Wanderings in South America

Behold that one next to it!—Hark! how the hammerings of the red-headed woodpecker resound through its distempered boughs!  See what a quantity of holes he has made in it, and how its bark is stained with the drops which trickle down from them.  The lightning, too, has blasted one side of it.  Nature looks pale and wan in its leaves, and her resources are nearly dried up in its extremities; its sap is tainted; a mortal sickness, slow as a consumption, and as sure in its consequences, has long since entered its frame, vitiating and destroying the wholesome juices there.

Step a few paces aside, and cast thine eye on that remnant of a mora behind it.  Best part of its branches, once so high and ornamental, now lie on the ground in sad confusion one upon the other, all shattered and fungus-grown, and a prey to millions of insects, which are busily employed in destroying them.  One branch of it still looks healthy!  Will it recover?  No, it cannot; nature has already run her course, and that healthy looking branch is only as a fallacious good symptom in him who is just about to die of a mortification when he feels no more pain, and fancies his distemper has left him; it is as the momentary gleam of a wintry sun’s ray close to the western horizon.—See! while we are speaking, a gust of wind has brought the tree to the ground, and made room for its successor.

Come farther on, and examine that apparently luxuriant tauronira on thy right hand.  It boasts a verdure not its own; they are false ornaments it wears; the bush-rope and bird-vines have clothed it from the root to its topmost branch.  The succession of fruit which it hath borne, like good cheer in the houses of the great, has invited the birds to resort to it, and they have disseminated beautiful, though destructive, plants on its branches, which, like the distempers vice brings into the human frame, rob it of all its health and vigour; they have shortened its days, and probably in another year they will finally kill it, long before nature intended that it should die.

Ere thou leavest this interesting scene, look on the ground around thee, and see what everything here below must come to.

Behold that newly fallen wallaba!  The whirlwind has uprooted it in its prime, and it has brought down to the ground a dozen small ones in its fall.  Its bark has already begun to drop off!  And that heart of mora close by it is fast yielding, in spite of its firm, tough texture.

The tree which thou passedst but a little ago, and which perhaps has lain over yonder brook for years, can now hardly support itself, and in a few months more it will have fallen into the water.

Put thy foot on that large trunk thou seest to the left.  It seems entire amid the surrounding fragments.  Mere outward appearance, delusive phantom of what it once was!  Tread on it, and like the fuss-ball, it will break into dust.

Sad and silent mementoes to the giddy traveller as he wanders on!  Prostrate remnants of vegetable nature, how incontestably ye prove what we must all at last come to, and how plain your mouldering ruins show that the firmest texture avails us nought when Heaven wills that we should cease to be!—

“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a rack behind.”

Cast thine eye around thee, and see the thousands of nature’s productions.  Take a view of them from the opening seed on the surface, sending a downward shoot, to the loftiest and the largest trees, rising up and blooming in wild luxuriance; some side by side, others separate; some curved and knotty, others straight as lances, all in beautiful gradation, fulfilling the mandates they had received from Heaven, and though condemned to die, still never failing to keep up their species till time shall be no more.

Reader, must thou not be induced to dedicate a few months to the good of the public, and examine with thy scientific eye the productions which the vast and well-stored colony of Demerara presents to thee?

What an immense range of forest is there from the rock Saba to the great fall! and what an uninterrupted extent before thee from it to the banks of the Essequibo!  No doubt, there is many a balsam and many a medicinal root yet to be discovered, and many a resin, gum, and oil yet unnoticed.  Thy work would be a pleasing one, and thou mightest make several useful observations in it.

Would it be thought impertinent in thee to hazard a conjecture, that, with the resources the Government of Demerara has, stones might be conveyed from the rock Saba to Stabroek to stem the equinoctial tides, which are for ever sweeping away the expensive wooden piles around the mounds of the fort?  Or would the timber-merchant point at thee in passing by, and call thee a descendant of La Mancha’s knight, because thou maintainest that the stones which form the rapids might be removed with little expense, and thus open the navigation to the woodcutter from Stabroek to the great fall?  Or wouldst thou be deemed enthusiastic or biassed, because thou givest it as thy opinion that the climate in these high lands is exceedingly wholesome, and the lands themselves capable of nourishing and maintaining any number of settlers?  In thy dissertation on the Indians, thou mightest hint, that possibly they could be induced to help the new settlers a little; and that, finding their labours well requited, it would be the means of their keeping up a constant communication with us, which probably might he the means of laying the first stone towards their Christianity.  They are a poor, harmless, inoffensive set of people, and their wanderings and ill-provided way of living seem more to ask for pity from us, than to fill our heads with thoughts that they would be hostile to us.

What a noble field, kind reader, for thy experimental philosophy and speculations, for thy learning, for thy perseverance, for thy kind-heartedness, for everything that is great and good within thee!

The accidental traveller who has journeyed on from Stabroek to the rock Saba, and from thence to the banks of the Essequibo, in pursuit of other things, as he told thee at the beginning, with but an indifferent interpreter to talk to, no friend to converse with, and totally unfit for that which he wishes thee to do, can merely mark the outlines of the path he has trodden, or tell thee the sounds he has heard, or faintly describe what he has seen in the environs of his resting-places; but if this be enough to induce thee to undertake the journey, and give the world a description of it, he will be amply satisfied.

It will be two days and a half from the time of entering the path on the western bank of the Demerara till all be ready, and the canoe fairly afloat on the Essequibo.  The new rigging it, and putting every little thing to rights and in its proper place, cannot well be done in less than a day.

After being night and day in the forest impervious to the sun and moon’s rays, the sudden transition to light has a fine heart-cheering effect.  Welcome as a lost friend, the solar beam makes the frame rejoice, and with it a thousand enlivening thoughts rush at once on the soul, and disperse, as a vapour, every sad and sorrowful idea, which the deep gloom had helped to collect there.  In coming out of the woods, you see the western bank of the Essequibo before you, low and flat.  Here the river is two-thirds as broad as the Demerara at Stabroek.

To the northward there is a hill higher than any in the Demerara; and in the south-south-west quarter a mountain.  It is far away, and appears like a bluish cloud in the horizon.  There is not the least opening on either side.  Hills, valleys, and lowlands, are all linked together by a chain of forest.  Ascend the highest mountain, climb the loftiest tree, as far as the eye can extend, whichever way it directs itself, all is luxuriant and unbroken forest.

In about nine or ten hours from this, you get to an Indian habitation of three huts, on the point of an island.  It is said that a Dutch post once stood here; but there is not the smallest vestige of it remaining, and, except that the trees appear younger than those on the other islands, which shows that the place has been cleared some time or other, there is no mark left by which you can conjecture that ever this was a post.

The many islands which you meet with in the way, enliven and change the scene, by the avenues which they make, which look like the mouths of other rivers, and break that long-extended sameness which is seen in the Demerara.

Proceeding onwards, you get to the falls and rapids.  In the rainy season they are very tedious to pass, and often stop your course.  In the dry season, by stepping from rock to rock, the Indians soon manage to get a canoe over them.  But when the river is swollen, as it was in May, 1812, it is then a difficult task, and often a dangerous one too.  At that time many of the islands were overflowed, the rocks covered, and the lower branches of the trees in the water.  Sometimes the Indians were obliged to take everything out of the canoe, cut a passage through the branches, which hung over into the river, and then drag up the canoe by main force.

At one place, the falls form an oblique line quite across the river, impassable to the ascending canoe, and you are forced to have it dragged four or five hundred yards by land.

It will take you five days, from the Indian habitation on the point of the island, to where these falls and rapids terminate.

There are no huts in the way.  You must bring your own cassava-bread along with you, hunt in the forest for your meat, and make the night’s shelter for yourself.

Here is a noble range of hills, all covered with the finest trees, rising majestically one above the other, on the western bank, and presenting as rich a scene as ever the eye would wish to look on.  Nothing in vegetable nature can be conceived more charming, grand, and luxuriant.

How the heart rejoices in viewing this beautiful landscape! when the sky is serene, the air cool, and the sun just sunk behind the mountain’s top.

The hayawa-tree perfumes the woods around; pairs of scarlet aras are continually crossing the river.  The maam sends forth its plaintive note, the wren chants its evening song.  The caprimulgus wheels in busy flight around the canoe, while “whip-poor-will” sits on the broken stump near the water’s edge, complaining as the shades of night set in.

A little before you pass the last of these rapids two immense rocks appear, nearly on the summit of one of the many hills which form this far-extending range where it begins to fall off gradually to the south.

They look like two ancient stately towers of some Gothic potentate, rearing their heads above the surrounding trees.  What with their situation and their shape together, they strike the beholder with an idea of antiquated grandeur which he will never forget.  He may travel far and near and see nothing like them.  On looking at them through a glass, the summit of the southern one appeared crowned with bushes.  The one to the north was quite bare.  The Indians have it from their ancestors that they are the abode of an evil genius, and they pass in the river below with a reverential awe.

In about seven hours from these stupendous sons of the hill, you leave the Essequibo, and enter the river Apourapoura, which falls into it from the south.  The Apourapoura is nearly one-third the size of the Demerara at Stabroek.  For two days you see nothing but level ground, richly clothed in timber.  You leave the Siparouni to the right hand, and on the third day come to a little hill.  The Indians have cleared about an acre of ground on it, and erected a temporary shed.  If it be not intended for provision-ground alone, perhaps the next white man who travels through these remote wilds will find an Indian settlement here.

Two days after leaving this, you get to a rising ground on the western bank, where stands a single hut; and about half a mile in the forest there are a few more; some of them square, and some round with spiral roofs.

Here the fish called pacou is very plentiful: it is perhaps the fattest and most delicious fish in Guiana.  It does not take the hook, but the Indians decoy it to the surface of the water by means of the seeds of the crabwood-tree, and then shoot it with an arrow.

You are now within the borders of Macoushia, inhabited by a different tribe of people, called Macoushi Indians; uncommonly dexterous in the use of the blowpipe, and famous for their skill in preparing the deadly vegetable poison commonly called wourali.

It is from this country that those beautiful paroquets named kessi-kessi are procured.  Here the crystal mountains are found; and here the three different species of the ara are seen in great abundance.  Here, too, grows the tree from which the gum-elastic is got; it is large, and as tall as any in the forest.  The wood has much the appearance of sycamore.  The gum is contained in the bark: when that is cut through it oozes out very freely: it is quite white, and looks as rich as cream: it hardens almost immediately as it issues from the tree; so that it is very easy to collect a ball, by forming the juice into a globular shape as fast as it comes out; it becomes nearly black by being exposed to the air, and is real Indian rubber without undergoing any other process.

The elegant crested bird called cock of the rock, admirably described by Buffon, is a native of the woody mountains of Macoushia.  In the daytime he retires amongst the darkest rocks, and only comes out to feed a little before sunrise, and at sunset; he is of a gloomy disposition, and, like the houtou, never associates with the other birds of the forest.

The Indians in the just-mentioned settlement seemed to depend more on the wourali-poison for killing their game than upon anything else.  They had only one gun, and it appeared rusty and neglected; but their poisoned weapons were in fine order.  Their blowpipes hung from the roof of the hut, carefully suspended by a silk-grass cord; and on taking a nearer view of them, no dust seemed to have collected there, nor had the spider spun the smallest web on them; which showed that they were in constant use.  The quivers were close by them, with the jaw-bone of the fish pirai tied by a string to their brim, and a small wicker-basket of wild cotton, which hung down to the centre; they were nearly full of poisoned arrows.  It was with difficulty these Indians could be persuaded to part with any of the wourali-poison, though a good price was offered for it; they gave me to understand that it was powder and shot to them, and very difficult to be procured.

On the second day after leaving the settlement, in passing along, the Indians show you a place where once a white man lived.  His retiring so far from those of his own colour and acquaintance seemed to carry something extraordinary along with it, and raised a desire to know what could have induced him to do so.  It seems he had been unsuccessful, and that his creditors had treated him with as little mercy as the strong generally show to the weak.  Seeing his endeavours daily frustrated, and his best intentions of no avail, and fearing that when they had taken all he had they would probably take his liberty too, he thought the world would not be hard-hearted enough to condemn him for retiring from the evils which pressed so heavily on him, and which he had done all that an honest man could do to ward off.  He left his creditors to talk of him as they thought fit, and bidding adieu for ever to the place in which he had once seen better times, he penetrated thus far into those remote and gloomy wilds, and ended his days here.

According to the new map of South America, Lake Parima, or the White Sea, ought to be within three or four days’ walk from this place.  On asking the Indians whether there was such a place or not, and describing that the water was fresh and good to drink, an old Indian, who appeared to be about sixty, said that there was such a place, and that he had been there.  This information would have been satisfactory in some degree, had not the Indians carried the point a little too far.  It is very large, said another Indian, and ships come to it.  Now these unfortunate ships were the very things which were not wanted; had he kept them out, it might have done, but his introducing them was sadly against the lake.  Thus you must either suppose that the old savage and his companion had a confused idea of the thing, and that probably the Lake Parima they talked of was the Amazons, not far from the city of Para, or that it was their intention to deceive you.  You ought to be cautious in giving credit to their stories, otherwise you will be apt to be led astray.

Many a ridiculous thing concerning the interior of Guiana has been propagated and received as true, merely because six or seven Indians, questioned separately, have agreed in their narrative.

Ask those who live high up in the Demerara, and they will, every one of them, tell you that there is a nation of Indians with long tails; that they are very malicious, cruel and ill-natured; and that the Portuguese have been obliged to stop them off in a certain river, to prevent their depredations.  They have also dreadful stories concerning a horrible beast, called the watermamma, which, when it happens to take a spite against a canoe, rises out of the river, and in the most unrelenting manner possible carries both canoe and Indians down to the bottom with it, and there destroys them.  Ludicrous extravagances; pleasing to those fond of the marvellous, and excellent matter for a distempered brain.

The misinformed and timid court of policy in Demerara was made the dupe of a savage, who came down the Essequibo, and gave himself out as king of a mighty tribe.  This naked wild man of the woods seemed to hold the said court in tolerable contempt, and demanded immense supplies, all which he got; and moreover, some time after, an invitation to come down the ensuing year for more, which he took care not to forget.

This noisy chieftain boasted so much of his dynasty and domain, that the Government was induced to send up an expedition into his territories to see if he had spoken the truth, and nothing but the truth.  It appeared, however, that his palace was nothing but a hut, the monarch a needy savage, the heir-apparent nothing to inherit but his father’s club and bow and arrows, and his officers of state wild and uncultivated as the forests through which they strayed.

There was nothing in the hut of this savage, saving the presents he had received from Government, but what was barely sufficient to support existence; nothing that indicated a power to collect a hostile force; nothing that showed the least progress towards civilisation.  All was rude and barbarous in the extreme, expressive of the utmost poverty and a scanty population.

You may travel six or seven days without seeing a hut, and when you reach a settlement it seldom contains more than ten.

The further you advance into the interior the more you are convinced that it is thinly inhabited.

The day after passing the place where the white man lived you see a creek on the left hand, and shortly after the path to the open country.  Here you drag the canoe up into the forest, and leave it there.  Your baggage must now be carried by the Indians.  The creek you passed in the river intersects the path to the next settlement: a large mora has fallen across it, and makes an excellent bridge.  After walking an hour and a half you come to the edge of the forest, and a savanna unfolds itself to the view.

The finest park that England boasts falls far short of this delightful scene.  There are about two thousand acres of grass, with here and there a clump of trees, and a few bushes and single trees scattered up and down by the hand of Nature.  The ground is neither hilly nor level, but diversified with moderate rises and falls, so gently running into one another that the eye cannot distinguish where they begin, nor where they end, while the distant black rocks have the appearance of a herd at rest.  Nearly in the middle there is an eminence, which falls off gradually on every side; and on this the Indians have erected their huts.

To the northward of them the forest forms a circle, as though it had been done by art; to the eastward it hangs in festoons; and to the south and west it rushes in abruptly, disclosing a new scene behind it at every step as you advance along.

This beautiful park of nature is quite surrounded by lofty hills, all arrayed in superbest garb of trees; some in the form of pyramids, others like sugar-loaves towering one above the other; some rounded off, and others as though they had lost their apex.  Here two hills rise up in spiral summits, and the wooded line of communication betwixt them sinks so gradually that it forms a crescent; and there the ridges of others resemble the waves of an agitated sea.  Beyond these appear others, and others past them; and others still farther on, till they can scarcely be distinguished from the clouds.

There are no sand-flies, nor bête-rouge, nor mosquitos in this pretty spot.  The fire-flies during the night vie in numbers and brightness with the stars in the firmament above: the air is pure, and the north-east breeze blows a refreshing gale throughout the day.  Here the white-crested maroudi, which is never found in the Demerara, is pretty plentiful; and here grows the tree which produces the moran, sometimes called balsam capivi.

Your route lies south from this place; and at the extremity of the savanna you enter the forest, and journey along a winding path at the foot of a hill.  There is no habitation within this day’s walk.  The traveller, as usual, must sleep in the forest.  The path is not so good the following day.  The hills over which it lies are rocky, steep, and rugged, and the spaces betwixt them swampy, and mostly knee-deep in water.  After eight hours’ walk you find two or three Indian huts, surrounded by the forest; and in little more than half an hour from these you come to ten or twelve others, where you pass the night.  They are prettily situated at the entrance into a savanna.  The eastern and western hills are still covered with wood; but on looking to the south-west quarter you perceive it begins to die away.  In those forests you may find plenty of the trees which yield the sweet-smelling resin called acaiari, and which, when pounded and burnt on charcoal, gives a delightful fragrance.

From hence you proceed, in a south-west direction, through a long swampy savanna.  Some of the hills which border on it have nothing but a thin coarse grass and huge stones on them; others, quite wooded; others with their summits crowned, and their base quite bare; and others, again, with their summits bare, and their base in thickest wood.

Half of this day’s march is in water, nearly up to the knees.  There are four creeks to pass; one of them has a fallen tree across it.  You must make your own bridge across the other three.  Probably, were the truth known, these apparently four creeks are only the meanders of one.

The jabiru, the largest bird in Guiana, feeds in the marshy savanna through which you have just passed.  He is wary and shy, and will not allow you to get within gun-shot of him.

You sleep this night in the forest, and reach an Indian settlement about three o’clock the next evening, after walking one-third of the way through wet and miry ground.

But, bad as the walking is through it, it is easier than where you cross over the bare hills, where you have to tread on sharp stones, most of them lying edgewise.

The ground gone over these two last days seems condemned to perpetual solitude and silence.  There was not one four-footed animal to be seen, nor even the marks of one.  It would have been as silent as midnight, and all as still and unmoved as a monument had not the jabiru in the marsh, and a few vultures soaring over the mountain’s top, shown that it was not quite deserted by animated nature.  There were no insects, except one kind of fly about one-fourth the size of the common house-fly.  It bit cruelly, and was much more tormenting than the mosquito on the sea-coast.

This seems to be the native country of the arrowroot.  Wherever you passed through a patch of wood in a low situation, there you found it growing luxuriantly.

The Indian place you are now at is not the proper place to have come to in order to reach the Portuguese frontiers.  You have advanced too much to the westward.  But there was no alternative.  The ground twixt you and another small settlement (which was the right place to have gone to) was overflowed; and thus, instead of proceeding southward, you were obliged to wind along the foot of the western hills, quite out of your way.