CHAPTER XII
The course of the rivers on the llanos is far from being as straight as the proverbial path of righteousness. They meander, wind, and turn about, so that when on a sharp curve one often sails almost directly against the main direction of the waters. The Indians take short cuts overland which enable them to travel much faster than the canoes. Thus the news of our coming preceded us by several days, and long before we reached the mouth of the Vichada all the tribes had heard that the largest expedition known in their history was on the way.
For reasons which he explained to us afterwards, Leal had, without consulting us, informed the first Indians whom we met that ours was a party of missionaries. I do not suppose that he went into any further details. In the mind of the Indians the remembrance of missionaries seems to have lingered from the days when Jesuit missions were established on nearly all the principal rivers of the Orinoco watershed. From the time of the Independence there have been no regular missions following a consistent plan and belonging to a special organization. Now and then desultory attempts have been made without any appreciable results. But the Indians respect the missionary; possibly they also fear him, and, as we could observe later on from our own experience, they expect from him gifts not only of a spiritual, but of a material kind.
The result of all this is that a missionary is more likely to be welcomed and assisted than any other traveller. This was what guided Leal in what he considered a harmless assertion—a pious fraud, in which the fraud is more obvious than the piety.
Be it remarked, however, that neither my companions nor I had the least responsibility for Leal’s action. When travelling along the mule-tracks leading to the plains, public opinion, or what under the existing circumstances took its place, had assigned to our expedition an episcopal character. This assimilation to the Church seemed to have been our fate. Here again we were incorporated in its fold in an official capacity, so to speak, without the least intention or effort on our part. When we learnt what Leal had done, it was too late to withdraw, and we resigned ourselves to our new ecclesiastical honours with proper humility.
It is said that men may be great, some because they are born great, others because they achieve greatness, and others yet again because greatness is thrust upon them. In the present instance the clerical character was thrust upon us. We—at least, I can answer for myself—tried to live up to the new dignity, not only inwardly, but outwardly, assuming, as far as circumstances would permit, the sedate and reverent, contemplative demeanour which so well suits him who devotes his life to the welfare of others, seeking to guide them to heaven by an easy path, no matter at what cost of personal sacrifice or discomfort to himself.
Strange, however, that this self-sacrificing mood adopted in imitation of true priests, who despise the comforts and joys of life, should have been assumed in our own spurious case for the special purpose of increasing those worldly comforts and material joys!
We soon discovered, to our amazement, that our new position was far from being a sinecure.
One day we were waiting for the noon-day heat to pass, having halted on a poyata, the name given to small beaches that seem to stretch like a tongue of sand from under the very roots of the forest into the river; we had fled for shelter to the coolness of the high vaulting trees, from whose trunks the hammocks swung invitingly. The blue heaven appeared like an enamelled background beyond the lace-work of the intertwined leaves and branches. The fires burned brightly and cheerily, their flames pale and discoloured in the bright glare of the sun; the pots simmered, and soon tempting whiffs were wafted by the lazy breeze that hardly stirred, welcome heralds of good things to come. The stomach reigns supreme just before and after a meal, which, if it be assured to a hungry mortal, constitutes for him the most satisfactory event in the immediate future, calming his anxieties or blunting the edge of care; and after it has been eaten, the process of digestion, which for the moment monopolizes the principal energies of the organism, seems to cast a veil over the unpleasant aspects of life, and to soften the thorns that beset our path.
Some General of the Confederate Army in the United States, who had retired to his lands after the final collapse of the South, used to remark that one of the saddest things for an old man who had been very active in former years was to receive the frequent news of the death of former comrades and companions. ‘Whenever such news reaches me,’ he went on to say, ‘I always order two pigeons for my dinner; they are so soothing!’
In the midst of our pleasant expectations we found ourselves suddenly invaded by a swarm of Indians, male and female of all ages, who came either from the forest or in canoes. They pounced on us so swiftly that we were practically swamped by them in an instant. They at once began to beg for presents, to touch and smell any of the articles belonging to us that they could, and they certainly would have taken everything had it been possible.
The men were all in the primitive attire of the proud Indian whom we had been unable to press into our service a few days before. The women wore tunics made either from coarse cotton stuffs obtained from the traders, or from a sort of bark, pliant and fairly soft, called marimba. Some of the women were accompanied by two or three children.
With the tribe—for it was a whole tribe that had fallen upon us—came a man dressed in trousers—the regulation article such as you may see in any civilized capital—and a woollen shirt of a deep red hue. He was the chief of the tribe, and had donned that garb in our honour.
The captain told Leal that the various mothers who had brought their children were anxious to have them baptized. Leal replied that the matter would be attended to on our return trip, arguing furthermore that the three reverend missionaries should not be disturbed as they lay in their hammocks, for though, had they been ordinary men, they might be thought to be asleep, yet being persons of eminent piety it was more probable that they were entranced in meditation. Leal backed his plea with a gift, a most wonderful argument which carries conviction to wild Indians almost as quickly as to civilized men. The chief did not insist, and for the moment we were left to our pseudo-religious and silent contemplations.
Shortly after, however, an Indian mother, with one child in her arms and two in her wake, proved obdurate and relentless. Her thirst for the baptismal waters—at least, on behalf of her children if not of herself—must be slaked at all costs. All Leal’s efforts proving fruitless, he ended by telling her that I was the chief missionary. Once recognised as a pillar of the Church, I was prepared for any sacrifice of self, so that on the Indian woman approaching me I got ready to perform whatever ceremony she might want to the best of my ability. She was not only prudent and cautious, but distrustful. She pulled my hat off, and ran her fingers swiftly through my hair. On seeing that I had no tonsure—her mimic was as clear as speech—she flung my hat violently on the ground, gesticulated and shouted, attracting the attention of all her companions.
Here was a complication for which we had not bargained. If there were great advantages in our being taken for missionaries, there was also great danger in being exposed as sham missionaries. Something must be done to remedy the evil. Leal at once bethought himself of an expedient; he took the Indian woman towards the hammock where Alex slept in sweet oblivion, unconscious of what was going on around him. She at once dragged off his hat, and on finding a head brilliantly bald almost fell prostrate. Hierarchy, or what in her savage mind stood for it, evidently grew higher with the size of the tonsure, and here the tonsure was immense. Had she known the various dignities into which the Catholic priesthood is divided, she might have taken Alex for the Pope. Be that as it may, she was satisfied. Alex, on being informed, swallowed the pill gracefully, and prepared to do his duty.
The woman brought forward her smallest child. Here again new difficulties ensued. We held a council of consultation as to the modus operandi. Opinions differed widely, and were supported vehemently, as is sure to be the case when all those discussing a given subject happen to be equally ignorant. Finally some sort of plan was adopted, and the child was baptized in accordance with a rite evolved from our own dim recollections, with such modifications as seemed most fit.
There under the blue heaven, with the broad winding river at our feet, close by the dense, darkening forest that lay behind us, its branches overhead forming a panoply of green, studded with the gold and yellow and blue flowers of the numerous creepers, we performed the ceremony of baptism, initiating the young savage into the Church of Christ our Lord with a feeling of deep reverence, intensified by our own sense of ignorance. Let us hope that the solemnity of the act, which flashed before us like an unexpected revelation, compensated for any involuntary informality.
But after the water had been poured on the babe’s head, and the ceremony had, as we thought, come to an end, the mother would not take her child back. She had evidently seen other baptisms, and our christening was not up to her standard. She made us understand that on former occasions ‘book reading’ had taken place: such was Leal’s interpretation of her words.
We had come to look upon this Indian woman as an expert critic. Through unpardonable neglect, which to this day I cannot explain satisfactorily, we had neither a breviary nor a prayer-book with us, so we laid hands on the next best thing, bearing in mind what a stickler for detail this Indian woman had proved to be. A book of poems, an anthology of Spanish poets, gilt-edged and finely bound, stood us in good service. Alex opened it at random, and read a short poem with due and careful elocution for the edification of the new little Christian.
The ceremony had to be performed eight or ten times. After the third child we gave them only one stanza apiece, as our ardour was somewhat chilled.
When all the children had been christened, the chief claimed the ‘usual’ gifts. He soon explained to us that it was customary for the missionaries to make presents to the parents of the children newly baptized. I had begun to admire the zeal of these mothers in quest of a higher religion for their children; this demand showed that their fervour was accompanied by greed, being thus of the same nature as that species of ‘charity with claws’—the Spanish caridad con uñas. Trifles were distributed amongst the mothers, and the tribe disappeared, rejoicing in their possessions, for to these folk the things were no trifles, and, let us hope, exultant in the acquisition of eight or ten buds destined to bloom into Christian flowers.
History doth indeed repeat itself, and humanity imitates humanity heedless of time and space. If I remember rightly, Clovis, justly anxious for the conversion of his legions to Christianity, presented each dripping warrior after baptism with a tunic—a most valuable article in those days, when Manchester looms did not exist and all weaving was done by hand. Those pious paladins, it is said, were like our Indian friends of the Vichada, always ready to be rechristened on the same terms as before—that is to say, in exchange for a new tunic. Yet, for all their sameness, things do somehow change with time. In these two instances we have the Church as a donor, and the new proselyte as a receiver of presents more or less valuable. Once the conversion fully assured, what a change in the parts within a few generations! The Church gives naught; at least, it gives nothing that is of this world. On the contrary, it takes all it can; the people are led to heaven, the poorer the easier, for in the kind and capacious bosom of Mother Church they are to deposit all worldly goods which might hamper their flight to higher regions. A beautiful and wonderful evolution, and we had not far to go to see it in full play and force. The savages of the Colombian plains are still in that primitive pitiful state when they have to be bribed, so to say, into the fold of the Church; many of the civilized people in the towns and cities obey and respect that Church which holds sway supreme over them in life and in death, guiding, controlling, saving them. Happy the nations where the chosen and appointed servants of the Most High, disciplined into some sort of priesthood or other, undertake the pleasing task of saving their reluctant fellow-men at the latter’s expense, but with the sure and certain faith of those who know that they are working for justice and for the happiness of their fellows, though these may choose to deny it. Happy, thrice happy, lands where the invasion of diabolical modern ideas has been baffled, and the good old doctrine of abject submission still rules!
CHAPTER XIII
Whenever we started afresh in the morning, or after any temporary halt, the man at the prow of the canoe would call out, ‘Vaya con Dios,’ and the man on the stern, who steered with a paddle far larger than the others, would reply, ‘y con la Virgen’ (‘God go with us,’ ‘and the Virgin,’ respectively). The fair Queen of Heaven, being thus commemorated, piety was wedded to chivalry.
The days followed each other in seemingly endless succession, like the windings of the river. Familiarity with the ever-varying aspects of Nature begot a sense of monotony and weariness. The forests and the prairies, dawn and sunset, the whole marvellous landscape, passed unheeded. We longed to reach the main artery; the Orinoco was our Mecca, apparently unattainable. Fishing and hunting had lost zest, and become simple drudgery, indispensable to renew our provender, as in the long journey nearly all our stores were exhausted.
Raoul and Leal frequently shot at the alligators, which, singly, in couples, or in shoals, basked in the sun in a sort of gluttonous lethargy, with hanging tongues and half-closed eyes. The huge saurians, when hit, would turn over and make for the water, except on rare occasions when the bullet entered below the shoulder-blade, this being a mortal wound.
We would sit listening to the even stroke of the paddles on the sides of the canoe and the drowsy sing-song of the men.
Frequently, towards sundown, we heard the deep note of tigers in the forest, and always the confused uproar of a thousand animals, frogs, crickets, birds, ushering in the night.
Besides alligators and wild-boar, the only other large animals which we frequently saw were the harmless tapirs.
Snakes are not abundant on the Vichada, yet it was on the shores of that river that we came to quite close quarters with a water-snake of the boa constrictor species. The reptile was found coiled not far from our halting-place. Raoul at once fired his fowling-piece at short range, blinding and wounding it. He then discharged the five bullets of his revolver into the snake, and the men completed the work, beating it with their paddles. When stretched out, it measured some 16 feet in length, and was of corresponding thickness.
These snakes, though not poisonous, are dangerous if hungry. They lurk at the drinking-places, and when a young calf, deer, or any other small animal comes within reach, they coil themselves round it and strangle it. They devour their prey slowly, and then fall into a sleep, which is said to last for several days.
In all probability, the snake we had killed must have been at the end of one of these periods. Much to our astonishment, notwithstanding bullets and blows, the snake began to move in the direction of our hammocks. Had this not been seen in time, it might possibly have coiled itself around some unwary sleeper. More blows were administered, and this time the animal seemed quite dead. However, it managed to roll into the river, and on striking the water appeared to revive.
This was our only meeting face to face with a denizen of these forests and rivers, and I can truly say we longed for no closer acquaintance with them.
For obvious reasons of prudence, we soon made up our minds never to pitch our night camp on beaches easy of access to the Indians settled along the shores, but during the day we would frequently halt at their settlements, and this enabled us to see a good deal of their mode of life and peculiarities.
We found the tribes docile and friendly, rather inclined to be industrious in their way than otherwise.
The Indians of the Vichada basin are the bakers, if I may so call them, of that great region. The bread which they prepare is made from the mañoc, or yuca, root, which grows in plenty along the banks of rivers and streams. There are two kinds of mañoc, one sweet and harmless, the other bitter and poisonous, yet it is from this latter kind that the casabe is prepared. The root, varying in length from 2 to 3 feet, with a thickness of from 1 to 3 inches, is grated on specially-prepared boards of very hard wood. Thus a whitish pulp is obtained, which is then compressed in a most primitive manner. A hollow cylinder, made of matting of coarse and pliant straw, varying in length from 4 to 6, and sometimes 8, feet, and in diameter from 5 inches upwards, is filled with the pulp, sausage-wise. The cylinder is then hung from the branch of a tree, or a beam conveniently upraised on a frame; it is then stretched and twisted from below. The juice of the pulp flows through the mesh of the matting. When all the juice has been extracted, the pulp is emptied into large wooden basins, and is soaked in water, which is run off, the operation being repeated several times. The poisonous element, soluble in water, is thus eliminated, and the pulp is ready. It is then spread on a slab of stone, thin and perfectly even, called budare, which stands over a fire. The casabe is soon baked, generally in round cakes from 12 to 18 inches in diameter, and from half an inch to an inch in thickness. After baking it is stored in special baskets, called mapires, where it can be kept for months, as it stands all weathers and is impervious to moisture. It has the taste and the consistency of sawdust, and hunger must be very keen for any novice to relish the food. Yet it is most nutritious, and after a while replaces biscuit and bread, especially when these are not to be found! Not only the Indians, but even the white men, or those who call themselves civilized in that vast region, use casabe exclusively. Wheat flour is soon spoiled in that hot, damp atmosphere, where there are no facilities for protecting it against moisture and vermin, and though corn might be abundantly produced, there are no mills to grind the meal. Population is so scarce, and the few inhabitants are so far apart, that it would not pay to set up the necessary machinery. Nature seems to overwhelm man, who drifts back easily into primitive conditions of being.
The Indians also prepare mañoc flour. The method is the same as in the case of casabe, only that before baking the pulp is allowed to ferment to a certain degree; after that it is baked and reduced to powder. This powder, mixed with water, makes an acid, refreshing drink. If sugar or molasses be available, they are added.
As I have said before, the Vichada Indians are expert weavers of hammocks, and carvers or makers of canoes. They fell a large tree, and, after months of labour, produce very fine canoes. The canoes, the hammocks, and the casabe and mañoc are sold to traders who realize large profits. A pair of trousers and a hat to the captain of a tribe are deemed a good price for a small canoe. Such articles as a cutlass, or an axe, are most highly prized by the Indians, and are paid for accordingly. It is pitiful to learn how these poor savages are cheated, when not robbed outright, by the pseudo-Christians who come in contact with them.
They also manufacture torches from resinous substances extracted from the forests. Some of these substances are excellent for caulking purposes, and, as they are found in great abundance, should constitute an important article of trade. A torch made from peraman about 3 to 4 feet in length, lighted as night set in, would burn with a brilliant yellow flame, and throw a strong glare over the camp in the small hours when the bonfires had been reduced to embers.
We had been on the Vichada about twenty-five days, when one of us developed symptoms of fever, and as these increased within the next twenty-four hours, we looked about for some convenient spot where we might rest for a few days, lest the attack might become really serious. It was our intention to build up some sort of hut—a comparatively easy matter, as some of our men were old hands at that kind of work. Fortunately for us, however, we met coming from the mouth of the Vichada a Venezuelan mañoc trader, who was sailing to one of the Vichada affluents, where he expected to receive a load of mañoc and casabe. The man’s name was Valiente. He had three canoes and ten men with him. We were delighted to meet him, as it had been impossible for us to gather correct information from the Indians.
He told us that we were still two or three days’ journey from the Orinoco, advised us not to put up at any of the beaches, but to push on to within a few hours of the mouth of the Vichada, where, on the left bank, we would find an abandoned caney that had been built by cattle-ranchers some years previously. He had just been there. It was possible, he added, that we might find some Indians in possession, in which case we should enforce the right of the white man and drive them out. At any rate, the caney was on high ground, the forests around were clear, and we should find it far more comfortable than anywhere else in that neighbourhood.
Following his advice, we hurried on as fast as we could, promising to wait for him at Santa Catalina, that being the name of the place. Valiente thought that he would start back in six or eight days.
In due course we reached Santa Catalina. On the high bluff, about 300 yards from the shore, we saw the welcome outlines of a caney; it showed unmistakable signs of having been built by white men. We could see from the river that it was inhabited. This was not so pleasant, but we had made up our minds that we would take possession of the caney with or without the consent of its occupants. If soft words proved insufficient, we were bound to appeal to the last argument of Kings and of men at bay—force.
I really did not feel inclined to violence; peaceful means and diplomatic parleying seemed to me preferable, but as we had no choice, following the practice sanctioned by experience, of preparing for war if you want to insure peace, we decided to make a great display of force, even as the Great Powers, with their military and naval manœuvres—a show of teeth and claws to overawe the occupants of the caney.
We moored on the bank near by. Notwithstanding my appearance, which, as I have chronicled in these pages, had warranted the belief in others that I belonged to the holiest of human professions, I was told off to ascertain whether we should occupy the premises peacefully or by force. I donned a red shirt, suspended from a broad leather belt a most murderous-looking cutlass and a six-shooter, cocked my hat sideways in a desperado fashion, and, full of ardour, advanced, flanked on either side by Leal and one of our men, each of whom carried a rifle and the inevitable machete. Verily, we looked like a wandering arsenal!
Remembering that the actor’s success is said to be greater the more he lives up to his part, I endeavoured to look as fierce as possible, and tried to call to mind scenes of dauntless courage, assaults of fortresses, heroic deeds from my historical repertory. I must have succeeded, for I felt uncommonly brave, particularly as there seemed to be no danger warranting our preparations.
Unfortunately, I happen to be afflicted with myopia, which at a certain distance blurs the outline of objects large or small.
As we continued to advance I could distinguish that someone was coming towards us. My courage evaporated; I felt sure that this must be some hostile Indian intent on hindering our access to the longed-for caney. I would fain have turned tail, but vanity, which is the source of nine-tenths of the displays of human courage, pricked me on. My ears awaited the wild whoop of the advancing Indian, and my eyes were prepared to witness the onslaught of his ferocious braves from the neighbouring bushes. Yet the die was cast, and forward we went.
Imagine my surprise when, from the approaching figure, still indistinct and vague to my short-sighted eyes, a greeting of the utmost courtesy in the purest Castilian rang forth in the air of the clear afternoon. I shall never forget it. Those words in my native tongue, uttered in the midst of that wilderness, 500 leagues from the nearest town or civilized settlement, conjured up in one moment cherished memories of a distant world.
Greatly relieved, I put aside my weapons of assault and destruction, which, to speak the truth, were most inconvenient to walk in.
I knew before, and am more convinced than ever since that day, that I am not compounded of the clay of heroes: in which I am like the rest of the world. Peace and peaceful avocations are much more in my line. I love heroes—military ones especially—in books, in pictures, or in statues; as every-day companions, I believe—not having met any heroes in the flesh—that they must be unbearable. They really owe it to themselves to get killed or to die the moment they have attained their honours. They are sure to be ruined if left to the vulgarizing influences of daily life, mixing with the rest of humanity in every-day toil and strife. You cannot have your bust or portrait in Parliament or Assembly, your niche in the cathedral or in public hall, and your equestrian statue with your horse eternally lifting his fore-legs for the edification of coming generations, and at the same time insist on walking about the streets in the guise of a commonplace mortal! If you live in bronze and marble, if your name fills half a column of the encyclopædia, and appears as a noble example in the books in which children are taught to consider brutal violence the highest evolution of human intellect and action, you cannot ask your humble companions on earth to put up with you in their midst. Heroes should find their places, and stick to them, for their own greater glory and the comfort of their fellow-men.
The gentleman whom we met was named Aponte, and came from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. He had been appointed to the governorship of the Amazon Territory. After spending several years in its capital, San Carlos, he became afflicted with cataract. People told him that the Vichada Indians cured cataract with the juice of certain herbs, which they kept secret. He had arrived at Santa Catalina about ten days before us, accompanied by his sister and a young Corsican who had been in his employ at San Carlos. An Indian woman from one of the tribes had taken him in charge, and made daily applications of some milky juice extracted from plants, and, strange to say, he found relief. I have since heard that he is completely cured.
An occulist, who travelled through those regions two or three years later, investigated the truth of these alleged cures, and found them to be authentic. He could not, however, induce the Indians to tell him what they use. This knowledge of the virtue of plants amongst the Indians is found in nearly all tropical lands. Quinine, to which humanity owes so much, was also an Indian secret, and was discovered by a well-known combination of circumstances. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, in one of the Peruvian States, the Indians were treated very cruelly by their masters. The daughter of the house won the love of the Indian slaves by her kindness and charity. It had been noticed that no Indians died from malarial and other fevers, which proved fatal to the white men, but what means they employed could not be learned either by threats or entreaties.
The daughter of the cruel master was taken ill. Her nurse, an Indian woman, gave her some concoction which saved her life, but would not reveal the secret for years. On her deathbed she told her young mistress what plant it was that the Indians employed against fever. Thus the cinchona, or Peruvian bark, was discovered. In the Choco regions in Colombia, which teem with snakes, the Indians know not only the plants that cure the bite and counteract the poison, but those which confer immunity. They also have a combination of substances forming a sort of paste, which, when applied to the wounds and ulcers of man or animal, however sore they may be, exercise a healing and immediate action.
I had an uncle, Dr. Triana, well known to European botanists, and especially to collectors of orchids, to several varieties of which his name is linked (the numerous varieties of Catleya trianensis are named after him). He lived for a long time in the Choco region, and brought back large quantities of this paste, which he used with success in cases of wounds and ulcers, both in Europe and America, but he could never persuade the Indians to tell him its exact composition.
The young Corsican whom we found with Mr. Aponte was a sort of globe-trotter, jack-of-all-trades, hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. He was an explorer, a dentist, could serve as barber if required, had acted as clerk to Mr. Aponte, had with him a fairly well-stocked medicine-chest, and proved to be a first-rate cook. He either knew something of medicine or made up for ignorance by his daring. At any rate, he took our sick companion in hand, administered to him some of his drugs, and in two or three days restored him to perfect health. This was a great blessing. Thus disappeared from our horizon the only ominous cloud which darkened it during those days of so much sunlight and freedom. Those who know not what tropical fevers are can form no idea of the dread that their presence inspires when one sees them stealthily gaining ground. At times they act slowly, and give one a chance of struggling against them, but often they develop with lightning rapidity, and a man in full health and in the bloom of life is cut down suddenly in a few days or in a few hours.
Figarella was the name of the Corsican ‘doctor’ who enlivened the few days we spent at Santa Catalina with his songs, his tales of Corsica, the narrative of his adventures, true and fanciful, in all parts of the world, and who managed to prepare sumptuous dinners with turtle eggs, wild-boar meat, fresh fish, and other ingredients, picked up the Lord only knows where. I often had qualms that he must be drawing too freely on his medicine-chest, but the dishes proved palatable, and as we survived from day to day we have nothing but thanks and gratitude to the friend whom we met in the midst of those wilds, with whom our lives came in contact for a few days, who then remained behind to work out his own destiny, as we ours, even as two ships that sight each other for a moment in mid-ocean and then both disappear.
CHAPTER XIV
Friend Valiente turned up at Santa Catalina, his canoes laden with mañoc and casabe, two days after our arrival.
Though the ranch had been abandoned for some time, stray cattle, more or less wild, roamed about the neighbourhood. Leal and Valiente soon lassoed a fine heifer, which, slaughtered without delay, replenished our commissariat. We celebrated a banquet like that held on New Year’s Day at San Pedro del Tua. We still had a little coffee, but of rum, which had then formed such an attraction, only the fragrant memory remained. Its place was supplied with what was left of our last demijohn of aniseed aguardiente.
As Valiente intended following the same route, we decided to wait for him. He knew that part of the Vichada and the Orinoco well. There were several small rapids which it was not advisable to cross without a pilot.
Two days after leaving Santa Catalina we struck the Orinoco, with a feeling of boundless joy. It seemed to us as if we had reached the open ocean, and the air itself appeared purer, more charged with invigorating oxygen.
After a short spin from the mouth of the Vichada, we reached Maipures, where Venezuelan authorities were stationed. Knowing that Venezuelans, as a rule, are inclined to be less reverent and respectful towards the Church and its servants than the average Colombian, we abandoned our ecclesiastical character, dropping it, as Elias dropped his mantle upon earth, on the waters of the Vichada, where it had done us such good service.
It was indispensable that we should find a pilot for the rapids. It seems that in former days the Venezuelan Government kept two or three pilots at Maipures, but we found to our sorrow that they had disappeared long since. However, not far from Maipures we were told that we should find a man named Gatiño, one of the best pilots on the river. We at once started in quest of him, and found him in the thick of the forest about a mile from the shore. He was gathering tonga beans, and had formed a little camp, accompanied by his family, which consisted of his wife, two children, a boy and girl of fourteen and twelve respectively, and two smaller children of five and six. He agreed to take us across the rapids, provided we would wait at Maipures until he could pack his beans and gather some india-rubber extracted by himself. As there was no help for it, we agreed to wait. Maipures turned out to be nothing but a group of some fifteen or twenty tumble-down, rickety houses, inhabited by about a score of people, amongst them the prefect or political representative of the Government. He received us most cordially, and placed one of the buildings at our service. I believe both Valiente and Leal gave him to understand that we were high and mighty personages representing the Colombian Government on a tour of inspection through the lands awarded to Colombia by a recent decision in a case of arbitration between the two republics, handed down by the Queen of Spain. Maipures, where the functionary in question was supreme, came within the new jurisdiction, and possibly the belief that we might exercise some influence in maintaining him in his important office may have had to do with his courtesy and goodwill towards us. It was lucky, however, that such an impression was created. Shortly after our arrival he informed us that the Governor of the Amazon territory had just communicated to him orders to prevent all travellers on the river from ascending or descending the stream—in a word, to keep them as prisoners at Maipures. On reading the Governor’s note to us, he argued, ‘This cannot apply to you, for, being Colombians, you are outside the Governor’s jurisdiction.’ Here, again, as when conferring ecclesiastical dignity upon us, Leal had acted with prudence and foresight.
At Maipures we felt, as we never felt before or after during the journey, the presence of the numerous insects, and noticed that these winged creatures worked with method and discipline. The puyon sounded the charge shortly after sunset, attacking without haste and without rest during the whole night. At dawn it would retire to camp, sated with our gore. The post of honour was taken by the sand-flies, which would remain on duty during the earlier part of the forenoon. In their turn they were replaced by some other arm of the service during the hot hours of the day, and so on till nightfall, when the puyon, refreshed and eager, would again fall upon his prey. There is no greater regularity in the change of guards at a fortress than is observed by these insects in their war upon men and animals.
The mosquito-net was the only real protection. Some relief is obtained by filling the room with smoke from smouldering horse or cattle manure, but the nauseous smell and the ammonia fumes made the remedy worse than the evil. We also feared to share the fate of herrings and other fish subject to the process, and preferred the seclusion of our mosquito-bars.
These, however, were all minor troubles, mentioned here as a matter of record. From our temporary abode we could hear the distant thunder of the rapids, as of batteries of cannon in a great artillery duel. The waters of the Orinoco, suddenly twisted into a narrow bed, wrestle with the boulders of granite scattered in the channel, which they have frayed through the very heart of the huge basaltic mountains.
Life in those regions, from what we gathered, is as wild, as untamed, and irresponsible as the rivers or forests, and as the animals that roam in them. Violence and force are the only law, greed is the sole guiding principle, amongst men. The functionaries in most cases are only authorized robbers and slayers. The Indians, being the most helpless victims, are plundered and murdered, as best suits the fancy of those representatives of organized Governments, whose crimes remain hidden behind the dense veil of interminable forests.
When news of any of these misdeeds does chance to reach the official ear, the facts are so distorted on the one hand, and there is so little desire to investigate on the other, that no redress is ever obtained.
Whilst at Maipures there came in a man from San Carlos, the capital of one of the Amazon territories. He told a gruesome story. The Governor of that province, whom he represented as a prototype of the official robbers just mentioned, had exasperated his companions by his all-absorbing greed. The Governor seized all the tonga beans and india-rubber extracted by the poor Indians, who were forced to work without any pay, unfed, whip-driven. His companions, who expected a share in the plunder, conspired to murder him. He was known to be fearless and an admirable shot. One night, however, his house was surrounded by a score or so of his followers; a regular siege ensued; the young Governor kept his assailants at bay for several hours. He was accompanied by a young Spanish ballet-dancer, who had followed his fortunes undaunted by the dangers of that wild land. She would reload the guns whilst he scanned the ground from the only window of the room. One of the assailants crept upon the roof of the house and shot him from behind. He died in a few hours. The canoes laden with all kinds of produce despatched by him—not down the Orinoco, for he feared they might be seized on the long journey through Venezuelan territory, but through the Casiquiare to the Amazon—were said to be worth £40,000 or £50,000. Even if not accurate in all its details, which I repeat from the statement of the new arrival at Maipures, this instance gives an idea of the conditions that prevail in those localities.
True to his word, Gatiño turned up at Maipures on the third day, and we continued our journey at once.
The rapids of the Orinoco break the open current of the river for a distance of some forty or fifty miles. The Maipures rapids are from five to six miles in length. The river then continues its quiet flow for about twenty or twenty-five miles down to the rapids of Atures; thence it flows to the ocean without any further obstacle of importance.
Gatiño had his own canoe of a special type, much larger than ours, very deep, heavy, capacious, and comfortable. It was the real home of his family.
I asked him why he did not settle somewhere on the banks of those rivers. He told me that both on the Orinoco and on the affluents there were numberless spots on high ground, free from all floods, abundant in game, within easy reach of good fishing, healthy and cool, where he would fain settle. ‘But we poor wretches,’ he added, ‘have no rights. When we least expect it, up turns a fine gentleman sent by some Government or other with a few soldiers; they lift our cattle and steal our chickens, destroy what they do not take away, and compel us to accompany them, paddling their canoes or serving them as they may want without any pay. Whenever I hear,’ he went on to say, ‘that white men in authority are coming along the river, I start immediately in my canoe through the caños as far inland as I can. The wild Indians and the savages are kind and generous; it is the whites and the whites in authority who are to be dreaded.’
Gatiño was himself a full-blooded Indian, but, having been brought up on some settlement, he considered himself a civilized man, and in truth it was strange to see how he practised the highest virtues of an honest man. He loved his wife and family tenderly; he worked day and night for their welfare. He longed for a better lot for his children, the eldest of whom ‘studied’ at the city of San Fernando de Atabapo, the only city which he knew of by personal experience. As it consists of eighty or a hundred thatch-roofed houses, one may well imagine what the word ‘city’ implied in his case; yet his thoughts were constantly centred on the learning which that child was storing to the greater honour and happiness of his wandering family. Reading and writing formed the curriculum of that university, possibly because they marked the limit of the teacher’s attainments; but let us be ashamed of mocking the humble annals of so good a man.
I cannot forbear mentioning an incident, a parallel to which it would be difficult to find amongst nominally civilized folk. One of our men who had accompanied us from San Pedro de Arimena, knowing our plight and our dependence on Gatiño, took him aside, informing him that we had plenty of gold, and that as one of us was ill, and we desired to reach the open river as soon as possible, it would be easy for him to name his price. He suggested that Gatiño should charge one or two thousand dollars for the job, which we would be bound to pay. Gatiño not only did not improve that wonderful opportunity, but he forbore from telling us of the advice given to him. He charged us 100 dollars, a moderate price for the work, and it was only when on the other side of the rapids that Leal learned the incident from the other men.
Here was a test which not many men brought up in the midst of civilized life could have withstood.
Gatiño and his family will ever remain in my mind as a bright, cheerful group. Alas for them, lost in those solitudes amongst wild beasts and wild Indians, and subject to the voracity of the white men, who become more ferocious than the worst tiger when their unbridled greed has no responsibility and no punishment to dread!
We had three canoes (including Gatiño’s) to take down. We were obliged to empty them completely. The men carried everything on their backs along the shore, whilst the canoes shot the rapids.
When I saw Gatiño on the first rapids, I believed him to be bent on suicide. At that point the river, cut and divided by the rocks, left a narrow channel of about 300 feet in length close in to the shore. Thus far the canoes had been dragged by the current and held by means of ropes. On reaching the channel, Gatiño manned the canoe with four men at the prow, and sat at the stern. The canoe, still tied by the rope, which was held by four men, was kept back as much as possible from the current, which increased in speed at every inch. At the end of the channel the whole river poured its foaming volume into a huge, cup-like basin, studded with rocks, where the water seethed as if boiling. From the basin the river flowed on placidly for several miles. This was the end of the first rapids.
Halfway down the channel the men let go the ropes, and the canoe, with its crew, seemed like a huge black feather upon a sea of foam, and the whole length of the channel, white and frothy, appeared like the arched neck of a gigantic horse curved to drink from the waters below. The waters, before entering the basin, formed a small cataract shooting over the protruding ledge. The canoe fell into the basin, and seemed about to be dashed against a rock that stood in its way. On again striking the waters, Gatiño gave the word of command, and the four men began to paddle steadily and with great force, as if to increase the impetus. Gatiño remained quiet and motionless in his place, holding his paddle out of the water ready to strike. At a given moment he uplifted it, thrust it deeply into the waves, and moved it dexterously, so that the canoe turned as if on a pivot, and quietly glided along the rock upon which it would have been dashed into a thousand pieces.
Gatiño explained to me that it was necessary for the men to paddle so as to give the canoe her own share in the impetus, and make it more responsive to his steering.
Though he assured me that there was no danger, and though the journey along the shore was tiresome and slow, I did not venture to accompany him when shooting the other rapids before reaching the open river.
The Orinoco has drilled an open passage-way through a spur of the mountains at Maipures. The struggle between the waters and the rocks must have lasted centuries.
‘Here shalt thou halt,’ said the rock.
‘Further will I go,’ replied the river.
Like the spoils of battle on a stricken field, the shattered rocks stud the current, which sweeps roaring and foaming around and over them. They resemble the ruins in the breach of a battered bastion. The river is the victor, but, as will happen when two great forces counteract each other, the result is a compromise, and the course of the stream is deviated. The difference of level from the beginning to the end of the rapids is in itself not sufficient to cause the violence with which the waters run. It arises from the sudden compression of the powerful volume of waters into a narrow space. The waters rush through the openings made in the rock with a deafening sound, torn by the remnants of pillars in the bed through which they pass. They fill the air with the tumult of their advance; one would say an army was entering a conquered city, quivering with the rapture of triumph, lifting up the thunder of battle, Titanic bugle-calls, and the pæans of victory. After each one of these narrow breaches in the wall of granite the river plunges into deep basins, where the foaming waters soon sink into their former quiet flow. The soldiers have crossed the first entrenchments, and collect their forces before the next assault. Soon the margins on either side begin to hem in, the waters stir more rapidly, and soon again the mad rush, the desperate plunge, the wild, roaring, irresistible onslaught, and again through the very heart of the mountain into the next basin. Finally, after storming the last redoubt, the river, like a lion freed from the toils which imprisoned him, leaps upon the bosom of the plain, bounding forward in solemn flow towards the ocean. The clear tropical sun reflects itself on its ever-moving bosom, even as the clouds and the forests, the mountains and the birds on wing. The wandering mirror keeps on its course, being, as Longfellow has it, like unto the life of a good man ‘darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven.’