Читать книгу Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena - J. A. Zahm - Страница 16

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The morning following our departure from the Pearl Islands we were delighted to find our good ship anchored in the beautiful Gulf of Paria. Thus, almost before we were aware of it, we found ourselves reposing on the waters of the famed Orinoco which we had made such futile efforts to reach from Caracas and Victoria. The Gulf of Paria, as is known, is just north of several of the largest estuaries of the Orinoco and the line of demarcation between the salt water of the Atlantic and the fresh water of Venezuela’s great river is usually quite marked. As we entered the gulf, through the Dragon’s Mouth, we had the mainland on our starboard and the island of Trinidad on our port quarter. Although the waters of the Orinoco now enter the Atlantic through two channels—the Boca del Draco and the Boca de la Sierpe—there is no doubt that Trinidad was in recent geological times a part of the mainland of South America and that the Orinoco, instead of reaching the ocean, as it now does, flowed almost directly across the island through a depression which is still quite conspicuous. It will thus be seen that during long geologic ages there has been an intimate physical connection between Trinidad and the Orinoco as there has been a close commercial connection between the two ever since the Spanish conquest.

Owing to the shallow waters of the harbor of the Port-of-Spain, the capital of Trinidad, our steamer had to anchor about a mile from the quay. When we were prepared to go ashore—and we lost no time in getting ready—we were surrounded by a motley crowd of sable, shouting, importunate boatmen, all clamoring and gesticulating and sounding the praises of their canoes, and calling attention to their fantastic names, as if this were a guarantee of their safety and comfort. In a few moments we were seated in one of these gayly decked craft, with our baggage beside us, on our way to the customhouse. Here we were delayed only a few minutes, for the English in their colonies, as in the mother country, rarely subject the traveler to those delays and annoyances that constitute so disagreeable a feature in certain other countries. “What a contrast,” we said to ourselves, “between the conduct of the officials here and that of the officious inquisitors at La Guayra!”

After we had been comfortably located in our hotel—there are several good hotels in the city—our first thought was about our journey up the Orinoco. To our great delight we learned that there would be a steamer going to Ciudad Bolivar in about a week. This accorded with our plans perfectly, as we thus had ample time to visit the chief points of interest—and there are many—of the island, and enjoy at least a passing view of the wonderful and varied floral display for which Trinidad is so famous.

Trinidad, as the reader will recollect, was discovered by Columbus during his third voyage, and given the name it still bears in honor of the Blessed Trinity. In his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, describing this voyage, he says he started from San Lucar in the name of the most Holy Trinity, and after two months at sea, during a portion of which time all aboard suffered intensely from the heat,2 they saw to the westward three mountain peaks, united at the base, rising up before them. Here, then, was to them the symbol of the Triune God—the Three in One—in whose name all had left their native land, and what more natural than that it should be named Trinidad—the Trinity? “Upon this,” writes the pious admiral, “we repeated the ‘Salve Regina,’ and other prayers, and all of us gave thanks to our Lord.”

What a grateful change it was from the extreme heat which they had endured, to the delightful climate of the newly discovered island. “When I reached the island of Trinidad,” I again quote from the Admiral’s letter, “I found the temperature exceedingly mild; the fields and the foliage were remarkably fresh and green, and as beautiful as the gardens of Valencia in April.”3

What so deeply impressed Columbus on his arrival at Trinidad was what likewise most impresses the visitor to-day—its mild climate and the beauty and luxuriance of its vegetation. Although the island is but little more than 10° from the Equator the mean annual temperature is not more than 77° F. In the mornings and evenings of the cooler season the thermometer is about 10° lower. During our sojourn of some weeks in Trinidad we never suffered from the heat. On the contrary, during our morning and evening drives, especially in the mountains, we found the ocean breeze delightfully refreshing.

Columbus was also much impressed by the natives of the island. They had a whiter skin—he had expected to find them very black—than any he had hitherto seen in the Indies and were very graceful in form, tall and elegant in their movements.

With the exception of a few scattered families, of more or less mixed descent, the visitor will find no evidence of the former existence here of that splendid type of Indian of whom the great navigator speaks so highly, and of whose race there were then on the island many thousands of souls. Here, as on the other islands of the West Indies, the aborigines have disappeared, never to return.

In their place we find the most cosmopolitan agglomeration of people under the sun—English, Germans, Spaniards, French, Chinese, Hindoos, and Negroes from the darkest Senegambian to the fairest Octaroon. About one-half of the population is composed of Negroes, one-third of Coolies, and one-sixth of whites of various nationalities and shades of color. As we contemplated the motley crowds which always throng the streets of the Port-of-Spain we could not but recall Lopez de Gomara’s curious reflections on the divers colors of the different races of men. We give his remarks in Richard Eden’s translation:

“One of the marueylous thynges that god ... vseth in the composition of man, is coloure; whiche doubtlesse can not bee consydered withowte great admiration in beholding one to be white and an other blacke, beinge coloures vtterlye contrary. Sum lykewyse to be yelowe whiche is betwene blacke and white; and other of other colours as it were of dyuers liueres. And as these colours are to be marueyled at, euen so is it to be considered howe they dyffer one from an other as it were by degrees, forasmuche as sum men are whyte after dyuers sortes of whytnesse: yelowe after dyuers maners of yelowe: blacke after dyuers sortes of blacknesse: and howe from whyte they go to yelowe by ... discolourygne to browne and redde: and to blacke by asshe colour, and murrey sumwhat lyghter then blacke: and tawnye lyke vnto the west Indian which are all togyther in general eyther purple, or tawny lyke vnto sodde quynses, or of the colour of chestnuttes or olyues: which colour is to them natural and not by theyr goynge naked as many haue thought: albeit theyr nakednesse haue sumwhat helped thereunto. Therfore in lyke maner and with suche diuersitie as men are commonly whyte in Europe and blacke in Affrike, euen with like varietie are they tawny in these Indies, with diuers degrees diuersly inclynynge more or lesse to blacke or whyte.”4

The Coolies interested us immensely, in whatever part of the island we met them—and they are to be seen everywhere—and were for us the subject-matter of constant study. They occupy an entire suburb of the Port-of-Spain, and, for those who are interested in sociological and economic questions, no place is more worthy of a visit. Day after day, when the delicious evening breezes began to sweep in from the ocean, we found ourselves directing our course towards the “Indian Quarter,” as it is called, and we always found something new to arrest our attention or excite our admiration. It required no effort whatever of the imagination to fancy ourselves in the crowded streets and markets of Benares or Madras.

Port-of-Spain, whose population is about 50,000, rejoices in quite a number of large and handsome public buildings and churches. Among the latter the Roman Catholic Cathedral is conspicuous. The homes of the people in the better quarters of the city—surrounded by a rich profusion of tropical flowers, and shrubs and trees covered with blooming climbers—are frequently models of architectural excellence, and betoken refinement, comfort and even affluence.

To us the most attractive part of the city was the Botanical Garden, adjoining the residence of the governor. This spot is justly famous not only in the West Indies, but the world over. Here have been collected from every tropical clime all the plants and shrubs and trees that are admired, for beauty of bloom, richness of fragrance, or grace and majesty of form.

Here we see the hibiscus shrub, with large, flaming, crimson flowers; the poinciana, aglow with a bloom of yellow and orange, scarlet flowered balisiers, and the poui tree decked with a rich robe of saffron. Alongside them are oranges and lemons, pineapples, guavas, mongosteens, nutmegs, tamarinds, and scores of other kinds of tropical fruits. A little further on we meet with tea shrubs, the clove and the cinnamon tree, the rubber tree, and the Bertolettia excelsa, laden with nuts, each of which contains from ten to twenty seeds. Then there are the curious cannon-ball tree, stately samans, the leopardwood tree, the trumpet tree and others equally attractive. Besides all these there are those princes of the forest—the palms—from every quarter of the tropics, with every variety of trunk and leaf—date, fern, talipot, Palmyra, and groo-groo palms, the tall traveler’s-tree with its graceful plantain-like leaves, and the Oreodoxa speciosa, “the glory of the mountains.” On and among them are rare orchids, and parasites of countless species, climbing ferns, and convolvuluses of every hue.

And to complete this scene of beauty, we behold at almost every step, fluttering across our path, brilliant heliconias and other butterflies that contribute such life and charm to the forest glories of tropical lands. And then the humming birds—those lovely animated gems that flit from bush to bush, and flower to flower—flashing all the fire of the opal, and emitting in rapid succession all the brilliant hues of the topaz and the sapphire, the ruby and the emerald. They are not as numerous now—more is the pity—as they were formerly, when the aborigines gave the name Iere—humming bird—to this island on account of their great numbers and when they protected and venerated them as the souls of departed Indians. But one still meets them in one’s strolls through the gardens and the forest, and always with a new sense of wonder and delight.

Here, of a truth, were realized, nay, eclipsed, all the marvels of the garden of Alcinous, for here

“There was still

Fruit in his proper season all the year.

Sweet Zephyr breath’d upon them blasts that were

Of varied tempers. These he made to bear

Ripe fruits, these blossoms. Time made never rape

Of any dainty there.”5

It is, indeed, worth a visit from afar to see and study these marvels of plant and vine, and bush and tree of the Botanic Garden. But the whole island is, at least for the stranger from the North, one vast botanic garden. Go where we will, we are astonished and bewildered by the novelty and the exuberance of the vegetation that surrounds us.

If we drive over the broad and well-kept roads along the western coast, we pass under shady avenues of cocoa palms bending under their burden of fruit. If we go to the cacao groves—and they are large and numerous here—our eyes are gladdened by the vermilion bloom that covers the protecting Erythrina umbrosa.6 In a glen hard by is a giant ceiba, transformed, by the countless number of creepers and epiphytes to which it has given hospitality, into a vast air-garden. Along the streams and mountain torrents are lovely canopies formed by the plume-like foliage of bamboos—seventy to eighty feet high—affording retreats of rarest sylvan beauty. Again it is in the Rosa del Monte, with its crimson bloom, the purple dracona, the yellow croton, the night-blooming cereus, the angelim, covered with purple tassels, the carmine poinsettia, the sweet-scented vanilla, festoons of purple flowered lianas, and gray candelabra of a giant cereus. Beyond it all, as a felicitous background to this gorgeous display and at the same time an adequate enclosure for Flora’s fairy palace, there is such a profusion of vegetable tracery and arabesques “as would have stricken dumb with awe and delight him who ornamented the Loggie of the Vatican.”

Further on we have the comely bread-fruit tree, with its deeply-lobed leaves and its massive fruit, the many-rooted and many-branched mangrove,7 and not far distant is a clump of royal palms, with their smooth pearl-gray columns and coronals of verdure. Or there is a group of kindred growth—jagua palms—whose crown of pinnated leaves, each full twenty-five feet long, caused Humboldt to declare that on this truly magnificent tree “Nature had lavished every beauty of form.” While standing by one of the pillar-stems of the jagua palm, beneath its emerald ostrich plumes, we were quite prepared to share Kingsley’s enthusiasm for palm trees in general. “Like a Greek statue in a luxurious drawing-room,” he writes, “sharp-cut, cold, virginal; shaming by the grandeur of mere form the voluptuousness of mere color, however rich and harmonious; so stands the palm of the forest; to be worshipped rather than to be loved.”8

It would tire the reader to attempt a description of the many pictures of interest of this charming island, of its delightful drives in every direction, of its beauteous cascades and waterfalls, one of which, Maracas Falls, three hundred feet in height, is a reproduction of Bridal Falls in the Yosemite, with the added setting of tropical verdure. No pen can picture the exquisite charm of the Caura or Maraval valleys, of Blue Basin and Macaripe Bay, or of the Five Islands—real gems of the ocean—with their cozy and inviting cottages. When in Egypt years ago we fancied that we should like to spend the rest of our days on the island of Philæ, ever in the presence of its matchless ruins. When we spent a happy day—how fleeting it was—on one of these five islands—it was the largest and fairest—we felt that we had at length found that inland home—far away from noise and strife, from

“Fever and fret and aimless stir”

of which we had so often dreamed, and in which we had so often longed to dwell.

The people of Trinidad think their island the most beautiful of all the West Indian group. Having visited, at one time or other, all the chief islands comprising the Greater and Lesser Antilles, we should hesitate to dispute their claim. It is certainly very beautiful, and possesses many attractions that are either entirely absent from the other islands or are found only in a lesser degree. Puerto Rico and Jamaica equal it in many respects, and in others surpass it, but in some important features the American possession is inferior to those of the British.

I have said nothing of La Brea, the wonderful pitch lake for which Trinidad has been celebrated since the time of Raleigh,9 and which for some decades past has supplied us with much of the asphalt used in the United States. This curious phenomenon has been described so often that there is no call for further comment. Suffice to say that it, together with the sugar plantations and the cacao groves, constitutes the chief source of the revenue of the island.

Like Curaçao, Trinidad is a favorite resort of Venezuelan revolutionists, expatriated generals and colonels and their sympathizers. As a rule, they are an impecunious set, and rarely interesting. Crespo and Guzman Blanco both started from here on their way to the presidential chair in Caracas. So did the unfortunate Paredes, shortly before our arrival in Venezuela, but he had scarcely set foot on the soil of his native country, which he had promised to liberate from the evils of Castroism, before he, with his followers, was shot down in cold blood.

On account of its proximity to the mainland and commanding, as it does, the entire Orinoco basin, Trinidad should enjoy an extensive trade with Venezuela. And this she would undoubtedly have were it not that Venezuela imposes an extra ad valorem duty of thirty per cent. on all merchandise that comes from or by way of Trinidad. This is in retaliation for the island’s harboring smugglers and revolutionists. One of the results of this policy is smuggling on a most extensive scale, at which many of the customs officials connive. This means a great loss to the Venezuelan government, for it is estimated that it thus loses a greater part of the duties that should go to the national treasury.

Another temptation to smuggle arises from the excessively high tariff on certain necessary articles of consumption. Thus salt, which is a government monopoly, costs sixteen times as much in Ciudad Bolivar as it does in Trinidad. The natural consequence is that there is a large contraband traffic in this important commodity. In some cases the smugglers elude the vigilance of the government officials and pay nothing whatever in the way of duties. In others they have an understanding with the officials, and pay por composicion—that is, only a portion of the tax—the other portion being divided between the official and the smuggler.

Contraband trade, however, is nothing new in this part of the world. It dates back to the sixteenth century when, according to Fray Padre Simon, the learned author of Noticias Historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra Firme, religion and policy prohibited all commercial relations between Spaniards and foreigners, especially the Dutch and the English.

As an obiter dictum, however, it may be remarked that it was this restricted and short-sighted trade policy that, more than anything else, led to the enormous losses that Spain suffered during so many decades from corsairs and buccaneers, and that eventually resulted in the wars of independence in the Spanish colonies of the New World.