Even under the burning sun of the equator, then, these giants stand with mantles of eternal snow and glittering blue fields of ice in the bitterly cold atmosphere. Up there you would think that you were near the pole. There are no trees on the high crests, which seem to rise up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean; but the climate is good, and agriculture yields sustenance to men. On the eastern flanks, which are watered by abundant rains, the vegetation is exceedingly luxuriant, and here the traveller enters the primeval forests of the tropics. Here is the home of the cinchona tree, here orchids bloom among the tall trunks, and here whole woods are entangled in a network of lianas. Immense areas of Brazil and Bolivia are covered with impenetrable primeval forests, which even still present an obstacle to the advance of the explorer.
Thus we find in the Andes all zones from the hot to the cold, from tropical forests to barren heights, from the equator to high southern latitudes.
Among these mountains dwelled in former times a remarkable and law-abiding people, who under judicious and cautious kings attained a high standard of power and development. To the leading tribe several adjacent peoples allied themselves, and in time the mightiest and most highly-cultured kingdom of South America flourished among them. According to tradition, the ruling royal family took its rise where the icefields of some of the loftiest summits of the Andes are reflected in the mirror of Lake Titicaca. The king was called Inca, and when we speak of the Inca Kingdom we mean old Peru, whose people were crushed and annihilated by the Spaniards.
The Inca Empire extended from Colombia and Ecuador in the north far down to the present Chile. The Inca's power was unlimited, and after death he was honoured with divine rites. He was surrounded with wealth and grandeur. A red headband with white and black feathers was the sign of his royal dignity. By his side stood the High Priest, who had to inquire into and proclaim the will of the gods.
In Cuzco, the holy city of the Indians, north-west of the Titicaca lake, the Inca people had erected a splendid temple to the sun and moon. The halls of the sun temple were overlaid with plates of the ruddiest gold, and the friezes and doors were of the same precious metal. In the principal hall was worshipped an image of the sun with a human face in the centre, surrounded by rays of precious stones. In another hall the image of the moon goddess glittered in silver.
The sun and moon were, then, the objects of the deepest reverence. But the Inca people also prayed to the rainbow and to the god of thunder, and believed that certain inferior deities protected their herds, dwellings, fields, and canals. They wore on the neck amulets which shielded them from danger and sudden death, and were eventually buried with them.
The dead were sewed up in hides or matting and interred under the dwelling-house, or, in the case of important men, in special funereal towers. On the coast the body was placed among boulders, in sand-banks, or in large vessels of earthenware. With a dead man were laid his weapons and implements, with women their utensils and handiwork, with children their playthings. To the dead, flowers and fruit were offered, and llamas were sacrificed. Dead Incas were deposited in the temple of the sun, and their wives in the hall of the moon.
The Festival of the Sun was held at the winter solstice, and on this occasion the Inca himself officiated as High Priest in his capacity as the "son of the sun." Then was lighted a fire on the altar of the sun, which was kept in all the year by the virgins of the sun. These had a convent near the temple, the royal palace and the house of nobles. It was also their duty to make costly robes for the priests and princes, to brew maize beer for the festivals of the gods, and after victories or a change of Incas to offer themselves to the gods.
The earlier history of the Inca people is lost in tradition and the mist of legends. We know more of their administration and social condition, for the Spanish conquerors saw all with their own eyes. The constitution was communistic. All the land, fields, and pastures was divided into three parts, of which two belonged to the Inca and the priesthood, and the third to the people. The cultivation of the land was supervised by a commissioner of the government, who had to see that the produce was equitably distributed, and that the ground was properly manured with guano from the islands on the west coast. Clothes and domestic animals were also distributed by the State to the people. All labour was executed in common for the good of the State; roads and bridges were made, mines worked, weapons forged, and all the men capable of bearing arms had to join the ranks when the kingdom was threatened by hostile tribes. The harvest was stored in government warehouses in the various provinces. An extremely accurate account was kept of all goods belonging to the State, such as provisions, clothes, and weapons. A register was kept of births and deaths. No one might change his place of abode without permission, and no one might engage in any other occupation than that of his father. Military order was maintained everywhere, and therefore the Inca people were able to subdue their neighbours. Everything was noted down, and yet this remarkable people had no written characters, but used cords instead, with knots and loops of various colours having different meanings. If the Inca wished to send an order to a distant province, he despatched a running messenger with a bundle of knotted strings. The recipient had only to look at the strings to find out the business on hand.
To facilitate the movement of troops, the Incas constructed two excellent roads which met at Cuzco—one in the mountainous country, the other along the coast. Europeans have justly admired these grand constructions. The military roads were paved with stone, and had walls and avenues of trees. At certain intervals were inns where the swift-footed couriers could pass the night. The principal highway ran from Cuzco to Quito. When the Inca himself was on a journey, he sat on a golden throne carried on a litter by the great nobles of the empire.
European explorers still discover grand relics of the Inca period. The people did not know the arch, and did not use bricks and mortar, yet their temples and fortresses, their gates, towers, and walls are real gems of architecture. The joins between the blocks are often scarcely visible, and some portals are hewn out of a single block with artistic and original chiselled figures and images of the sun god on the façades.
Their skill in pottery was of equal excellence, and as workers in metal there was none to match them in the South American continent. They made clubs and axes of bronze, and vessels and ornaments of gold and silver. In their graves modern explorers have found many striking proofs of their proficiency in the art of weaving. They used the wool of llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos. These species of animal, allied to the camel, still render great services to the Indians. The llama is distributed over the greater part of the Andes, and the male only is used as a transport animal. The llama is shy, stupid, and quiet, and his head is somewhat like a sheep's. The alpaca does not carry loads, but is kept as a domestic animal for the sake of its meat and wool. The vicuña and guanaco also do not work in the service of man. The latter is found chiefly on the steppes of Patagonia, where he meets the fate of the South American ostrich and falls to the arrows of the Indians.
The Inca people wove clothes of the wool of these animals as well as of cotton. The chief garment of the men was a short shirt without sleeves, of the women a longer shirt with a belt round the waist. The men wore short hair with a black bandage round the head; and outside the bandage they wound a noose or lasso. The women wore their hair long. Sandals covered the feet, and in the ear-lobes were inserted round pegs. The people reared and grazed cattle, as we have seen, and were hunters and fishermen. They grew potatoes and many other root crops, bananas, tobacco, and cotton, and sowed extensive fields of maize. They had all the characteristics of the American race—a short skull, sharply cut features, and a powerfully built body.
For centuries the Inca people had lived in undisturbed repose in their beautiful valleys and on their sunlit tablelands between the mountain ranges—or cordilleras, as they are called—which compose the Andes. If their peace was occasionally disturbed by neighbouring tribes, messages in knotted signs flew through the country, and the roads were full of armed men; but the Inca kings dreamed of no serious danger. For several hundred years their power had passed from father to son, and no neighbour was strong enough to wrest the sceptre from the Inca king's hand. Not a whisper of such names as Chimborazo and Cotopaxi had reached Europe.
A great Inca had recently died and bequeathed his power to his two sons, Huascar and Atahualpa. Just as always in the Old World, such a partition produced friction and disputes, and at length civil war broke out. After four hundred years, we read with sorrow the account of the suicidal strife which harried old Peru, divided the Inca people into two hostile factions, and thus made them an easy prey to the conquerors.
Scarcely had the clash of arms died out after the brave and chivalrous Cortez had burned his ships on the coast of Mexico, subdued the kingdom of Montezuma, and placed it under the crown of Castille, before another Spanish conqueror, the rough, cruel, and treacherous Pizarro, cast his eyes southwards, covetous of new gold countries. With a handful of adventurers, he made his way down to Peru, but soon perceived that he could not succeed without help from the home country. The Emperor Charles V. listened to his tale of gold and green forests, and in the year 1531 Pizarro set out again, this time with a company of 180 well-armed cavaliers. By degrees he gathered fresh reinforcements, landed on the coast of Peru, and marched into the Inca kingdom.
Pizarro was clever and courageous, but, unlike Cortez, he was a base man and a scoundrel. He had no education or proper feeling, and could not even write his name, but he was cunning and knew how to take advantage of favourable circumstances. By means of scouts and ambassadors he soon made himself fully acquainted with the situation. He lulled the fears of Atahualpa by offers of peace, with the result that the Inca king requested his assistance to crush his brother Huascar. If the brothers had held together, they could have driven the Spanish pestilence out of the country. Now the fate of both was sealed.
It was agreed that Atahualpa should come in person to Pizarro's camp, and he arrived in pomp and state, escorted by an army of 30,000 men. He naturally wished to impress his ally with his power. He sat raised on a litter of gold, and was surrounded by all his generals.
Then Pizarro's military chaplain stepped forth, a Catholic priest. In one hand he held a crucifix, in the other a breviary. Raising his crucifix, he exhorted the Inca king in the name of Jesus to accept Christianity and to acknowledge the King of Castille as his master. Atahualpa retained his composure, and simply answered that no one could deprive him of the rights inherited from his fathers. He would not forswear his fathers' faith and did not understand what the priest said. "It is written here in this book," cried the priest, and handed the breviary to the king. Atahualpa held the book to his ear, listened, and said as he threw the breviary on the ground, "Your book does not speak."
Without warning, a massacre was commenced. The cannon and muskets of the Spaniards ploughed red furrows in the ranks of the Peruvians. Protected by their helmets and harness of steel, and with halberts and lances lowered, the cavaliers swept irresistibly through the ranks of half-naked natives and spread terror and confusion around them. All that could be reached with sword, spear, or bullet were mercilessly slaughtered. Four thousand dead bodies lay scattered over the ground, among thousands wounded and bleeding. The rest of the army was completely scattered and took to flight. The Inca king himself had been early taken captive to be kept as a hostage. Enormous plunder fell into the hands of the victors. The report of a land of gold in the south had not been an empty tale; here was gold in heaps. The loot was generously divided between the officers and men, and, with the crucifix raised to heaven, the priest read mass while the other villains thanked God for victory.
The captive Inca king begged and prayed to be set at liberty. But Pizarro promised to release him only after he had bound himself to fill a moderate-sized room with gold from the floor up to as high as he could reach with his hand. Then messages in knotted cords were carried through all the country which remained faithful to Atahualpa, and vessels, bowls, ornaments, and ingots of gold poured in from temples and palaces. In a short time the room was filled and the ransom paid, but the Inca king was still kept a prisoner. He reminded Pizarro of his promised word. The unscrupulous adventurer laughed in his black beard. Instead of keeping his promise, he accused Atahualpa of conspiracy, condemned him to death, and the innocent and pious Indian king was strangled in prison. By this abominable deed the whole Spanish conquest was covered with shame and disgrace.
One of Pizarro's comrades in arms, Almagro, now arrived with reinforcements, and with an army of 500 men Pizarro marched on through the high lands to the capital, Cuzco, which he captured. Then he fell out with Almagro, and the latter determined to seek out other gold countries in the south on his own account. With a small party he marched up into the mountains of Bolivia, and then followed the coast southwards to the neighbourhood of Aconcagua. He certainly found no gold, but he achieved a great exploit, for he led his troop through the dreaded Atacama desert.
Meanwhile Pizarro ruled in the conquered kingdom. Close to the coast he founded Lima, which was afterwards for a long period the residence of the Spanish viceroy, and is now, with nearly 150,000 inhabitants, still the capital of Peru. It has a large number of monasteries and churches, and a stately cathedral. The port town, Callao, was almost totally destroyed a hundred and sixty-six years ago by a tidal wave, which drowned the inhabitants and swept away the houses; but it gradually regained its prosperity, and now has 50,000 inhabitants.
At length, however, Pizarro roused a formidable insurrection by his cruelty, and while he was besieged in Lima his three brothers were shut up in Cuzco. Just then Almagro returned from the Atacama desert, defeated the Peruvians, seized Cuzco, and made the three Pizarro brothers prisoners. But the fourth brother, the conqueror, succeeded in effecting their liberation and in capturing Almagro, who was at once sent to the gallows. A few years later, however, Almagro's friends wreaked vengeance on Pizarro; a score of conspirators rushed into the governor's palace and made their way with drawn swords into the room where Pizarro was surrounded by some friends and servants. Most of these jumped through the window; the rest were cut down. Pizarro defended himself bravely, but after killing four of his assailants he fell to the ground, and with a loud voice asked to be allowed to make his confession. While he was making the sign of the cross on the ground, a sword was thrust into his throat.
The murdered Inca king is an emblem of bleeding South America. All was done, it was pretended, in order to spread enlightenment and Christianity, but in reality the children of the country were lured to destruction, deluded to fill Spanish coffers with gold, and then in requital were persecuted to death. Civilisation had no part in the matter; it was only a question of robbery and greed of gain, and when these desires were satisfied, the descendants of the Incas might be swept off the earth.
In Peru the largest river of the world takes its source, and streams northwards among the verdant cordilleras of the Andes. Wheat waves on its banks, and here and there stands a funereal tower or a ruin from Inca times. Small rafts take the place of bridges, and at high water the river rushes foaming furiously through the valley.
And then it suddenly turns eastwards and cuts its way with unbridled fury through the eastern ridges of the Andes. The water forces itself through ravines barely 50 yards wide and dashes with a deafening roar over falls and rapids. Sometimes the river rests from its labours, expanding to a width of two or three furlongs. Crystal affluents hurry down from the snow-fields of the Andes to join it. It takes its tribute of water from mountain and forest, and is indeed a majestic stream when it leaves the last hills behind.
The source of the Amazons was discovered in 1535 by Marañon, a Spanish soldier. Vicente Pinzon had discovered its mouth in the year 1500. But Marañon, on the one hand, had no notion where the river emerged into the sea, and Pinzon, on the other, knew not where the headwaters purled through the valley. It was reserved for another Spaniard to solve the problem. Let us follow Orellana on his adventurous journey.
Gonzalo Pizarro served under his brother, the conqueror, in northern Peru. There he heard of rich gold countries in the east, and decided to seek them. With an army of 350 Spanish cavalry and infantry, as well as 4000 Indians, he set out from Quito and marched over the Andes past the foot of Cotopaxi to the lowlands of the Napo River.
It was a reckless enterprise. The Indians were frozen to death in crowds on the great heights. Instead of gold, nothing was found but wearisome savannahs and swamps, and dismal forests soaked with two months' rain. Instead of useful domestic animals, no creature was seen but the thick-skinned tapir, which, with a long beak-like nose, crops plants and leaves and frequents swampy tracts in the heart of the primeval forest. The few natives were hostile.
When the troop reached the Napo River on New Year's Day, 1540, Pizarro decided to send the bold seaman Orellana on in front down the river to look for people and provisions, for famine with all its tortures threatened them.
A camp was set up and a wharf constructed. A small brigantine for sails and oars was hastily put together, and Orellana stepped on board with a crew of fifty men, and the boat was borne down the strong current.
Dark and silent woods stood on both sides. No villages, no human beings were seen. Tall trees stood on the bank like triumphal arches, and from their boughs hung lianas serving as rope ladders and swings for sportive monkeys with prehensile tails. Day after day the vessel glided farther into this humid land never before seen by white men. The Spaniards looked in vain for natives, and their eyes tried in vain to pierce the green murkiness between the tree trunks. The men showed increasing uneasiness; but Orellana sat quietly at the helm, gave his orders to the rowers, and had the sail hoisted to catch the breeze that swept over the water.
No camping-places on points of the bank, no huts roofed with palm leaves or grass, no smoke indicated the vicinity of Indians. In a thicket by a brook lay a boa constrictor, a snake allied to the python of the Old World, in easy, elegant coils, digesting a small rodent somewhat like a hare and called an agouti. At the margin of the bank some water-hogs wallowed in the sodden earth full of roots, and under a vault of thorny bushes lay their worst enemy, the jaguar, in ambush, his eyes glowing like fire.
At length the country became more open. Frightened Indians appeared on the bank, and their huts peeped through the forest avenues. Orellana moored his boat and landed with his men. The savages were quiet, and received the Spaniards trustingly, so the latter stayed for a time and collected all the provisions they could obtain. The Indians spoke of a great water in the south which could be reached in ten days.
The fifty Spaniards were now in excellent spirits, and set to work eagerly to construct another smaller sailing vessel. When this was done, Orellana filled both his boats with provisions, manned the larger with thirty and the smaller with twenty men, and continued his wonderful journey, which was to furnish the explanation of the great river system of tropical America. Around him stretched the greatest tropical lowland of the world, before him ran the most voluminous river of the earth. He saw nothing but forest and water, a bewitched country. He had no equipment beyond that which was afforded by the Napo's banks, and his men grumbled daily at the long, dangerous voyage.
After ten days the two boats came to the "great water," where the Napo yields its tribute to the Amazons River. The latter was then rising fast, and when it is at its height, in June and July, the water lies forty feet above its low water-level. Farther down the difference tends to disappear, for the northern tributaries come from the equator, where it rains at all seasons, while the southern rise at different times according to the widely separated regions where their sources lie. To travel from the foot of the cordilleras to the mouth the high water of the main river takes two months.
The Spaniards felt as if they were carried over a boundless lake. Where the banks are low the forests are flooded for miles, and the trees stand up out of the water. Then the wild animals fly to safer districts, and only water birds and forest birds remain, with such four-footed animals as spend all their lives in trees. The fifty men noticed that certain stretches on the banks were never reached by the high water, and it was only at these places that the Indians built their huts, just as the indiarubber gatherers do at the present day (Plate XXXIV.).
When the high water retired, large patches of the loose, sodden banks were undermined, and fell into the river, weighed down by the huge trees they supported. Islands of timber, roots, earth, and lianas were carried away by the current. Some stranded on shallows in the middle of the river, others grounded at projections of the bank, and other rubbish was piled up against them till the whole mass broke away and danced down the river towards the sea. Here the men had to be careful, for at any moment the boats might capsize against a grounded tree trunk. Deep pools also were found, and the current ran at the rate of 2-1/2 feet a second, and they often had the help of the wind.
They soon learned to know by the changed appearance of the forest where they could land. Where the royal crowns of foliaged trees reared their waving canopy above the palms they could be sure of finding dry ground; but if the palms with verdant luxuriance raised their plumes above low brushwood, they might be sure that the bank was flooded by the river.
If the voyage on the capricious river was dangerous, the Spaniards were still more disturbed by Indians, who came paddling up in their canoes and showered poisoned arrows on the boats. To get through in safety, the explorers had to avoid the banks as much as possible.
At the end of May they drifted past the mouth of the Rio Negro, which discharges a large volume of water, for it collects streams from Venezuela and Guiana, and from the wet llanos, or open plains, north of the Amazons River. Where the great tributary is divided by islands it attains a breadth of as much as thirty miles.
Here Orellana stayed several weeks with friendly Indians, who lived in pretty huts under the boughs of bananas. The vessels were repaired, and provisions taken on board—maize, chickens, turtles, and fish. There were swarms of edible turtles, and the Indians caught them and collected their eggs; and the fish were abundant and various—no wonder, when two thousand species of fish live in the basin of the Amazons.
Shortly afterwards they glided past the mouth of the Madeira, a mile and a half broad, which discharges a volume of water little inferior to that of the main river. For the Madeira has its sources far to the south, and descends partly from the cordilleras of Peru and Bolivia, partly from the plateau of Brazil.
Woods and no end of water, month after month! The heat is the same all the year round—not very excessive, seldom 104°, but still oppressive and enervating because of the humidity of the air. Yet the voyage was not monotonous. Leaning against the masts and gunwale, or leisurely moving the oars, the soldiers could observe the dolphins leaping in the river, the sudden darts of the alligators as they hunted the fish through the water, or the clumsy movements of the manati, one of the Sirenia, as it cropped grass at the edge of the bank, to the danger of the eel-like lung fish, which sometimes goes up on to dry land. Sometimes they saw the Indians in light canoes pursue manatis and alligators with harpoons for the sake of their flesh, and perhaps they felt a shiver at the sight of the huge water-snakes of the Amazons River.
On they went through the immense forest which extends from the foot of the Andes and the sources of the Madeira to the mouths of the Orinoco—through this dense, rank carpet which covers all the lowlands of Brazil with its teeming and superabundant life, and which is so bountifully watered by tropical rains and flooded rivers. All the rain that falls on the llanos and the selvas (as the wooded plains are called) makes its way through innumerable affluents to the Amazons and enters the sea through its trumpet-shaped mouth. The river, with its forests, is like a cornucopia of vast, wild, irrepressible nature, where life breathes and pulsates, where it bubbles and ripples, seethes and ferments in the soft productive soil, where animals swarm, and beetles and butterflies are more numerous than anywhere else on our earth, and are clad in the most gorgeous hues of the tropics. There old trees on the bank are undermined and washed away, while others decay in the sultry recesses of the forest. There the earth is constantly fertilised by the manure of animals and their corpses and by dead vegetation, and there new generations are continually rising up from the graves in nature's inexhaustible kingdom.
The Spaniards had no time to make excursions into the country from their camps. It is difficult to make one's way through this intricate, ragged network of climbing plants between trunks, boughs, bushes, and undergrowth. In the interior, far away from the waterways, and especially between some of the southern tributaries, lie forests unknown and untrodden since heathen times. Perhaps there are Indian tribes among them who have not yet heard that America has been discovered, and who may congratulate themselves that the forests are too much for the white men.
There palms predominate in a peaceful Eden, and at their feet flourish ferns with stems as hard as wood. In the bamboo clumps the jaguars play with their cubs, and on the outskirts of the swamps the peccary, a sort of small pig, jumps on his long, supple legs. A dark-green gloom prevails under the tall bay-trees, and their stems stand under their crowns like the columns of a church nave. There thrive mimosas and various species of fig, and climbing palms are not ashamed of their inquisitiveness.
See this tree 200 feet high, with its round, hard fruits as large as a child's head! When they are ripe they fall, and the shell opens to let out the triangular seeds which we call Brazil nuts.
Look at the indiarubber tree with its light-coloured stem, its light-green foliage, and its white sap, which, when congealed, rolls round motor wheels through streets and roads.
Here again is a tree that every one knows about. It grows to a height of 50 feet, and bears large, smooth, leathery leaves, but its blossoms issue from the stem and not among the foliage. Its cucumber-shaped orange fruits ripen at almost all seasons in the perpetual summer of the Amazons. In the fruit the seeds lie in rows. The tree grows wild in the forests, but was cultivated by the Indians before the arrival of white men, and they prepared from it a drink which they called "chocolatl." It was bitter, but the addition of sugar and vanilla made it palatable. This tree is called the cocoa-tree.
Still better known and more popular is another drink—coffee. The coffee-tree is not found in the primeval forests, but in plantations, and even there it is a guest, for its native country is Kaffa in Abyssinia, and coffee came from Arabia to Europe through Constantinople. Now Brazil produces three-fourths of all the world's coffee, and in all thousands of millions of pounds of coffee are consumed yearly.
The vanilla plant, also, is one of the wonderful inmates of the forests. In order that the wild plants which are indigenous in the mountain forests of Mexico and Peru may produce fruit, the pollen must be carried by insects. Many years ago the plant was transported to the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where it throve capitally, but bore no fruit. The helpful insects of its native country were absent. Then artificial fertilisation with pollen was successfully attempted, and now Réunion supplies most of the vanilla in the world's markets.
Think again of all the animals which live in the forest and its outskirts towards the savannahs! There is the singular opossum, and there is the sluggish, scaly armadillo, which loves the detestable termites—those white ants which, with their sharp mandibles, gnaw to pieces paper, clothes, wood, the whole house in fact. Then there is the climbing sloth, with its round monkey head and large curved claws. All day long it remains sleepily hanging under a bough, and only wakes up when night falls. It lives only on trees and eats leaves. In far-back ages there were sloths as large as rhinoceroses and elephants. We have, too, the raccoon in a greyish-yellow coat, also a nocturnal animal, which sleeps during the day in a hollow tree. He lives on small mammals and birds, eggs and fruits, but before he swallows his food he cleans it well, generally in water.
There is a perpetual gloom under the crowns of the foliaged trees and palms. It is the home of shadows. Only lianas, these parasites of the vegetable kingdom, raise their stems above the dusky vault to open their calyces in the sun. Round them flutter innumerable butterflies in gaudy colours. On the border between sunlight and shade scream droll parrots, and busy pigeons steer their way among the trees on rustling wings. There humming-birds dart like arrows through the air. They are small, dainty birds with breast, neck, and head shining like metal with the brightest, most vivid colouring. They build their nests carefully with vegetable fibres and moss, and their beaks are long and fine as a reed. There is a humming-bird which does not grow longer than an inch and a half, and weighs little more than fifteen grains.
We must now go back to see how Orellana got on with his two brigantines.
Below the mouth of the Madeira he landed once on the northern bank in a region inhabited only by tall Amazons, from whom the river received its name. But the tale of Amazons was really a sailor's romance, just as the Spaniards dreamed of Eldorado, or the land of gold.
On they went and the river never ended. During their voyage they saw in lakes by the bank, well sheltered and exposed to the sun, the grandest of all flowers, the Victoria regia of the water-lily family, floating on the water. Its leaves measure six feet in diameter, and the blossoms are more than a foot across. The flowers open only two evenings, first white and then purple.
Between the mouths of the mighty tributaries Tapajos and Xingu the Spaniards saw the great grassy plains stretching up to the river. They only just escaped cannibals on the northern bank. Warned by friendly Indians, they were on their guard against the piroroca, the mysterious bore, fifteen feet high, which is connected with the flow of the tide and rushes up the river twice a month from the sea, devastating everything. Finally they came to the northern mouth of the Amazons River, having traversed 2500 out of the 3600 miles of its length.
Here Orellana decked his vessels over and sailed out to sea, making for the West Indies along the coasts of Guiana and Venezuela. Even after the coast was lost to sight he still sailed in yellow, muddy, fresh water, and he was far to the north before he came to blue-green sea-water. For three hundred miles from the mouth the fresh river water overlies the salt. At Christmas he dropped his anchor on the coast of San Domingo, and his grand exploit was achieved.
Like the sting on the scorpion's poison gland, Tierra del Fuego, the most southern land of America, juts out into the southern sea. It is separated from the mainland by the sound which bears the name of the intrepid Magellan. In the primeval forests of the interior grow evergreen beeches, and there copper-brown Indians of the Ona tribe formerly held unlimited sway. Like their brethren all over the New World, they have been thrust out by white men and are doomed to extinction. They were only sojourners on the coasts of Tierra del Fuego, and their term has expired. Only a few now remain, but they still retain the old characteristics of their race, are powerfully built, warlike and brave, live at feud with their neighbours, and kindle their camp fires in the woods, on the shores of lakes, or on the coast.
Many a sailing vessel has come to grief in the Straits of Magellan. The channel is dangerous, and has a bad reputation for violent squalls, which beat down suddenly over the precipitous cliffs. It is safer to keep to the open sea and sail to the south of the islands of Tierra del Fuego. Here the surges of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans roar together against the high cliffs of Cape Horn.
Who listens to this song, who gazes with royal disdain down over the spray, who wonders why the breakers have been there for thousands of years pounding against gates that never open, who soars at this moment with outspread wings over Cape Horn—who but the albatross, the largest of all storm birds, the boldest and most unwearied of all the winged inhabitants of the realm of air?
Look at him well, for in a second he will be gone. You see that he is as large as a swan, has a short, thick neck, a large head with a powerful pink and yellowish bill, and that he is quite white except where his wing feathers are black. His wings are wonders of creation. When he folds them, they cling close to the body and seem to disappear; but now he has spread them out, and they measure twelve feet from tip to tip. They are long and narrow, thin and finely formed as a sword blade. He moves them with amazing steadiness, and excels all other birds in strength and endurance. No bird has such an elegant and majestic flight. He spreads his wings like sails with taut sheets, and soars at a whistling pace up against the wind. Follow him with your eyes hour after hour in the hardest wind, and you will see that he makes a scarcely perceptible beat of his wings only every seventh minute, keeping them between whiles perfectly still. That is his secret. All his skill consists in his manner of holding his wings expanded and the inclination he gives to his excellent monoplane in relation to his body and the wind. Everything else, change of elevation, and movement forwards with or against the wind, is managed by the wind itself. When he wishes to rise from the surface of the sea he spreads his wings, turns towards the wind, and lets it lift him up. Then he soars in elegant curves and glides up the invisible hills of the atmosphere.
Most noteworthy is the perfect freedom of the albatross. He shuns the mainland and breeds on solitary islands; he can scarcely move on the ground, and when he is forced to alight he waddles clumsily along like a swan. He comes in contact with the earth only at the nest, where the hen sits on her single egg and tucks her white head under her wing. Otherwise he does not touch the ground. He finds his food on the surface of the sea, and spends three-fourths of his life in the air. There he soars about from sea to sea like a satellite to the earth, moving freely and lightly round the heavy globe as it rolls through space.
He is not restricted to any particular course, no distance is too great for him; he simply rests on his wings and sweeps easily from ocean to ocean. He is, however, rarer in the Atlantic than in the Pacific Ocean, and he avoids the heat of equatorial regions. He sails in any other direction he pleases, where he has most prospect of satisfying his voracious appetite.
What do you think of an albatross which was caught on a vessel and marked so that it might be recognised again, and which then followed the vessel for six days and nights watching for any refuse thrown out? The ship was in the open sea and was sailing twelve knots an hour, but the albatross did not tire. Nay, he made circles of miles round the vessel at a considerable height. On board the ship the watch was changed time after time, for man must rest and sleep, but the albatross needed neither sleep nor rest. He had no one to whom he could entrust the management of his wings while he slept at night. He kept awake for a week without showing any signs of weariness. He flew on and on, sometimes disappearing astern, and an hour later appearing again and sweeping down on the vessel from the front. That it was the same albatross was proved by the mark painted on the breast. Only on the seventh day did he leave the ship, dissatisfied with the fare set before him. He was then hundreds of miles from the nearest coast.
Just think of all the wonderful and remarkable sights he must witness on his airy course! He sees everything that takes place on the decks of large sailing vessels, and the smoke rising out of the steamers' funnels. He marks the clumsy movements of the twenty-feet-long sea-elephants on the gravel shore of the islands of South Georgia, east of Cape Horn, and sees the black or grey backs of whales rolling on the surface of the water.
Perhaps he has some time wandered away northwards over the Atlantic and seen whalers attack the blue whale—the largest animal now living in the world, for it often attains to a length of 90 feet. At the present day whalers use strongly built, swift, and easily handled steam-launches, and shoot the harpoon out from the bow with a pivoted gun. In the head of the harpoon is a pointed shell which explodes in the body of the whale, dealing a mortal wound, and at the butt end a thick rope is secured. The vessel follows the whale until it is dead. Then it is hauled up with a steam winch and towed to a whaling station in some bay on the coast, where it is flitched. Then the oil is boiled out, poured into casks, and sent to market.
Much more picturesque and more dangerous was the whaling witnessed in northern seas by the forefathers of the albatross, for man has been for a thousand years the worst enemy of the whale, and some species are almost exterminated. Then the whalers did not use a gun, but threw the harpoon by hand. Every vessel had several keelless whale-boats, pointed at both bow and stern, so that they could be rowed forwards or backwards. When a whale was seen in the distance the boats set out, each boat manned by six experienced whalers. One of them was the coxswain, another the harpooner, while the others sat at the oars. The harpoon line, an inch thick, lay carefully coiled up, and ran out through a brass eye in the bow. Every man knew from long experience what he had to do at any particular minute, and therefore there was silence on board, all working without orders.
When all is ready one of the boats rows towards the whale, and the harpooner throws his sharp weapon with all his strength into the whale's flank. Almost before the harpoon has struck the boat is backed swiftly. Wild with pain, the whale may strike the boat from above with his powerful horizontal caudal fin and crush it at a blow, or he may dive below the boat and upset it, but usually he thinks only of making his escape. He makes for the depths in fright, and the harpoon line runs out, the strands producing a singing sound. Great care is necessary, for if the line curls round a man's leg he is carried overboard and is lost. The whale dives at once to a depth of a couple of hundred fathoms. There it is dark and quiet, and he remains there half an hour or an hour, till at length he is obliged to come up to breathe. The lie of the line in the water shows approximately where he will come up again, and another boat rows to the spot. As soon as he appears above the surface a second harpoon whistles through the air.
The whale is now too breathless to dive. He swims along the surface and lashes the waves with his tail to free himself from his tormentors. He speeds along at a desperate pace, dashing the waves into spray around him and drawing the boats after him. The crews have hauled in the lines, and the boats are quite close to the whale, but they must be ready to pay out the lines if the whale dives. The boats' prows are tilted high up into the air and the water streams off them. They shoot forward like mad things through the foaming sea, whether it be day or night, and pitch up and down over the crests of the waves. With stretched muscles, clenched teeth, and glaring eyes the whale-hunters follow the movements of the whale and the boat.
They notice that the pace slackens. The whale begins to tire, and at last is quite exhausted. Its movements become irregular, it stops and throws itself about so that the water spurts up round it. Then a boat rows up, and a long spear is thrust in three feet deep towards the animal's heart, and perhaps an explosive bullet is fired. If the lungs are pierced the whale sends up jets of blood from its nostrils—"hoisting the red flag," in the language of whalers. Its time is come; it gives up the struggle, and its death tremors show that another of the giants of the ocean has bid a last farewell to its boundless realm.
On motionless wings an albatross hovers high above Cape Horn. His sharp eye takes in everything. Now he sees in the distance smoke from the funnel of a steamer, and in a couple of minutes he has tacked round the vessel and decided to follow it on its voyage to the north. To the east he has the coast of Chile, with its countless reefs and islands and deep fiords, and above it rises the snow-capped crest of the Andes. As soon as refuse is thrown overboard, the albatross swoops down like an arrow. A second before he touches the water he raises his wings, draws back his head, stretches out his large feet in front with expanded claws, and then plumps down screaming, into the water. He floats as lightly as a cork. In a moment he has swallowed all the scraps floating on the surface, and then, turning to the wind, rises to a giddy height.
The vessel happens to be carrying goods to Santiago, the capital of Chile, and casts anchor at its port town, Valparaiso. In the background rises Aconcagua, the highest mountain of America.
Then the albatross steers out to sea to try his luck elsewhere. Seventy miles from the coast he comes across the notable little island, Juan Fernandez, and circles round its volcanic cliffs. For him there are no frightful precipitous ascents and descents; from his height he can see all he wishes to see. It is otherwise with explorers. Some cliffs are inaccessible to their feet, as Carl Skottsberg found when he went out to the island three years ago in a Chilian vessel. He saw the cliffs 3000 feet high, and heard the surf rolling in round the island. It was a perfect picture of wild desolation. He found it difficult to land in a small boat. He looked in vain for parrots, monkeys, and tortoises, but found, instead, that more than half the number of the plants on the island are such as grow on no other spot on the earth. Among them are palms, with bright, pale-green trunks, which have been recklessly destroyed by men to make walking-sticks. Here also are tree-ferns, and the small, delicate, climbing ferns which gracefully festoon trunks and boughs. And here also is the last specimen of a species of sandalwood which, wonderful to relate, has found its way hither from its home in Asia. A couple of hundred years ago it grew profusely on the island, but now it has been nearly exterminated by man's cupidity. The red, strongly scented wood was too much in demand for fine cabinet work and other purposes. Only one small branch now produces foliage on the last sandal-tree. In this case it is not the last tree among many, but the last specimen of a species which is vanishing from the earth.
In a cave at the foot of a mountain, according to tradition, lived Robinson Crusoe, and from a saddle in the crest he threw longing, eager glances over the great ocean. A memorial tablet in the cave relates that the real Crusoe, a Scotch sailor named Selkirk, lived alone on the island for four years and four months in the years 1704-1709. He went on shore of his own accord, being dissatisfied with the officers of the ship to which he belonged. The climate was mild, the rainfall moderate, and wild goats and edible fruits served him for food.
Such is the actual fact. How much more do we delight in the Robinson Crusoe whose story is so charmingly depicted in a romantic dress! His vessel foundered, and he was the only man who was thrown up by the stormy waves upon the island. There he made himself at home, wandered round the shore and through the woods, and filled a shooting-bag of banana leaves with oysters, turtle's eggs, and wild fruits. With his simple bow he shot the animals of the forest to make himself clothes of their skins, and wild goats, which he caught and tamed, yielded him milk, from which he churned butter and manufactured cheese. He became a fisherman, furrier, and potter, and on the height above his cave he had his chapel where he kept Sundays. He found wild maize, and sowed, reaped, and made bread. As years passed on, his prosperity increased, and he was a type of the whole human race, which from the rude simplicity of the savage has in the course of ages progressed to a condition of refinement and enlightenment. When he was most at a loss for fire to prepare his food, the lightning struck a tree and set it on fire, and we remember that he then kept up his fire for a long time, never letting it go out. He was very grieved when it at length expired, but a volcanic outbreak came to his assistance, and he lighted his fire again from the glowing lava. He made himself a bread oven of bricks, and built himself a hut and a boat.
Once when he was away on an excursion, and lay asleep far from his dwelling, he started up in alarm at hearing some one call out his name. It was only his own parrot, which had learned to talk, and which had searched for him, and was sitting on a bough calling out "Poor Robinson Crusoe!"
How well we remember his lonely walk to the other side of the island, when he stood petrified with fear before the print of a human foot in the sand! For eight years he had been alone, and now he found that there were other human beings, cannibals no doubt, in the neighbourhood. He stood, gazed, listened, hurried home, and prepared for defence. Here, also, he is a type of peoples and states, which sooner or later awake to a perception of the necessity of defence against hostile attacks. His suspicions give way to certainty when one day he sees a fire burning on the beach. He runs home, draws up the ladder over the fortification round his dwelling, makes ready his weapons, climbs up to his look-out, and sees ten naked savages roasting flesh round a fire. After a wild dance they push out their canoes and disappear. At the fire are left gnawed human bones and skulls, and Robinson is beside himself at the sight.
At the end of the fourteenth year he is awakened one stormy night by a shot. His heart beats fast, for now the hour of deliverance is surely at hand. Another shot thunders through the night. Perhaps it is a signal of distress from a ship! He lights a huge fire to guide the crew. When morning dawns, he finds that a ship has run on to a submerged rock and been wrecked. No sign of the crew is visible. But yes, a sailor lies prostrate on the sand and a dog howls beside him. Crusoe runs up; he would like a companion in his loneliness; but however long he works with artificial respiration and other remedies, the dead will not come to life, and Robinson Crusoe sadly digs a grave for the unknown guest.
Another year passes and all the days are alike. As he sits at his table, breaking his bread and eating fish and oysters, he has his dog, parrot, and goats as companions and gives them a share of his meal.
One day he sees from his look-out hill five boats come to the island and put to shore, and thirty savages jump on land and light a fire. Then they bring two prisoners from a boat. One they kill with a club. The other runs away and makes straight towards Crusoe's dwelling. Only two men pursue him, and Crusoe runs up to help him. At a sign from his master, the dog rushes on one of the savages and holds him fast till he gets his death-blow, and the other meets the same fate. Then Crusoe by signs and kindly gestures makes the prisoner understand that he has found a friend. The poor fellow utters some incomprehensible words, and Crusoe, who has not heard a human voice for fifteen years, is delighted to hear him speak. The other savages make off as fast as they can.
Robinson Crusoe's black friend receives the name of Friday, because he came to the island on a Friday. In time Friday learns to speak, and brightens and relieves the life of the solitary man. One day another wreck is stranded on the rocks, and Robinson and Friday fetch from its stores firearms and powder, tools and provisions, and many other useful things. When eighteen long years have expired, the hero of our childhood is rescued by an English ship.
The albatross is a knowing bird, or he would not follow vessels for weeks. He knows that there is food on board, and that edible fragments are often thrown out. But his power of observation and his knowledge are much greater than might be suspected. He knows also of old where small storm birds take their prey, and when he finds them flying along with their catch he shoots down like lightning among them, appropriates all he can find, and does not trouble himself in the least about the smaller birds' disappointment.
But these vultures of the sea are still cleverer in other ways. Their forefathers have lived on the sea for thousands of years, and their senses have been developed to the greatest acuteness and perfection. They know the regular winds, and can perceive from the colour of the water if a cold or warm sea current sweeps along below them. If now our friend the albatross, travelling westwards over the islands of Polynesia, wishes to be carried along by the wind, he knows that he has only to keep between the Tropic of Capricorn and the equator in order to be in the belt of the south-east trade-wind. And no doubt he has also noticed that this wind gives rise to the equatorial current which, broad and strong, sets westwards across the Pacific Ocean. If he wishes to fly north of the equator, he receives the same help from the north-east trade-wind; but if he wanders far to the south or north of the equator, he will meet with head winds and find that the ocean current sets eastwards. In the northern half of the Pacific Ocean this north-easterly current is called the Kuroshiwo, or "Black Salt." It skirts the coast of Japan and runs right across to Canada. This current is one of the favourite haunts of the albatross.