Wanderings in South America

A courageous sea-captain at last sailed away in safety, though chased by the Spanish brigs of war, and after thirty days at sea Waterton landed in England.

Another uncle had estates in Demerara, and in the autumn Waterton sailed thither from Portsmouth.  He landed at Georgetown, Demerara, in November, 1804, and was soon delighted by the natural history of the tropical forest.  In 1806 his father died, and he returned to England.  He made four more journeys to Guiana, and, in 1825, published an account of them, entitled “Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, in the years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824; with original instructions for the perfect preservation of birds, &c., for cabinets of natural history.”  The two first journeys are now reprinted from the original text.  The book at once attracted general attention, became popular, and has taken a place among permanent English literature.  Unlike most travellers, Waterton tells nothing of his personal difficulties and discomforts, and encumbers his pages with neither statistics nor information of the guidebook kind.  His observation of birds and beasts, written down in the forests, and the description of the forests themselves, fill all his pages.  The great ant-eater and the sloth were for the first time accurately described by him.  He showed that the sloth, instead of being a deformed, unhappy creature, was admirably adapted to its habitat.  He explained the use of the great claws of the ant-eater, and the curious gait which they necessitated.  The habits of the toucan, of the houtou, of the campanero, and of many other birds, were first correctly described by him.  He determined to catch a cayman or alligator, and at last hooked one with a curious wooden hook of four barbs made for him by an Indian.

The adventure which followed is perhaps one of the most famous exploits of an English naturalist.

“We found a cayman, ten feet and a half long, fast to the end of the rope.  Nothing now remained to do, but to get him out of the water without injuring his scales, ‘hoc opus, hic labor.’  We mustered strong: there were three Indians from the creek, there was my own Indian, Yan; Daddy Quashi,1 the negro from Mrs. Peterson’s; James, Mr. R. Edmonstone’s man, whom I was instructing to preserve birds; and, lastly, myself.

“I informed the Indians that it was my intention to draw him quietly out of the water, and then secure him.  They looked and stared at each other, and said I might do it myself, but they would have no hand in it; the cayman would worry some of us.  On saying this, ‘consedere duces,’ they squatted on their hams with the most perfect indifference.

“The Indians of those wilds have never been subject to the least restraint; and I knew enough of them to be aware, that if I tried to force them against their will, they would take off, and leave me and my presents unheeded, and never return.

“Daddy Quashi was for applying to our guns, as usual, considering them our best and safest friends.  I immediately offered to knock him down for his cowardice, and he shrank back, begging that I would be cautious, and not get myself worried; and apologising for his own want of resolution.  My Indian was now in conversation with the others, and they asked me if I would allow them to shoot a dozen arrows into him, and thus disable him.  This would have ruined all.  I had come above three hundred miles on purpose to get a cayman uninjured, and not to carry back a mutilated specimen.  I rejected their proposition with firmness, and darted a disdainful eye upon the Indians.

“Daddy Quashi was again beginning to remonstrate, and I chased him on the sand-bank for a quarter of a mile.  He told me afterwards, he thought he should have dropped down dead with fright, for he was firmly persuaded, if I had caught him, I should have bundled him into the cayman’s jaws.  Here then we stood, in silence, like a calm before a thunder-storm.  ‘Hoc res summa loco.  Scinditur in contraria valgus.’  They wanted to kill him, and I wanted to take him alive.

“I now walked up and down the sand, revolving a dozen projects in my head.  The canoe was at a considerable distance, and I ordered the people to bring it round to the place where we were.  The mast was eight feet long, and not much thicker than my wrist.  I took it out of the canoe, and wrapped the sail round the end of it.  Now it appeared clear to me, that if I went down upon one knee, and held the mast in the same position as the soldier holds his bayonet when rushing to the charge, I could force it down the cayman’s throat, should he come open-mouthed at me.  When this was told to the Indians, they brightened up, and said they would help me to pull him out of the river.

“‘Brave squad!’ said I to myself, ‘“Audax omnia perpeti,” now that you have got me betwixt yourselves and danger.’  I then mustered all hands for the last time before the battle.  We were, four South American savages, two negroes from Africa, a creole from Trinidad, and myself, a white man from Yorkshire.  In fact, a little Tower of Babel group, in dress, no dress, address, and language.

“Daddy Quashi hung in the rear; I showed him a large Spanish knife, which I always carried in the waistband of my trousers: it spoke volumes to him, and he shrugged up his shoulders in absolute despair.  The sun was just peeping over the high forests on the eastern hills, as if coming to look on, and bid us act with becoming fortitude.  I placed all the people at the end of the rope, and ordered them to pull till the cayman appeared on the surface of the water and then, should he plunge, to slacken the rope and let him go again into the deep.

“I now took the mast of the canoe in my hand (the sail being tied round the end of the mast) and sank down upon one knee, about four yards from the water’s edge, determining to thrust it down his throat, in case he gave me an opportunity.  I certainly felt somewhat uncomfortable in this situation, and I thought of Cerberus on the other side of the Styx ferry.  The people pulled the cayman to the surface; he plunged furiously as soon as he arrived in these upper regions, and immediately went below again on their slackening the rope.  I saw enough not to fall in love at first sight.  I now told them we would run all risks, and have him on land immediately.  They pulled again, and out he came—‘monstrum horrendum, informe.’  This was an interesting moment.  I kept my position firmly, with my eye fixed steadfast on him.

“By the time the cayman was within two yards of me, I saw he was in a state of fear and perturbation: I instantly dropped the mast, sprang up, and jumped on his back, turning half round as I vaulted, so that I gained my seat with my face in a right position.  I immediately seized his fore-legs, and by main force twisted them on his back; thus they served me for a bridle.

“He now seemed to have recovered from his surprise, and probably fancying himself in hostile company, be began to plunge furiously, and lashed the sand with his long and powerful tail.  I was out of reach of the strokes of it, by being near his head.  He continued to plunge and strike, and made my seat very uncomfortable.  It must have been a fine sight for an unoccupied spectator.

“The people roared out in triumph, and were so vociferous, that it was some time before they heard me tell them to pull me and my beast of burthen farther in.  I was apprehensive the rope might break, and then there would have been every chance of going down to the regions under water with the cayman.  That would have been more perilous than Arion’s marine morning ride:—

‘Delphini insidens vada cærula sulcat Arion.’

“The people now dragged us about forty yards on the sand; it was the first and last time I was ever on a cayman’s back.  Should it be asked, how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer—I hunted some years with Lord Darlington’s fox-hounds.

“After repeated attempts to regain his liberty, the cayman gave in, and became tranquil through exhaustion.  I now managed to do up his jaws, and firmly secured his fore-feet in the position I had held them.  We had now another severe struggle for superiority, but he was soon overcome, and again remained quiet.  While some of the people were pressing upon his head and shoulders, I threw myself on his tail, and by keeping it down to the sand, prevented him from kicking up another dust.  He was finally conveyed to the canoe, and then to the place where we had suspended our hammocks.  There I cut his throat; and after breakfast was over, commenced the dissection.”

After his fourth journey Waterton occasionally travelled on the Continent, but for the most part resided at Walton Hall.  In the park he made the observations afterwards published as “Essays on Natural History,” in three series, and since reprinted, with his Life and Letters, by Messrs. Warne and Co.

Walton Hall is situated on an island surrounded by its ancient moat, a lake of about five-and-twenty acres in extent.  From the shores of the lake the land rises; parts of the slope, and nearly all the highest part, being covered with wood.

In one wood there was a large heronry, in another a rookery.  Several hollow trees were haunted by owls, in the summer goat-suckers were always to be seen in the evening flying about two oaks on the hill.  At one end of the lake in summer the kingfisher might be watched fishing, and throughout the year herons waded round its shores picking up fresh-water mussels, or stood motionless for hours, watching for fish.  In winter, when the lake was frozen, three or four hundred wild duck, with teal and pochards, rested on it all day, and flew away at night to feed; while widgeons fed by day on its shores.  Coots and water-hens used to come close to the windows and pick up food put out for them.  The Squire built a wall nine feet high all round his park, and he used laughingly to say that he paid for it with the cost of the wine which he did not drink after dinner.

A more delightful home for a naturalist could not have been.  No shot was ever fired within the park wall, and every year more birds came.  Waterton used often to quote the lines:—

“No bird that haunts my valley free   To slaughter I condemn;Taught by the Power that pities me,   I learn to pity them;”

and each new-comer added to his happiness.  In his latter days the household usually consisted of the Squire, as he was always called, and of his two sisters-in-law, for he had lost his wife soon after his marriage in 1829.  He breakfasted at eight, dined in the middle of the day, and drank tea in the evening.  He went to bed early, and slept upon the bare floor, with a block of wood for his pillow.  He rose for the day at half-past three, and spent the hour from four to five at prayer in his chapel.  He then read every morning a chapter in a Spanish Life of St. Francis Xavier, followed by a chapter of “Don Quixote” in the original, after which he used to stuff birds or write letters till breakfast.  Most of the day he spent in the open air, and when the weather was cold would light a fire of sticks and warm himself by it.  So active did he continue to the end of his days, that on his eightieth birthday he climbed an oak in my company.  He was very kind to the poor, and threw open a beautiful part of his park to excursionists all through the summer.  He had a very tender heart for beasts and birds, as well as for men.  If a cat looked hungry he would see that she had a meal, and sometimes when he had forgotten to put a crust of bread in his pocket before starting on his afternoon walk, he would say to his companion, “How shall we ever get past that goose?” for there was a goose which used to wait for him in the evening at the end of the bridge over the moat, and he could not bear to disappoint it.  If he could not find a bit of food for it, he would wait at a distance till the bird went away, rather than give it nothing when it raised its bill.

Towards the end of his life I enjoyed his friendship, and can never forget his kindly welcome, his pithy conversation, the happy humour with which he expressed the conclusions of his long experience of men, birds and beasts, and the goodness which shone from his face.  I was staying at Walton when he died, and have thus described his last hours in the biography which is prefixed to the latest edition of his Essays.2  I was reading for an examination, and used, on the Squire’s invitation, to go and chat with him just after midnight, for at that hour be always awoke, and paid a short visit to his chapel.  A little before midnight on May 24th I visited him in his room.  He was sitting asleep by his fire wrapped up in a large Italian cloak.

His head rested upon his wooden pillow, which was placed on a table, and his thick silvery hair formed a beautiful contrast with the dark colour of the oak.  He soon woke up, and withdrew to the chapel, and on his return we talked together for three-quarters of an hour about the brown owl, the nightjar, and other birds.  The next morning, May 25, he was unusually cheerful, and said to me, “That was a very pleasant little confab we had last night: I do not suppose there was such another going on in England at the same time.”  After breakfast we went with a carpenter to finish some bridges at the far end of the park.  The work was completed, and we were proceeding homewards when, in crossing a small bridge, a bramble caught the Squire’s foot, and he fell heavily upon a log.  He was greatly shaken, and said he thought he was dying.  He walked, notwithstanding, a little way, and was then compelled to lie down.  He would not permit his sufferings to distract his mind, and he pointed out to the carpenter some trees which were to be felled.  He presently continued his route, and managed to reach the spot where the boat was moored.  Hitherto he had refused all assistance, but he could not step from the bank into the boat, and he said, “I am afraid I must ask you to help me in.”  He walked from the landing-place into the house, changed his clothes, and came and sat in the large room below.  The pain increasing, he rose from his seat after he had seen his doctor, and though he had been bent double with anguish, he persisted in walking up-stairs without help, and would have gone to his own room in the top storey, if, for the sake of saving trouble to others, he had not been induced to stop half-way in Miss Edmonstone’s sitting-room.  Here he lay down upon the sofa, and was attended by his sisters-in-law.  The pain abated, and the next day he seemed better.  In the afternoon he talked to me a good deal, chiefly about natural history.  But he was well aware of his perilous condition, for he remarked to me, “This is a bad business,” and later on he felt his pulse often, and said, “It is a bad case.”  He was more than self-possessed.  A benignant cheerfulness beamed from his mind, and in the fits of pain he frequently looked up with a gentle smile, and made some little joke.  Towards midnight he grew worse.  The priest, the Reverend R. Browne, was summoned, and Waterton got ready to die.  He pulled himself upright without help, sat in the middle of the sofa, and gave his blessing in turn to his grandson, Charlie, to his granddaughter, Mary, to each of his sisters-in-law, to his niece, and to myself, and left a message for his son, who was hastening back from Rome.  He then received the last sacraments, repeated all the responses, Saint Bernard’s hymn in English, and the first two verses of the Dies Iræ.  The end was now at hand, and he died at twenty-seven minutes past two in the morning of May 27, 1865.  The window was open.  The sky was beginning to grow grey, a few rooks had cawed, the swallows were twittering, the landrail was craking from the Ox-close, and a favourite cock, which he used to call his morning gun, leaped out from some hollies, and gave his accustomed crow.  The ear of his master was deaf to the call.  He had obeyed a sublimer summons, and had woke up to the glories of the eternal world.

He was buried on his birthday, the 3rd of June, between two great oaks at the far end of the lake, the oldest trees in the park.  He had put up a rough stone cross to mark the spot where he wished to be buried.  Often on summer days he had sat in the shade of these oaks watching the kingfishers.  “Cock Robin and the magpies,” he said to me as we sat by the trees one day, “will mourn my loss, and you will sometimes remember me when I lie here.”  At the foot of the cross is a Latin inscription which he wrote himself.  It could hardly be simpler: “Pray for the soul of Charles Waterton, whose tired bones are buried near this cross.”  The dates of his birth and death are added.

Walton Hall is no longer the home of the Watertons, the oaks are too old to flourish many years more, and in time the stone cross may be overthrown and the exact burial place of Waterton be forgotten; but his “Wanderings in South America” and his “Natural History Essays” will always be read, and are for him a memorial like that claimed by the poet he read oftenest—

   “quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes,Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.”Norman Moore.

FIRST JOURNEY

   —“nec herba, nec latens in asperisRadix fefellit me locis.”

In the month of April, 1812, I left the town of Stabroek, to travel through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America.

The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali-poison; and to reach the inland frontier fort of Portuguese Guiana.

It would be a tedious journey for him who wishes to travel through these wilds to set out from Stabroek on foot.  The sun would exhaust him in his attempts to wade through the swamps, and the mosquitos at night would deprive him of every hour of sleep.

The road for horses runs parallel to the river, but it extends a very little way, and even ends before the cultivation of the plantation ceases.

The only mode then that remains is to proceed by water; and when you come to the high lands, you may make your way through the forest on foot, or continue your route on the river.

After passing the third island in the river Demerara, there are few plantations to be seen, and those not joining on to one another, but separated by large tracts of wood.

The Loo is the last where the sugar-cane is growing.  The greater part of its negroes have just been ordered to another estate; and ere a few months shall have elapsed all signs of cultivation will be lost in under-wood.

Higher up stand the sugar-works of Amelia’s Waard, solitary and abandoned; and after passing these there is not a ruin to inform the traveller that either coffee or sugar has been cultivated.

From Amelia’s Waard an unbroken range of forest covers each bank of the river, saving here and there where a hut discovers itself, inhabited by free people of colour, with a rood or two of bared ground about it; or where the wood-cutter has erected himself a dwelling, and cleared a few acres for pasturage.  Sometimes you see level ground on each side of you for two or three hours at a stretch; at other times a gently sloping hill presents itself; and often, on turning a point, the eye is pleased with the contrast of an almost perpendicular height jutting into the water.  The trees put you in mind of an eternal spring, with summer and autumn kindly blended into it.

Here you may see a sloping extent of noble trees, whose foliage displays a charming variety of every shade from the lightest to the darkest green and purple.  The tops of some are crowned with bloom of the loveliest hue; while the boughs of others bend with a profusion of seeds and fruits.

Those whose heads have been bared by time, or blasted by the thunder-storm, strike the eye, as a mournful sound does the ear in music; and seem to beckon to the sentimental traveller to stop a moment or two, and see that the forests which surround him, like men and kingdoms, have their periods of misfortune and decay.

The first rocks of any considerable size that are observed on the side of the river are at a place called Saba, from the Indian word, which means a stone.  They appear sloping down to the water’s edge, not shelvy, but smooth, and their exuberances rounded off, and, in some places, deeply furrowed, as though they had been worn with continual floods of water.

There are patches of soil up and down, and the huge stones amongst them produce a pleasing and novel effect.  You see a few coffee-trees of a fine luxuriant growth; and nearly on the top of Saba stands the house of the post-holder.

He is appointed by government to give in his report to the protector of the Indians of what is going on amongst them, and to prevent suspicious people from passing up the river.

When the Indians assemble here the stranger may have an opportunity of seeing the aborigines dancing to the sound of their country music, and painted in their native style.  They will shoot their arrows for him with an unerring aim, and send the poisoned dart from the blow-pipe true to its destination; and here he may often view all the different shades, from the red savage to the white man, and from the white man to the sootiest son of Africa.

Beyond this post there are no more habitations of white men, or free people of colour.

In a country so extensively covered with wood as this is, having every advantage that a tropical sun and the richest mould, in many places, can give to vegetation, it is natural to look for trees of very large dimensions; but it is rare to meet with them above six yards in circumference.  If larger have ever existed, they had fallen a sacrifice either to the axe or to fire.

If, however, they disappoint you in size, they make ample amends in height.  Heedless and bankrupt in all curiosity must he be who can journey on without stopping to take a view of the towering mora.  Its topmost branch, when naked with age or dried by accident, is the favourite resort of the toucan.  Many a time has this singular bird felt the shot faintly strike him from the gun of the fowler beneath, and owed his life to the distance betwixt them.

The trees which form these far-extending wilds are as useful as they are ornamental.  It would take a volume of itself to describe them.

The green-heart, famous for its hardness and durability; the hackea, for its toughness; the ducalabali, surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vieing with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust tree, yielding copal; and the hayawa and olon trees, furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met with in the forest, betwixt the plantations and the rock Saba.

Beyond this rock the country has been little explored; but it is very probable that these, and a vast collection of other kinds, and possibly many new species, are scattered up and down, in all directions, through the swamps, and hills, and savannas of ci-devant Dutch Guiana.

On viewing the stately trees around him the naturalist will observe many of them bearing leaves, and blossoms, and fruit, not their own.

The wild fig-tree, as large as a common English apple-tree, often rears itself from one of the thick branches at the top of the mora; and when its fruit is ripe, to it the birds resort for nourishment.  It was to an undigested seed, passing through the body of the bird which had perched on the mora, that the fig-tree first owed its elevated station there.  The sap of the mora raised it into full bearing; but now, in its turn, it is doomed to contribute a portion of its own sap and juices towards the growth of different species of vines, the seeds of which, also, the birds deposited on its branches.  These soon vegetate, and bear fruit in great quantities; so what with their usurpation of the resources of the fig-tree, and the fig-tree of the mora, the mora, unable to support a charge which nature never intended it should, languishes and dies under its burden; and then the fig-tree, and its usurping progeny of vines, receiving no more succour from their late foster-parent, droop and perish in their turn.

A vine called the bush-rope by the wood-cutters, on account of its use in hauling out the heaviest timber, has a singular appearance in the forests of Demerara.  Sometimes you see it nearly as thick as a man’s body, twisted like a cork-screw round the tallest trees, and rearing its head high above their tops.  At other times three or four of them, like strands in a cable, join tree and tree and branch and branch together.  Others, descending from on high, take root as soon as their extremity touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays supporting the main-mast of a line-of-battle ship; while others, sending out parallel, oblique, horizontal, and perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you in mind of what travellers call a matted forest.  Oftentimes a tree, above a hundred feet high, uprooted by the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall by these amazing cables of nature; and hence it is that you account for the phenomenon of seeing trees not only vegetating, but sending forth vigorous shoots, though far from their perpendicular, and their trunks inclined to every degree from the meridian to the horizon.