Venezuela

On the right bank of the Orinoco above the confluence of the Meta and below that of the Atabapo, and south-eastward of this on both banks of the main river, lies the great but little known Territorio Amazonas, extending over the ill-defined watershed into the Rio Negro, and, therefore, the Amazon, basin. The area included in the territory amounts to some 281,700 square kilometres or 101,400 square miles, and of this vast region practically nothing is known, save the character of the banks of the larger rivers and of such parts of the hills and forests as may have been traversed by the few explorers who have entered the hinterland of the Guayanas.

On the northern and eastern borders the general character of the region is like that of the greater part of the State of Bolivar, the boundary to the north being more or less arbitrary, in part at least. The Brazilian frontier follows the watershed of the Sierra Parima in its northern part, but near the Rio Negro this line also ceases to be determined by any clearly marked natural features.

The capital of this huge and almost unknown area is San Fernando de Atabapo, little more than a village from the point of view of population, which amounted to only 388 in 1891, but still the largest centre in the region. It is situated at the junction of the Atabapo and Orinoco, the land on which it stands being practically an island on account of the channel connecting the two rivers behind the settlement; the Inirida and Guaviare enter the Atabapo opposite the town, the contrast between the white waters of the Guaviare, the black, clear stream of the Atabapo, and the muddy Orinoco being very noticeable. The capital is the seat of the Governor and a Judge of First Instance and minor officials, who constitute an appreciable fraction of the population.

The upper Orinoco basin includes some of the best known, as well as some of the least explored districts in the whole territory. The old mission station of Esmeralda (longitude 65° 40´ W., latitude 3° 11´ N.) marks the limit of any attempt at civilisation on the upper Orinoco, and beyond this point our knowledge of the country is very scant indeed. Below this point the river and forests and savannahs near its bank are comparatively well known, from the number of travellers and small rubber prospectors, as far as San Fernando, and below this again little exploration has been carried out away from the river, which, nevertheless, is the main line of communication with Pericos, below the Atures Rapids, whence steamers run down the lower Orinoco to Ciudad Bolivar, and so afford communication with the outside world.

The Atures Rapids, the biggest on the Orinoco, form at present an effectual barrier to through communication by steamer, between the upper and lower river, a difficulty formerly obviated by the construction of a now disused cart-road from Pericos to Salvajitos, above the rapids, a distance of 14 kilometres. But though the rapids have thus barred the advance of civilisation, their great beauty and the possibility that one day they may afford the power for an electric railway along the line of the old cart-road beyond compensate for any such disadvantage.

Humboldt thus describes the Maipures and Atures Rapids in his “Ansichten der Natur.” They are, he says, “to be regarded as a countless number of small cascades succeeding each other like steps. The Raudal (as the Spanish term this kind of cataract) is formed by an archipelago of islands and rocks, which so contract the bed of the river that its natural width of more than 8,500 feet is often reduced to a channel scarcely navigable to the extent of 20 feet. At the present day the eastern side is far less accessible and far more dangerous than the western.

“... It was with surprise I found, by barometrical measurements, that the entire fall of the Raudal (of Maipures) scarcely amounted to more than 30 or 32 feet.... I say with surprise, for I hence discovered that the tremendous roar and wild dashing of the stream arose from the contraction of its bed by numerous rocks and islands, and the counter-currents produced by the form and position of the masses of rock.

“... The beholder enjoys a most striking and wonderful prospect. A foaming surface, several miles in length, intersected with iron-black masses of rock projecting like battlemented ruins from the waters, is seen at one view. Every islet and every rock is adorned with luxuriant forest trees. A perpetual mist hovers over the watery mirror, and the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the crowd of vapoury spray. When the rays of the glowing evening sun are refracted in the humid atmosphere, an exquisite optical illusion is produced. Coloured bows appear, vanish, and reappear, while the ethereal picture dances, like an ignis fatuus, with every motion of the sportive breeze.

“... A canal might be opened between the Cameji and the Toparo ... which would become a navigable arm of the Orinoco, and supersede the old and dangerous bed of the river.

“The Raudal of Atures is exactly similar to that of Maipures, like which, it consists of a cluster of islands between which the river forces itself a passage extending from 18,000 to 24,000 feet.

“... rocks, like dykes, connected one island with another. At one time the water shoots over these dykes, at another it falls into their cavities with a deafening hollow sound. In some places considerable portions of the bed of the river are perfectly dry, in consequence of the stream having opened for itself a subterranean passage. In this solitude the golden-coloured rock manakin builds its nest.”

The contract recently entered into with General R. D. Chalbaud, the President of the Compañía Anónima de Navegacion Fluvial y Costanera de Venezuela, stipulates for a railway worked by steam or electricity to provide a land connection between a service of upper Orinoco steamers above the Maipures Rapids and the lower Orinoco steamers already plying below those of Atures; the time may not be far distant, therefore, when these beautiful falls will also add to the sum of the world’s happiness by assisting in opening up a vast extent of territory rich in agricultural and mineral products, which hitherto they themselves have been largely instrumental in closing.

From the right bank of the Orinoco in the region of the rapids along the Sipapo and Cataniapo tributaries to the hills forming the watershed between that river and the Ventuari, and beyond these, is the unknown territory of the Piaroa Indians, whose sacred mountain of Sipapo is visible from the Orinoco banks. The name Piaroa appears to be a general term including those branches of families of the Maipures, Atures, &c., which were formerly considered to be separate tribes. Tavera-Acosta describes them as a timid people, devoted to agriculture, and they are said to be very light in colour. They frequently come down to the town of Atures to exchange their curare, cotton, cassava, plantains, and game for general merchandise and tools; and their curare is held in high esteem for its purity and high quality by the other tribes.

Of an unexplored country such as that of the Piaroas little or nothing can be said definitely with regard to the products, but the observations of travellers as to the country along the river banks and the circumstantial accounts of the remainder derived from some of the inhabitants point to this region as one rich in all manner of resources.

Near the Orinoco and at intervals throughout the region there are grass plains, or savannahs, which may some day, like those elsewhere in Guayana, support many thousand head of cattle. In the forests which surround these savannahs there are quantities of untouched rubber-trees (Hevea guianensis and H. Brasilensis). Though near the rivers, the wild rubber has been exploited to some small extent, not always wisely, the output of the district is very far below what it might be, apart from the possibility of plantation rubber, the lack of development being due, as throughout the Orinoco region, to lack of population. Practically all the available hands work at the collection of rubber, but a few trees of Bertholettia excelsa, the Brazil-nut, have been planted near San Fernando, and the enormous quantities of wild nuts which at present lie on the ground and rot will doubtless one day be systematically collected and exported; to mention only one other of the many forest products, there are, along the Orinoco below San Fernando, many natural cacao patches (Theobroma cacao), as yet untouched and undeveloped. It is hardly necessary to speak of the valuable timber-trees of which the forests are largely composed, and the quantity of natural vegetable products of the region is as yet only to be surmised from the casual specimens brought in by natives or travellers.

Nor is there lack of mineral resources; the lajas which so often occur both in the savannahs and as bare patches in the midst of the forest frequently show indications of metallic ores, and below Pericos, on the Orinoca, copper is said to be visible in the river banks. The Indians frequently show specimens of ores, iron, manganese, copper, and even gold, the localities of which they are not unnaturally unwilling to reveal until there is some prospect of development of the “mine.”

Finally, the big falls on the Cataniapo and Sipapo and other tributaries of the Orinoco, with the rapids of the main river, promise a supply of power in the Piaroa territory sufficient for all probable demands for many years to come.

The 75 kilometres of open water between the Atures and Maipures Rapids is navigable for steamers during the greater part of the year, but the upper of the two great “raudales” proves a bar again to through communication with the upper Orinoco and its tributaries. Above Maipures, however, there is no serious hindrance to navigation, even through to the Amazon basin by way of the Casiquiare bifurcation.

Some twenty miles above Maipures the Orinoco receives the large volume of water drained by the River Vichada from the llanos of the San Martin territory of Colombia, and a little over one hundred miles from Maipures the Guaviare and Atabapo discharge their waters side by side into the main stream.

From the mouth of the Guaviare up to Esmeralda is probably the best known portion of the upper valley, since it is here that the majority of small rubber prospectors have obtained small fortunes after a short period of hard and rough labour in the insect-infested forests. The same causes as those referred to above in the lower parts of the Orinoco have here also prevented more systematic and continuous exploitation; those who have ventured to brave the discomforts and dangers of the forest have almost invariably retired with their gains to taste such pleasures of civilisation as the towns of the Lower Orinoco and neighbouring regions afford; thus the scanty population remains stationary, and previously, from want either of sufficient interest or opportunity, capital has never attempted to introduce colonists or to develop the resources of the region with such labour as can be had.

The picadores de goma have thus only seen the forests along the river for a few kilometres on either bank, and the remoter parts of the region are as little known as any other part of the territory of the Amazons. The rubber collectors enter the forest in the month of October, the season lasting from then to February or March, and parcel out the forest among themselves, each man taking an area including some five hundred trees or more. He then proceeds to cut an estrada through the forest along a tortuous course, so arranged that about half the rubber-trees lie on either side. He will begin to traverse this path at sunrise and tap the trees of either group on alternate days, the latex being carried back to the river late in the day and put to smoke in huts by the river. Each day he may collect eight or ten gallons of sap, and so twelve or fifteen hundredweight in the season, in addition to inferior gums derived from the creepers which hang everywhere from the large forest trees.

The rubber and other valuable trees, including the wild cacao and brazil-nuts, seem to become less scattered above Maipures, and this is doubtless an additional reason for the greater extent of exploitation in this more remote district, while it should also be remembered that the Casiquiare affords a highway for the bold and industrious Banibas and other Indians of the Rio Negro basin to the rubber-producing forests, which afford better returns than those in their immediate neighbourhood.

About forty miles above the mouth of the Guaviare, where the Orinoco again changes the direction of its course from parallel to meridian, the Delta and mouth of the great Ventuari tributary is encountered and beyond this the course is in a south-easterly direction and so continues as far as the source. The famous Casiquiare bifurcation is about 150 miles above the mouth of the Ventuari; and Esmeralda, the highest point of attempted permanent civilisation on the Orinoco, is some twenty miles beyond.

Esmeralda was, even in Humboldt’s time, a flourishing mission, but has been now for many years little more than a name, the houses being reduced to two or three huts. The name is derived from the quantity of fragments of chloritic and colourless quartz which lie scattered about the grass plains on which the mission was established. All travellers bear witness to the beauty of the position, with the peak of Duida visible beyond the forest to the north-east; but they also agree in considering Esmeralda the worst place for the tiny sandflies (mosquitoes of the Spaniards), which are the great plague of the Upper Orinoco.

Duida appears to be one of the peaks of the vertical-sided tableland type usual in Guayana, belonging to a range of mountains extending into the Piaroa territory, though broken at many points by river valleys, including that of the Ventuari. Though similarity of form cannot always be regarded as indicating identity of composition, the fact that such observations as have been made point to the floor of the whole elevated plateau of Guayana, here as elsewhere, being made of the same granite as that of the Roraima Hills and the Callao goldfields. It seems justifiable to suppose that all these peculiar mountains are of the same probably pre-Cambrian sediments, and it may be that Mount Duida and the range of which it is part will be found to be pierced by the dykes and sills which elsewhere in the Guayanas are often found to be accompanied by gold and other ores.

Beyond Esmeralda several travellers, from the time of Don Francisco de Bobadilla downwards, have reached the Raudal de los Guaharibos, but all have been compelled to turn back from those rapids, on account of the ferocity of the Indians of that name. Only one traveller claimed to have been more fortunate than the rest and to have reached the source of the great river. The Guaharibo Rapids are situated some 120 miles up-stream from Esmeralda.

The Ventuari is the largest Venezuelan tributary of the Upper Orinoco, yet the three hundred miles or so of its course are practically unknown to Europeans. As far as its valley has been explored, alternating forests and savannahs have been found. Across these in colonial times there was once a track uniting Esmeralda directly with the Lower Orinoco by way of the Caura; the route lay up the Padamo and then across the head-waters of the Ventuari to the source of the Erewato, a tributary of the Caura. Along this road there was a chain of forts, but the cruelties of the soldiers at last led the Indians to unite for their examination, and Humboldt tells us that every man in the fifty-league-long chain of forts was slain one night in 1776. The Indians told him that by this road it was ten days from Esmeralda to the headquarters of the Ventuari, and two days thence to the mouth of the Erewato.

Some of the upland savannahs which this road crossed must be excellently situated both for occupation by Europeans and for stock-raising, but the region is naturally very difficult of access at present, lying as it does in the very back of the hinterland of the Guayana. These districts are occupied by the Maquiritare, near relatives of, if not identical with, the Waiomgomo of the Caura. Their territory produces rubber and timber as well as gold. Auriferous quartz is said to have been seen by casual traders up the Ventuari, and the inhabitants collect the precious metal, storing it in jars, with which, by devious waterways and many portages, they travel across to British Guiana to trade for rifles of a quality unobtainable in southern Venezuela.

Separated by a narrow ridge from the Ventuari is the upper valley of the Merevari (Caura), a practically unknown region, scantily peopled by the Waiomgomo, and apparently possessing no particular attractions from a commercial point of view.

On the south side of the main river we have one of the most notable instances of a natural phenomenon peculiar to the elevated inland plain of South America in the celebrated bifurcation of the Casiquiare, some twenty miles below Esmeralda. The watershed between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro is here very ill defined, and near the bifurcation a line of slight elevation on the southern bank of the former river is all that exists to separate the two great drainage systems. At the head of the Casiquiare the elevation is sufficiently reduced to allow some part of the water of the Orinoco to overflow into the southern drainage area, and so affords a through waterway to the whole of the Amazon Valley.

On the eastern side of the Brazo, as it is called, there are numerous tributaries, whose upper courses are absolutely unknown, save from the casual reports of wandering Indians. The main stream and its affluents alike flow through great forests, and the immediate neighbourhood of the Casiquiare being level, the valley is damp and abounds in small lakes and swamps.

There is abundant rubber in the forests, but the life of the inhabitants of the small settlements, which are mainly supported by this industry, is a miserable one. They live chiefly on cassava, accompanied by much alcohol in one form or another, from champagne to raw sugar spirit; if other beverages fail, they have even fallen back on eau-de-Cologne, brought from Pará or Ciudad Bolivar and, one would have imagined, too expensive a luxury to be imbibed in quantity.

The Casiquiare discharges its waters into the Guainia, or more correctly, the two streams join to form the Rio Negro, the river being known by that name below the junction. The highest village of importance on the Guainia is Maroa, the seat of government of the Rio Negro district. The Guainia being a clear, deep (i.e., black) stream, with a cloudless sky overhead and no mosquitoes, Maroa enjoys a good climate. Its inhabitants cultivate an excellent quality of manioc and manufacture hammocks.

The forests of the Guainia and Rio Negro are comparatively little known, though some rubber is collected along the banks. The old settlement of San Carlos, on the Rio Negro, is now abandoned, and beyond this there are no Venezuelan villages before the hill known as the Cerro del Cucuhy, which marks the Brazilian frontier, and beyond lies the military station of Cucuhy, occupied by soldiers of the latter republic.

Although, as we have seen, it is possible to travel by water from the Orinoco to the Amazon, the more direct route up the Atabapo and across the “Isthmus” of Pimichin to the Guainia is generally used by the Indians and traders.

Above San Fernando there are no towns on the banks of the Atabapo, though many native villages. To the south-east of the capital is the wide savannah of Santa Barbara, capable of supporting a vast number of cattle. Farther south the banks are forest-covered, and when the head of navigation is reached at Yavita the route across to Pimichin lies between giant trees, which have attracted the attention of many travellers. The watershed here between the two rivers has no great elevation, and it would be possible to excavate a canal and so provide a far shorter waterway between the two great river systems. Whether such a project will ever seem to be justified is another matter.

The great hindrance to progress over the whole of the Amazons territory is at present lack of population, for with less than two persons to the square mile it is impossible to do much towards developing the country. Apart from their natural lack of enthusiasm, the Indians have for over a century been neglected as far as education is concerned, and whether judicious action in this direction on the part of the Government would be possible or profitable one cannot say. The general tendency of the authorities is rather towards colonisation by Europeans, with due regard to the protection of the Indians. However its development may eventually come about, there is no doubt of the great possibilities of the territory, pastoral, agricultural, and mineral resources being alike abundant and untried.