quereca, placed by Gomara page 277, in that very isthmus of Panama,
whence we received the first absurd tales of an albino American
people? In reading with attention the authors of the beginning of the
16th century, we see that the discovery of America and of a new race
of men, had singularly awakened the interest of travellers respecting
the varieties of our species. Now, if a black race had been mingled
with copper-colored men, as in the South-sea Islands, the
conquistadores would not have failed to speak of it in a precise
manner. Besides, the religious traditions of the Americans relate the
appearance, in the heroic times, of white and bearded men as priests
and legislators; but none of these traditions make mention of a black
race.)
These phenomena are so much the more worthy of attention as they are
observed in that great branch of the American nations generally ranked
in a class totally opposite to that circumpolar branch, namely the
Tschougaz-Esquimaux,* whose children are fair, and who acquire the
Mongol or yellowish tint only from the influence of the air and the
humidity. (* The Chevalier Gieseke has recently confirmed all that
Krantz related of the colour of the skin of the Esquimaux. That race
(even in the latitude of seventy-five and seventy-six degrees, where
the climate is so rigorous) is not in general so diminutive as it was
long believed to be. Ross' Voyage to the North.) In Guiana, the hordes
who live in the midst of the thickest forests are generally less tawny
than those who inhabit the shores of the Orinoco, and are employed in
fishing. But this slight difference, which is alike found in Europe
between the artisans of towns and the cultivators of the fields or the
fishermen on the coasts, in no way explains the problem of the Indios
blancos. They are surrounded by other Indians of the woods (Indios del
monte) who are of a reddish-brown, although now exposed to the same
physical influences. The causes of these phenomena are very ancient,
and we may repeat with Tacitus, "est durans originis vis."
The fair-complexioned tribes, which we had an opportunity of seeing at
the mission of Esmeralda, inhabit part of a mountainous country lying
between the sources of six tributaries of the Orinoco; that is to say,
between the Padamo, the Jao, the Ventuari, the Erevato, the Aruy, and
the Paraguay.* (* They are six tributary streams on the right bank of
the Orinoco; the first three run towards the south, or the Upper
Orinoco; the three others towards the north, or the Lower Orinoco.)
The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries are accustomed to designate
this country more particularly by the name of Parima.* (* The name
Parima, which signifies water, great water, is applied sometimes, and
more especially, to the land washed by the Rio Parima, or Rio Branco
(Rio de Aguas Blancas), a stream running into the Rio Negro; sometimes
to the mountains (Sierra Parima), which divide the Upper and Lower
Orinoco.) Here, as in several other countries of Spanish America, the
savages have reconquered what had been wrested from them by
civilization, or rather by its precursors, the missionaries. The
expedition of the boundaries under Solano, and the extravagant zeal
displayed by a governor of Guiana for the discovery of El Dorado,
partially revived in the latter half of the eighteenth century that
spirit of enterprise which characterised the Spaniards at the period
of the discovery of America. In going along the Rio Padamo, a road was
observed across the forests and savannahs (the length of ten days'
journey), from Esmeralda to the sources of the Ventuari; and in two
days more, from those sources, by the Erevato, the missions on the Rio
Caura were reached. Two intelligent and enterprising men, Don Antonio
Santos and Captain Bareto, had established, with the aid of the
Miquiritares, a chain of military posts on this line from Esmeralda to
the Rio Erevato. These posts consisted of block-houses (casas
fuertes), mounted with swivels, such as I have already mentioned. The
soldiers, left to themselves, exercised all kinds of vexations on the
natives (Indians of peace), who had cultivated pieces of ground around
the casas fuertes; and the consequence was that, in 1776, several
tribes formed a league against the Spaniards. All the military posts
were attacked on the same night, on a line of nearly fifty leagues in
length. The houses were burnt, and many soldiers massacred; a very
small number only owing their preservation to the pity of the Indian
women. This nocturnal expedition is still mentioned with horror. It
was concerted in the most profound secrecy, and executed with that
spirit of unity which the natives of America, skilled in concealing
their hostile passions, well know how to practise in whatever concerns
their common interests. Since 1776 no attempt has been made to
re-establish the road which leads by land from the Upper to the Lower
Orinoco, and no white man has been able to pass from Esmeralda to the
Erevato. It is certain, however, that in the mountainous lands,
between the sources of the Padamo and the Ventuari (near the sites
called by the Indians Aurichapa, Ichuana, and Irique) there are many
spots where the climate is temperate, and where there are pasturages
capable of feeding numerous herds of cattle. The military posts were
very useful in preventing the incursions of the Caribs, who, from time
to time carried off slaves, though in very small numbers, between the
Erevato and the Padamo. They would have resisted the attacks of the
natives, if, instead of leaving them isolated and solely to the
control of the soldiery, they had been formed into communities, and
governed like the villages of neophyte Indians.
We left the mission of Esmeralda on the 23rd of May. Without being
positively ill, we felt ourselves in a state of languor and weakness,
caused by the torment of insects, bad food, and a long voyage, in
narrow and damp boats. We did not go up the Orinoco beyond the mouth
of the Rio Guapo, which we should have done, if we could have
attempted to reach the sources of the river. There remains a distance
of fifteen leagues from the Guapo to the Raudal of the Guaharibos. At
this cataract, which is passed on a bridge of lianas, Indians are
posted armed with bows and arrows to prevent the whites, or those who
come from their territory from advancing westward. How could we hope
to pass a point where the commander of the Rio Negro, Don Francisco
Bovadilla, was stopped when, accompanied by his soldiers, he tried to
penetrate beyond the Gehette?* (* See above.) The carnage then made
among the natives has rendered them more distrustful, and more averse
to the inhabitants of the missions. It must be remembered that the
Orinoco had hitherto offered to geographers two distinct problems,
alike important, the situation of its sources, and the mode of its
communication with the Amazon. The latter problem formed the object of
the journey which I have described; with respect to the discovery of
its sources, that remains to be done by the Spanish and Portuguese
governments.
Our canoe was not ready to receive us till near three o'clock in the
afternoon. It had been filled with innumerable swarms of ants during
the navigation of the Cassiquiare; and the toldo, or roof of
palm-leaves, beneath which we were again doomed to remain stretched
out during twenty-two days, was with difficulty cleared of these
insects. We employed part of the morning in repeating to the
inhabitants of Esmeralda the questions we had already put to them,
respecting the existence of a lake towards the east. We showed copies
of the maps of Surville and La Cruz to old soldiers, who had been
posted in the mission ever since its first establishment. They laughed
at the supposed communication of the Orinoco with the Rio Idapa, and
at the White Sea, which the former river was represented to cross.
What we politely call geographical fictions they termed lies of the
old world (mentiras de por alla). These good people could not
comprehend how men, in making the map of a country which they had
never visited, could pretend to know things in minute detail, of which
persons who lived on the spot were ignorant. The lake Parima, the
Sierra Mey, and the springs which separate at the point where they
issue from the earth, were entirely unknown at Esmeralda. We were
repeatedly assured that no one had ever been to the east of the Raudal
of the Guaharibos; and that beyond that point, according to the
opinion of some of the natives, the Orinoco descends like a small
torrent from a group of mountains, inhabited by the Coroto Indians.
Father Gili, who was living on the banks of the Orinoco when the
expedition of the boundaries arrived, says expressly that Don
Apollinario Diez was sent in 1765 to attempt the discovery of the
source of the Orinoco; that he found the river, east of Esmeralda,
full of shoals; that he returned for want of provision; and that he
learned nothing, absolutely nothing, of the existence of a lake. This
statement perfectly accords with what I heard myself thirty-five years
later at Esmeralda. The probability of a fact is powerfully shaken
when it can be proved to be totally unknown on the very spot where it
ought to be known best; and when those by whom the existence of the
lake is affirmed contradict each other, not in the least essential
circumstances, but in all that are the most important.
When travellers judge only by their own sensations they differ from
each other respecting the abundance of the mosquitos as they do
respecting the progressive increase or diminution of the temperature.
The state of our organs, the motion of the air, its degree of humidity
or dryness, its electric intensity, a thousand circumstances
contribute at once to make us suffer more or less from the heat and
the insects. My fellow travellers were unanimously of opinion that
Esmeralda was more tormented by mosquitos than the banks of the
Cassiquiare, and even more than the two missions of the Great
Cataracts; whilst I, less sensible than they of the high temperature
of the air, thought that the irritation produced by the insects was
somewhat less at Esmeralda than at the entrance of the Upper Orinoco.
On hearing the complaints that are made of these tormenting insects in
hot countries it is difficult to believe that their absence, or rather
their sudden disappearance, could become a subject of inquietude; yet
such is the fact. The inhabitants of Esmeralda related to us, that in
the year 1795, an hour before sunset, when the mosquitos usually form
a very thick cloud, the air was observed to be suddenly free from
them. During the space of twenty minutes, not one insect was
perceived, although the sky was cloudless, and no wind announced rain.
It is necessary to have lived in those countries to comprehend the
degree of surprise which the sudden disappearance of the insects must
have produced. The inhabitants congratulated each other, and inquired
whether this state of happiness, this relief from pain (feicidad y
alivio), could be of any duration. But soon, instead of enjoying the
present, they yielded to chimerical fears, and imagined that the order
of nature was perverted. Some old Indians, the sages of the place,
asserted that the disappearance of the insects must be the precursor
of a great earthquake. Warm discussions arose; the least noise amid
the foliage of the trees was listened to with an attentive ear; and
when the air was again filled with mosquitos they were almost hailed
with pleasure. We could not guess what modification of the atmosphere
had caused this phenomenon, which must not be confounded with the
periodical replacing of one species of insects by another.
After four hours' navigation down the Orinoco we arrived at the point
of the bifurcation. Our resting place was on the same beach of the
Cassiquiare, where a few days previously our great dog had, as we
believe, been carried off by the jaguars. All the endeavours of the
Indians to discover any traces of the animal were fruitless. The cries
of the jaguars were heard during the whole night.* (* This frequency
of large jaguars is somewhat remarkable in a country destitute of
cattle. The tigers of the Upper Orinoco are far less bountifully
supplied with prey than those of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and the
Llanos of Caracas, which are covered with herds of cattle. More than
four thousand jaguars are killed annually in the Spanish colonies,
several of them equalling the mean size of the royal tiger of Asia.
Two thousand skins of jaguars were formerly exported annually from
Buenos Ayres alone.) These animals are very frequent in the tracts
situated between the Cerro Maraguaca, the Unturan, and the banks of
the Pamoni. There also is found that black species of tiger* of which
I saw some fine skins at Esmeralda. (* Gmelin, in his Synonyma, seems
to confound this animal, under the name of Felis discolor, with the
great American lion (Felis concolor) which is very different from the
puma of the Andes of Quito.) This animal is celebrated for its
strength and ferocity; it appears to be still larger than the common
jaguar. The black spots are scarcely visible on the dark-brown ground
of its skin. The Indians assert, that these tigers are very rare, that
they never mingle with the common jaguars, and that they form another
race. I believe that Prince Maximilian of Neuwied, who has enriched
American zoology by so many important observations, acquired the same
information farther to the south, in the hot part of Brazil. Albino
varieties of the jaguar have been seen in Paraguay: for the spots of
these animals, which may be called the beautiful panthers of America,
are sometimes so pale as to be scarcely distinguishable on a very
white ground. In the black jaguars, on the contrary, it is the colour
of the ground which renders the spots indistinct. It requires to
reside long in those countries, and to accompany the Indians of
Esmeralda in the perilous chase of the tiger, to decide with certainty
upon the varieties and the species. In all the mammiferae, and
particularly in the numerous family of the apes, we ought, I believe,
to fix our attention less on the transition from one colour to another
in individuals, than on their habit of separating themselves, and
forming distinct bands.
We left our resting place before sunrise on the 24th of May. In a
rocky cove, which had been the dwelling of some Durimundi Indians, the
aromatic odour of the plants was so powerful, that although sleeping
in the open air, and the irritability of our nervous system being
allayed by the habits of a life of fatigue, we were nevertheless
incommoded by it. We could not ascertain the flowers which diffused
this perfume. The forest was impenetrable; but M. Bonpland believed
that large clumps of pancratium and other liliaceous plants were
concealed in the neighbouring marshes. Descending the Orinoco by
favour of the current, we passed first the mouth of the Rio
Cunucunumo, and then the Guanami and the Puriname. The two banks of
the principal river are entirely desert; lofty mountains rise on the
north, and on the south a vast plain extends far as the eye can reach
beyond the sources of the Atacavi, which lower down takes the name of
the Atabapo. There is something gloomy and desolate in this aspect of
a river, on which not even a fisherman's canoe is seen. Some
independent tribes, the Abirianos and the Maquiritares, dwell in the
mountainous country; but in the neighbouring savannahs,* bounded by
the Cassiquiare, the Atabapo, the Orinoco, and the Rio Negro, there is
now scarcely any trace of a human habitation. (* They form a
quadrilateral plot of a thousand square leagues, the opposite sides of
which have contrary slopes, the Cassiquiare flowing towards the south,
the Atabapo towards the north, the Orinoco towards the north-west, and
the Rio Negro towards the south-east.) I say now; for here, as in
other parts of Guiana, rude figures representing the sun, the moon,
and different animals, traced on the hardest rocks of granite, attest
the anterior existence of a people, very different from those who
became known to us on the banks of the Orinoco. According to the
accounts of the natives, and of the most intelligent missionaries,
these symbolic signs resemble perfectly the characters we saw a
hundred leagues more to the north, near Caycara, opposite the mouth of
the Rio Apure. (See Chapter 2.18 above.)
In advancing from the plains of the Cassiquiare and the Conorichite,
one hundred and forty leagues further eastward, between the sources of
the Rio Blanco and the Rio Essequibo, we also meet with rocks and
symbolical figures. I have lately verified this curious fact, which is
recorded in the journal of the traveller Hortsman, who went up the
Rupunuvini, one of the tributary streams of the Essequibo. Where this
river, full of small cascades, winds between the mountains of
Macarana, he found, before he reached lake Amucu, rocks covered with
figures, or (as he says in Portuguese) with varias letras. We must not
take this word letters in its real signification. We were also shewn,
near the rock Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare, and at the
port of Caycara in the Lower Orinoco, traces which were believed to be
regular characters. They were however only misshapen figures,
representing the heavenly bodies, together with tigers, crocodiles,
boas, and instruments used for making the flour of cassava. It was
impossible to recognize in these painted rocks* (the name by which the
natives denote those masses loaded with figures) any symmetrical
arrangement, or characters with regular spaces. (* In Tamanac
tepumereme. (Tepu, a stone, rock; as in Mexican, tetl, a stone, and
tepetl, a mountain; in Turco-Tatarian, tepe.) The Spanish Americans
also call the rock covered with sculptured figures, piedras pintadas;
those for instance, which are found on the summit of the Paramo of
Guanacas, in New Grenada, and which recall to mind the tepumereme of
the Orinoco, the Cassiquiare, and the Rupunuvini.) The traces
discovered in the mountains of Uruana, by the missionary Fray Ramon
Bueno, approach nearer to alphabetical writing; but are nevertheless
very doubtful.
Whatever may be the meaning of these figures, and with whatever view
they were traced upon granite, they merit the examination of those who
direct their attention to the philosophic history of our species. In
travelling from the coast of Caracas towards the equator, we are at
first led to believe that monuments of this kind are peculiar to the
mountain-chain of Encaramada; they are found at the port of Sedeno,
near Caycara,* (* In the Mountains of the Tyrant, Cerros del Tirano.)
at San Rafael del Capuchino, opposite Cabruta, and in almost every
place where the granitic rock pierces the soil, in the savannah which
extends from the Cerro Curiquima towards the banks of the Caura. The
nations of the Tamanac race, the ancient inhabitants of those
countries, have a local mythology, and traditions connected with these
sculptured rocks. Amalivaca, the father of the Tamanacs, that is, the
creator of the human race (for every nation regards itself as the root
of all other nations), arrived in a bark, at the time of the great
inundation, which is called the age of water,* when the billows of the
ocean broke against the mountains of Encaramada in the interior of the
land. (* The Atonatiuh of the Mexicans, the fourth age, the fourth
regeneration of the world.) All mankind, or, to speak more correctly,
all the Tamanacs, were drowned, with the exception of one man and one
woman, who saved themselves on a mountain near the banks of the
Asiveru, called Cuchivero by the Spaniards. This mountain is the
Ararat of the Aramean or Semitic nations, and the Tlaloc or Colhuacan
of the Mexicans. Amalivaca, sailing in his bark, engraved the figures
of the moon and the sun on the Painted Rock (Tepumereme) of
Encaramada. Some blocks of granite piled upon one another, and forming
a kind of cavern, are still called the house or dwelling of the great
forefather of the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near
this cavern, in the plains of Maita, which they say was an instrument
of music, the drum of Amalivaca. We must here observe, that this
heroic personage had a brother, Vochi, who helped him to give the
surface of the earth its present form. The Tamanacs relate that the
two brothers, in their system of perfectibility, sought, at first, to
arrange the Orinoco in such a manner, that the current of the water
could always be followed either going down or going up the river. They
hoped by this means to spare men trouble in navigating rivers; but,
however great the power of these regenerators of the world, they could
never contrive to give a double slope to the Orinoco, and were
compelled to relinquish this singular plan. Amalivaca had daughters,
who had a decided taste for travelling. The tradition states,
doubtless with a figurative meaning, that he broke their legs, to
render them sedentary, and force them to people the land of the
Tamanacs. After having regulated everything in America, on that side
of the great water, Amalivaca again embarked, and returned to the
other shore, to the same place from whence he came. Since the natives
have seen the missionaries arrive, they imagine that Europe is this
other shore; and one of them inquired with great simplicity of Father
Gili, whether he had there seen the great Amalivaca, the father of the
Tamanacs, who had covered the rocks with symbolic figures.
These notions of a great convulsion of nature; of two human beings
saved on the summit of a mountain, and casting behind them the fruits
of the mauritia palm-tree, to repeople the earth; of that national
divinity, Amalivaca, who arrived by water from a distant land, who
prescribed laws to nature, and forced the nations to renounce their
migrations; these various features of a very ancient system of belief,
are well worthy of attention. What the Tamanacs, and the tribes whose
languages are analogous to the Tamanac tongue, now relate to us, they
have no doubt learned from other people, who inhabited before them the
same regions. The name of Amalivaca is spread over a region of more
than five thousand square leagues; he is found designated as the
father of mankind, or our great grandfather, as far as to the Caribbee
nations, whose idiom approaches the Tamanac only in the same degree as
the German approaches the Greek, the Persian, and the Sanscrit.
Amalivaca is not originally the Great Spirit, the Aged of Heaven, the
invisible being, whose worship springs from that of the powers of
nature, when nations rise insensibly to the consciousness of the unity
of these powers; he is rather a personage of the heroic times, a man,
who, coming from afar, lived in the land of the Tamanacs and the
Caribs, sculptured symbolic figures upon the rocks, and disappeared by
going back to the country he had previously inhabited beyond the
ocean. The anthropomorphism of the divinity has two sources
diametrically opposite; and this opposition seems to arise less from
the various degrees of intellectual culture, than from the different
dispositions of nations, some of which are more inclined to mysticism,
and others more governed by the senses, and by external impressions.
Sometimes man makes the divinities descend upon earth, charging them
with the care of ruling nations, and giving them laws, as in the
fables of the East; sometimes, as among the Greeks and other nations
of the West, they are the first monarchs, priest-kings, who are
stripped of what is human in their nature, to be raised to the rank of
national divinities. Amalivaca was a stranger, like Manco-Capac,
Bochica, and Quetzalcohuatl; those extraordinary men, who, in the
alpine or civilized part of America, on the tablelands of Peru, New
Grenada, and Anahuac, organized civil society, regulated the order of
sacrifices, and founded religious congregations. The Mexican
Quetzalcohuatl, whose descendants Montezuma* (* The second king of
this name, of the race of Acamapitzin, properly called
Montezuma-Ilhuicamina.) thought he recognized in the companions of
Cortez, displays an additional resemblance to Amalivaca, the
mythologic personage of savage America or the plains of the torrid
zone. When advanced in age, the high-priest of Tula left the country
of Anahuac, which he had filled with his miracles, to return to an
unknown region, called Tlalpallan. When the monk Bernard de Sahagun
arrived in Mexico, the same questions were put to him, as those which
were addressed to Father Gili two hundred years later, in the forests
of the Orinoco; he was asked whether he came from the other shore (del
otro lado), from the countries to which Quetzalcohuatl had retired.
The region of sculptured rocks, or of painted stones, extends far
beyond the Lower Orinoco, beyond the country (latitude 7 degrees 5
minutes to 7 degrees 40 minutes, longitude 68 degrees 50 minutes to 69
degrees 45 minutes) to which belongs what may be called the local
fables of the Tamanacs. We again find these same sculptured rocks
between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (latitude 2 degrees 5 minutes
to 3 degrees 20 minutes; longitude 69 to 70 degrees); and between the
sources of the Essequibo and the Rio Branco (latitude 3 degrees 50
minutes; longitude 62 degrees 32 minutes). I do not assert that these
figures prove the knowledge of the use of iron, or that they denote a
very advanced degree of culture; but even on the supposition that,
instead of being symbolical, they are the fruits of the idleness of
hunting nations, we must still admit an anterior race of men, very
different from those who now inhabit the banks of the Orinoco and the
Rupunuri. The more a country is destitute of remembrances of
generations that are extinct, the more important it becomes to follow
the least traces of what appears to be monumental. The eastern plains
of North America display only those extraordinary circumvallations
that remind us of the fortified camps (the pretended cities of vast
extent) of the ancient and modern nomad tribes of Asia. In the
oriental plains of South America, the force of vegetation, the heat of
the climate, and the too lavish gifts of nature, have opposed
obstacles still more powerful to the progress of human civilization.
Between the Orinoco and the Amazon I heard no mention of any wall of
earth, vestige of a dyke, or sepulchral tumulus; the rocks alone show
us (and this through a great extent of country), rude sketches which
the hand of man has traced in times unknown, and which are connected
with religious traditions.
Before I quitted the wildest part of the Upper Orinoco, I thought it
desirable to mention facts which are important only when they are
considered in their connection with each other. All I could relate of
our navigation from Esmeralda to the mouth of the Atabapo would be
merely an enumeration of rivers and uninhabited places. From the 24th
to the 27th of May, we slept but twice on land; our first
resting-place was at the confluence of the Rio Jao, and our second
below the mission of Santa Barbara, in the island of Minisi. The
Orinoco being free from shoals, the Indian pilot pursued his course
all night, abandoning the boat to the current of the river. Setting
apart the time which we spent on the shore in preparing the rice and
plantains that served us for food, we took but thirty-five hours in
going from Esmeralda to Santa Barbara. The chronometer gave me for the
longitude of the latter mission 70 degrees 3 minutes; we had therefore
made near four miles an hour, a velocity which was partly owing to the
current, and partly to the action of the oars. The Indians assert that
the crocodiles do not go up the Orinoco above the mouth of the Rio
Jao, and that the manatees are not even found above the cataract of
Maypures.