Читать книгу Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena - J. A. Zahm - Страница 17
THE DELTA OF THE ORINOCO
ОглавлениеWe were still reveling in the countless beauties of forest and field—quite oblivious of the passage of time—when we were informed that our steamer would, in a few hours, start for Ciudad Bolivar, the chief city on the Orinoco, and distant about two days’ sail from the Port-of-Spain.
Eager as we were to explore the wonders of the famed and mysterious Orinoco, it was with great reluctance that we tore ourselves away from the cherished home of flowers and humming birds—sweet Iere. In Trinidad, thanks to the kind and considerate hospitality of its people, we had enjoyed all the comforts of home and the same freedom of movement as if we had been given the keys of the city.
Our steamer was scheduled to leave at two o’clock in the afternoon, but, as a matter of fact, did not weigh anchor until some hours later. This, however, we did not regret, as it gave us an opportunity to have “one last lingering look” at the island beautiful from the upper deck of the vessel. Besides this, we could by means of our field glasses take a survey of the Gulf of Paria—for it is famous in history, this Gulf of Paria—and has been visited by men whose names are writ large in the annals of the world’s heroes.
Its waters were visited in 1805 by England’s one-eyed, one-armed sailor-man, while in pursuit of the French and Spanish warships which he had chased from Gibraltar to the Caribbean Sea and thence back to Trafalgar, where Spain lost its navy and England her greatest admiral. “Had Nelson found the hostile squadron under the lee of Trinidad, the delta of the Orinoco would now be as famous in naval history as the delta of the Nile.”
It is, however, the imposing figure of Spain’s great admiral, Cristobal Colon, that looms highest in these parts. He it was that gave the chief promontories of island and mainland, and the channels that separate the one from the other, many of the names they still bear.
Far down to the south is La Boca de la Sierpe—the Serpent’s Mouth—the channel that separates the southwesternmost point of Trinidad from Venezuela. It was through this channel that Columbus passed when he entered the gulf in which we now are, and from which he got his first view of the mainland of the New World. But he did not realize at first the magnitude of his discovery. Thinking the land he saw on his port quarter was an island—for during his two preceding voyages he had seen nothing but islands, outside of Cuba, which he fancied to be the eastern part of Asia—he named it Isla Santa, or Holy Island. A short distance to the northwest of us is La Boca del Draco, the Dragon’s Mouth, through which the great navigator
“Push’d his prows into the setting sun,
And made West East.”
The names Serpent’s Mouth and Dragon’s Mouth were given to the two straits mentioned on account of the strong currents found there and on account of the danger Columbus experienced in taking his ships through them. His letter to Ferdinand and Isabella contains a graphic description of the dangers he encountered while passing through the Serpent’s Mouth. “In the dead of night,” he writes, “while I was on deck, I heard an awful roaring, that came from the south, toward the ship; on the top of this rolling sea came a mighty wave roaring with a frightful noise, and with all this terrific uproar were other conflicting currents, producing, as I have already said, a sound as of breakers upon rocks. To this day I have a vivid recollection of the dread I then felt lest the ship might flounder under the force of that tremendous sea; but it passed by, and reached the mouth of the before-mentioned passage, where the uproar lasted for a considerable time.”10 He had similar difficulty in making his exit through the Dragon’s Mouth.
No wonder that the frightened sailors of Columbus imagined that they were the sport of the Evil One. “Being in the region of Paria,” writes Navarrete, “the Admiral asked the pilots what they made their position to be; some said that they were in the sea of Spain, others that they were in the sea of Scotland, and that all the seamen were in despair, and said the Devil had brought them there.”11
Columbus, as has been stated, at first considered the land on his port side to be insular in character, but before he left the Gulf of Paria he was evidently convinced by the raging surges of fresh water that had nearly swamped his ships, that he had discovered a land of continental dimensions. In his letter to the Spanish sovereigns he writes, “This land, which your highnesses have sent me to explore, is very extensive, and I think there are many other countries in the south of which the world has never had any knowledge.”
He had observed that a very large river debouched from the land of Gracia and he at once “rightly conjectured that the currents and the overwhelming mountains of water which rushed into these straits with such an awful roaring, arose from the contest between the fresh water and the sea. The fresh water struggled with the salt to oppose its entrance and the salt water contended against the fresh in its efforts to gain a passage outward. And I formed the conjecture, that at one time there was a continuous neck of land from the island of Trinidad and the land of Gracia, where the two straits now are.” All these conclusions have been confirmed by the observations of subsequent explorers.
What, however, will most interest the curious reader are the speculations into which Columbus was led by the various phenomena observed in the Gulf of Paria. The most fantastic, from our modern point of view, were his theories regarding the form of the earth and the location of the Terrestrial Paradise.
Before his arrival in the Gulf of Paria, he had been a firm believer in the sphericity of the earth, but in this part of the world he had observed so many new and unexpected features—“so much irregularity,” as he phrased it—that he came “to another conclusion respecting the shape of the earth, namely: that it is not round, as they describe, but of the form of a pear, which is very round except where the stalk grows, at which part it is most prominent.”
It is very easy for us, in the light of all the advance in scientific knowledge since his time, to smile at his hypotheses, and the reasonings by which he arrived at his conclusions. What seemed plausible then appears preposterous now. But we must remember that the proofs of the rotundity of the earth before his time were quite empirical, and were far from having the demonstrative force of those that are now adduced. All the epoch-making work in physics and astronomy by such men as Galileo and Kepler, Newton and Laplace, Huyghens and Foucault, and the French academicians, bearing on the form of our globe, has been accomplished since his time. If we now know that the earth has the form of an oblate spheroid and not that of a pear, it is in consequence of the progress of physical astronomy during the four centuries that have elapsed since Columbus sailed the western seas.
Before his time the learned had located the earthly paradise in various parts of the eastern hemisphere. Some contended that it was in Mesopotamia, others that it was in Ethiopia near the head waters of the Nile, but all agreed that it was somewhere in the East. Now Columbus, who imagined he had reached the eastern part of Asia, by sailing westwards from Spain, thought he had incontrovertible evidence for locating the Garden of Eden in the newly discovered land of Gracia.
“I do not suppose,” he writes, “that the Earthly Paradise is in the form of a rugged mountain, as the descriptions of it have made it appear, but that it in on the summit of the spot which I have described as being in the form of the stalk of a pear; the approach of it from a distance must be by a constant and gradual ascent; but I believe that, as I have already said, no one could ever reach the top”—except “by God’s permission,” as he asserts elsewhere. “I think also that the water I have described may proceed from it, though it be far off, and that, stopping at the place which I have just left, it forms this lake. There are great indications of this being the Terrestrial Paradise, for its site coincides with the opinions of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned; and moreover, the other evidences agree with the supposition, for I have never either read or heard of fresh water coming in so large a quantity, in closer conjunction with the sea. The idea is also corroborated by the blandness of the temperature, and if the water of which I speak does not proceed from the Earthly Paradise, it appears to be still more marvelous, for I do not believe there is any river in the world so large or so deep.”12
Besides Nelson and Columbus, a third celebrated seaman visited this part of the world. This was Sir Walter Raleigh, of whom we shall have more to say as we proceed.13
Our parting view of the forest-clad mountains of Trinidad we shall never forget. The sun was setting on the mainland—the land of Gracia of Columbus—but before disappearing below the horizon he tinged Iere’s mountains with a parting smile and enveloped them in a
“—soft and purple mist
Like a vaporous amethyst;”
reminding one of the azure haze that veils Hymettus as the sun sinks behind Parnassus in an evening in June—something that only the gifted Greek poet has ever been able adequately to describe.
The shades of night had fallen long before we reached the Serpent’s Mouth, which we were obliged to pass before entering the Macareo, one of the numerous channels of the Orinoco delta. We were thus deprived of the opportunity of getting a good view of the huge billows that are produced by the meeting of river and sea, of which Columbus has given us so graphic a description.
Those of the passengers that were disposed to become seasick retired to their staterooms before we arrived at the Macareo bar, where the sea is roughest, and where the ground-swells are most unpleasant. For half an hour or more the steamer tossed considerably, reminding one of the English Channel in stormy weather. But the impact of surge against surge, of which Columbus speaks, was much less than we had been led to anticipate, and there was little indication of the forcible eddies of the “violentlie swift Orinoco,” which caused Raleigh so much embarrassment.
This was easily accounted for, as the rainy season had not yet set in, and the waters at the various estuaries were, therefore, comparatively little agitated. Columbus, however, arrived here towards the end of the rainy season, when the floods of the Orinoco were at their height, while Raleigh came after the rainy season was quite well advanced. Again, ours was a fairly good-sized steamer and better adapted to stem wave and current than were the fragile barks of Columbus, or the frail wherries and cock-boats of Raleigh. When the floods of the Orinoco were at high-water mark, we can well understand that the early navigators had reason to be deeply impressed by the dangers that confronted them in these seething and roaring waters, and that, to their exalted imaginations, the realities of their surroundings were in nowise short of the fancies of the poet as indicated in the verses at the head of this chapter. Indeed, so great were the supposed difficulties, and so dangerous the climate in these parts, that sailors were wont to say,
“Quien se va al Orinoco,
Si no se muere, se vuelve loco.”14
When it comes to navigating the less known rivers and caños—channels—which, like a network, intersect the delta in every direction, the difficulty and danger are even now so great that the most skilled Indian pilots often become bewildered. When this occurs nothing remains but to follow the current until one reaches the gulf, and then enter a branch with which one is familiar. Sir Walter gives such a graphic account of the difficulties he experienced in reaching “the great riuer Orenoque,” that I reproduce in his own words a part of a paragraph bearing on the subject.
After telling us how his Indian pilot had gotten lost in the maze of caños through which he was trying to grope his way, he says: “If God had not sent vs another helpe we might haue wandred a whole yeere in that laborinth of riuers, ere we had found any way, either out or in, especiallie after we were past the ebbing and flowing, which was in fower daies: for I know all the earth doth not yeeld the like confluence of streames and branches, the one crossing the other as many times, and all as faire and large and so like one to another, as no man can tell which to take: and if we went by the Sun or compasse hoping thereby to go directly one way or other, yet that waie we were also carried in a circle amongst multitudes of Islands, and euery Island so bordered with high trees as no man could see any further than the bredth of the riuer, or length of the breach.”15
Exaggerated as this account seems, it does scant justice to the reality. Raleigh had no opportunity to explore the delta, and to acquire definite notions of its immensity, or he would have had much more to add to the foregoing description of its extent and marvels. Even to-day we have no map of this region, which is, in many respects, as unknown as the least explored part of Central Africa. As yet our knowledge of land and river is limited only to its most salient features, but this is quite sufficient to excite our wonder. Suffice it to say that the area of the delta is greater than that of Sicily; that its base, from its main branch at the Boca de Navios to the embouchure of the Manamo, is nearly two hundred miles in length; that the Orinoco, at the bifurcation of its two principal branches, is twelves miles in width; that there are no fewer than fifty branches conveying the waters of the mighty river into the Atlantic; that the lowlands of the delta are divided into thousands of islands, and islets, by a network of rivers diverging in fan-shape towards the sea, and by innumerable caños and bayous, some with stagnant water, others with strong currents, ramifying in every direction in straight lines and in curves, so that escape from their intricacies by any one, except an experienced pilot, would be as impossible as would have been an exit from the Cretan labyrinth without the clew of Ariadne.
When we arose the morning after leaving Trinidad, our steamer had already advanced quite a distance on its way through the Macareo. This brazo, or branch, is chosen not because it is the largest or the deepest, but because it affords the shortest and most direct route between the Port-of-Spain and Ciudad Bolivar. Although the distance to this latter place from the mouth of the Macareo is only two hundred and sixty miles, it usually required nearly two days, counting the stops on the way, for the trip up the river, so strong is the current The return trip, however, can be made in much less time.
We shall never forget our first view of the Orinoco and of the impressions we then received. Was it that we were at last sailing in the placid waters of the one river of all the world that we had from our youth most yearned to behold, or was it that we had been dreaming of the site and beauties of the Terrestrial Paradise, as fancied by Columbus to exist in these parts, or was it because of both these elements combined? We know not, but one thing is certain, and that is that our first view of the Orinoco and its forest-shaded banks, festooned with vines and flowers, recalled at once those musical words of Dante,
“Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread
O’er the serene aspect of the pure air,
High up as the first circle, to mine eyes
Unwonted joy renewed.”16
and brought vividly back to memory his inimitable description of his entrance into the Garden of Eden, where he was to meet again his long-lost Beatrice.
To emphasize the illusion, there suddenly appeared under a noble moriche palm on the flower-enameled bank of the river and only a few rods from where we were standing, two children of the forest—a young man and a young woman—bride and groom, we loved to think—who were as Columbus found the American, as Adam and Eve were after the fall, when, in the words of Milton,
“Those leaves
They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe,
And with what skill they had, together sewed
To gird their waist.”
Handsome was the youth and beautiful was the maiden, strong as Hiawatha, fair as Minnehaha—both fit models for sculptor and painter, and such as the poet dreams of when depicting his heroes and heroines of the forest primeval.
Were they the king and queen of their tribe? Fancy said, “Yes.” But whether they were or not, one could say with truth that the tan-colored maid was like the one Raleigh met along this very same river and who, in his own words, “was as well fauored and as well shaped as euer I saw anie in England.”17
Near this interesting young couple, both in the heyday of youth, lay a cluster of plantains, which was doubtless to contribute to their morning repast. But what a coincidence that, even in this trifling circumstance, we should find an additional reminder of the Earthly Paradise! Have not men of science named the plantain Musa Paradisaica, in allusion to the tradition, which has long obtained, that it was the plantain, and not the apple, that was the forbidden fruit in Eden?18 It was there to fill out the picture as an artist in the tropics would wish to see it painted.
But there was still something wanting. While we were yet under the spell of our environment, and lost in the contemplation of the Edenic beauties around us, we were awakened from our reverie by a plunge and a splash before the prow of our vessel—and there, greatest surprise of all in our series of coincidences, was a giant anaconda, full thirty feet long, vigorously plowing its way to the opposite bank of the river. It was like the water-snakes in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
“Blue, glossy, green and velvet black,
It coiled and swam,
And when it reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.”
So startling was this strange apparition that we could scarcely credit our senses, and, had it not been for exclamations of surprise by several of the passengers near by, we should have thought, for a while, that it was all a dream.
The picture was now complete. There was the serpent in this paradise of delights, as in the paradise of our first parents. And what added to the strangeness—the uncanniness—of the appearance of the serpent at this particular juncture was the extraordinary rarity of such an occurrence. One of the officers of the steamer told us that he had been sailing up and down the Orinoco for twenty years and had never seen one of these boas before. And more wonderful still, it was the first and last we ourselves saw, although we subsequently traveled many thousands of miles on tropical rivers along which such serpents have their habitat.19
All in all, our first view of the Orinoco fully met our fondest expectations so far as they related to variety and exuberance of vegetation and beauty of scenery. The entire delta of the Orinoco may aptly be described as one of Nature’s choicest conservatories, in which Flora has collected together the fairest growths of garden and forest, and where the charm of foliage and flower is enhanced by the presence of countless species of the feathered tribe of richest plumage and of dazzling hue.
A distinguished German traveler, Friedrich Gerstäcker, writing of his impressions of the delta of the Orinoco, does not hesitate to declare that “there is not in the world anything more glorious in vegetation than is to be seen on the banks of the Orinoco,” and that there is no place more attractive to the tourist.20
To form some conception of the wonderful variety of vegetable life to be seen in the delta, it will suffice to observe that a third of a century ago botanists had counted in the forests of Guiana no fewer than 132 families of plants, 772 genera and 2,450 distinct species. Of the genera more than sixty were indigenous.
Although we saw many things in the delta of the Orinoco that possessed intense interest for us, we saw none of the natives living in houses built on the summits of trees, about which some recent writers, following Raleigh, Humboldt and others, still entertain their readers. To tell the truth, we did not expect to find such dwellings, as it has been demonstrated beyond question that they do not now exist, and probably never did exist in these parts outside of the fertile imaginations of Raleigh and Gumilla. Humboldt never visited the delta, and hence, what he says on the subject in Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions, is based on reports received from others.21
Cardinal Bembo, writing in the first half of the sixteenth century, speaks of them, and Benzoni, his contemporary, who spent fifteen years in traveling in the New World, illustrates by an engraving what he has to say about the Indian houses built on the tops of trees.22
Scene on the Orinoco. (From Goering.)
Ferdinand Columbus, who, although a mere youth, had accompanied his father on his fourth voyage, writes, that when in the Gulf of Uraba, “We saw people living like birds in the tops of trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough, and building their huts upon them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom, we guessed that it was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins that are in this island.”23
Peter Martyr, who most likely got his information about these strange dwellings from Ferdinand Columbus, tells us that the trees on which they were built were of “suche heighth, that the strength of no mane’s arme is able to hurle a stone to the houses buylded therein.” He adds, however, that the owners of the houses have “theyr wyne cellers in the grounde and well replenysshed.” And he vouchsafes the reason for not keeping the wine, with “all other necessayre thinges they haue, with theym in the trees. For albeit that the vehemencie of the wynde, is not of poure to caste downe those houses, or to breeke the branches of the trees, yet are they tossed therwith, and swaye sumwhat from syde to syde, by reason therof, the wyne shulde be muche troubeled with moouinge.... When the Kynge or any of the other noblemen, dyne or suppe in these trees, theyr wynes are brought theym from the celleres by theyr seruantes, whyche by meanes of exercise are accustomed with noo lesse celeritie to runne vppe and downe the steares adherete to the tree, then doo owre waytynge boyes vppon the playne grounde, fetche vs what wee caule for from the cobbarde bysyde owr dynynge table.”
As to the size of the trees the same writer avers, “Owr men measuringe manye of these trees, founde them to bee of suche biggnes, that seuen men, ye sumetymes eight, holdinge hande in hande with theyr armes streached furthe, were scarcely able to fathame them aboute.”24
Raleigh had evidently read some of these accounts about people living on tree tops, but not satisfied with the Munchausen tales of his predecessors, he proceeds to entertain his readers with stories as marvelous as those of Sindbad the Sailor.
Writing of the Indians of the delta, he says: “In the winter they dwell vpon the trees, where they build very artificiall towns, and villages, ... for between May and September, the riuer Orenoke riseth thirtie foote vpright, and then are those Ilands ouerflowen twentie foote high aboue the leuell of the ground, sauing some few raised grounds in the middle of them.... They neuer eate of anie thing that is set or sowen, and as at home they vse neither planting nor other manurance, so when they com abroad the refuse to feede of ought but of that which nature without labor bringeth foorth.”25
Of the Waraus, the Indians who inhabit the delta, the missionary, Padre Gumilla, writes that when their islands are periodically inundated by the rise of the Orinoco, they erect their huts on piles—not on trees, as Raleigh states—above the water. Furthermore, he tells us that these huts are made of the moriche palm, which grows abundantly in these islands, and are covered with the leaves of it. From the fibres of the leaf, they make their hammocks and their cords for fishing and for bowstrings.
Around the pulpy shoot that ascends from the trunks is a web-like integument that serves them for the slight covering they wear. On the productions of this tree, also, they entirely subsist. The pulpy shoot is eaten as cabbage, and the tree bears a fruit like the date, but somewhat larger. When the inundation ceases, the tree is cut down, and being perforated, a palatable juice exudes, from which they make a drink. The interior substance of it is then taken out and thrown into vessels of water and well washed and the ligneous fibres being removed, a white sediment is deposited, which, dried in the sun, is made into a very wholesome bread.26
Accepting the foregoing statements as true, Humboldt philosophizes as follows: “It is curious to observe in the lowest degree of civilization the existence of a whole tribe depending on a single species of palm tree, similar to those insects which feed on one and the same flower, or on one and the same part of a plant.”27
Yet, notwithstanding all that has been written about the Indians of the Orinoco delta living on the tops of trees, and depending on only the moriche palm for food and raiment, it is certain that they do not do so now, and it is almost equally certain that they have never done so in the past. Truth to tell, these stories seem to repose on little better foundation than those so long circulated and credited regarding Lake Parime, and the great city of Manoa—the home of El Dorado.
Raleigh had no time or opportunity to explore the delta, and there is reason to believe that in this, as in other matters, he gave free reign to his fancy to satisfy his reader’s desire for the marvelous. Gumilla, apparently, got his information regarding these particular subjects at secondhand. He spent many years on the middle Orinoco and some of its affluents, but there is no evidence that he was ever in a position to verify the stories so long current regarding the manner of living of the inhabitants of the delta.
The fact is, no one, so far as known, ever made any attempt to explore the interior of the delta until more than two centuries after Raleigh’s time and until nearly a half century after Humboldt’s visit to the valley of the Orinoco. As a consequence, all that had been reported by earlier writers was exaggeration and guesswork, if not pure invention.
Sir Robert Schomburgk, who, as Her Majesty’s commissioner to survey the boundaries of British Guiana, explored the delta in 1841—and some months of his sojourn there was during the rainy season—states explicitly, that not in a single instance did he find Indians dwelling on trees. “We can well suppose that the numerous fires which were made in each hut, and the reflection of which was the stronger in consequence of the stream of vapor around the summit of trees in those moist regions, illuminated at night the adjacent trees; but the fire itself was scarcely ever made on the top of a tree. The inundation rises at the delta seldom higher than three or four feet above the banks of the rivers;”—not twenty or thirty feet, as Raleigh asserts—“and if the immediate neighborhood of the sea and the level nature of the land be considered, this is an enormous rise.”28
Herr Appun, who visited the delta some years subsequently to Schomburgk’s sojourn there, declares, “I have lived more than a year and a half among the Waraus of the Orinoco delta, and those of the east coast of South America, from Cape Sabinetta to Cape Nassau, at the mouth of the Pomeroon river in British Guiana, both during the dry and the rainy season, and never have I beheld any of the aerial dwellings that have been described.”29
The one, however, who has most thoroughly explored the interior of the delta is Sr. Andres E. Level, who spent several years among the Waraus, or Guaraunos, as they are called by the Spaniards. His investigations have completely exploded the false notions so long entertained regarding the delta and its inhabitants. The land is not all an impassable swamp. Much of it is so elevated above the river that it is never reached by the high floods of the Orinoco.
Its soil is even more fertile than that of the Nile valley and produces every tropical fruit and tree in the greatest profusion. Game is abundant, and the Indians have extensive rancherias—plantations—which supply them grain, fruits and vegetables of all kinds. In the rivers near by they have the greatest variety of fish, besides turtle that would be the delight of the epicure.
As the Waraus of the interior are a timid people and have long since learned to distrust the white man, they remain, as a rule, concealed in the depths of forests that are impassable. They are, however, a quiet, industrious, home-loving people, and are famous among the tribes in this section of Guiana for their beautiful curiaras, or canoes—made from a single log of the cedar, or of a tree called Bioci. Some of these dugouts—the monoxyla of the Greeks—are full fifty feet long and from five to six feet broad and find a ready sale as far south as Demerara.
Far from being a dismal swamp, inhabited only by poor, starving savages, condemned to live on tree tops, and to find food and clothing in a single palm, Sr. Level30 shows us that the delta is a garden of exceeding richness and that the Indians, if the government did its duty towards them by developing the marvelous resources of their land and by giving its inhabitants, so long neglected, some measure of attention and assistance, would eventually make efficient contributors to the national revenue, and become desirable citizens of the republic.
2 “The wind then failed me, and I entered a climate where the intensity of the heat was such that I thought both ships and men would have been burned up, and everything suddenly got into such a state of confusion that no man dared go below deck to attend to the securing of the water-cask and the provisions. This heat lasted eight days; on the first day the weather was fine, but on the seven other days it rained and was cloudy, yet we found no alleviation of our distress; so that I certainly believe that if the sun had shone, as on the first day, we should not have been able to escape in anyway.”—Writings of Christopher Columbus, ut sup., pp. 113, 114, and Irving’s Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Chap. XXIX. ↑
4 Eden’s First Three English Books on America, p. 338. ↑
5 Chapman’s Odyssey, Bk. VII. ↑
6 Called Bois immortelle by the French, and in Spanish bearing the appropriate name of madre de cacao, mother of cacao. ↑
7 It was upon the “boughs and spraies” of these trees that Raleigh found “great store of oisters, very salt and wel tasted.” A species of edible oyster is still found on this tree—the Rhizophora Mangle of Linnæus—but, although served on the table in the West Indies, it is far from being as luscious as our “Blue Points” or as large as our “Lynn Havens.” ↑
8 At Last, p. 79, London, 1905. ↑
9 “At this point called Tierra de Brea or Piche,” writes Raleigh, “there is that abondance of stone pitch, that all the ships of the world may therewith loden from thence, and wee made triall of it in trimming our ships to be most excellent good, and melteth not with the sunne, as the pitch of Norway, and therefore for ships trading in the south partes very profitable.”—The Discovery of Guiana, pp. 3 and 4, published for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1848. ↑
10 Writings of Columbus, op. cit., pp. 120, 121. ↑
11 Coleccion de los Viajes y descubrunientos que hiaeron por mar los Españoles desde fines dil siglo XV. Tom. III, p. 583. ↑
12 See the aforementioned letter of Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella for the quotations above given. The whole letter will well repay perusal. See also Relaciones y Cartas de Cristobal Colon, Tom. CL, XIV, de la Biblioteca Clasica, Madrid, 1892, p. 268 et seq.
Americus Vespucius shared with Columbus the belief in the existence of the Terrestrial Paradise in the newly-discovered lands near the equator. Writing to his friend, Lorenzo de Medici, giving him an account of his second voyage, he declares “In the fields flourish so many sweet flowers and herbs, and the fruits are so delicious in their fragrance, that I fancied myself near the terrestrial paradise,” and again, “If there is a terrestrial paradise in the world it cannot be far from this region.”—The Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius, pp. 197 and 214, by C. Edwards Lester and Andrew Foster, New York, 1846. ↑
13 The curious reader will be interested in learning that Sir Walter Raleigh, as well as Columbus and Vespucius, speculated about the probable site of Paradise. In his History of the World he devotes a long chapter to the subject, and several pages to the discussion “Of their Opinion which make paradise as high as the moon; and of others which make it higher than the middle region of the air,” Chap. III, Oxford, 1829. ↑
14 He who goes to the Orinoco dies or becomes crazy. ↑
15 The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, p. 46, edited by Sir Robert Schomburgk, printed for the Hakluyt Society, London, 1848. ↑
16 Purgatorio, Canto 1, vv. 13–16. ↑
17 Sir Robert Schomburgk is no less enthusiastic in his praise of the tawny beauties of this part of South America. Commenting on Raleigh’s opinion, just quoted, he writes as follows:—
“During our eight years’ wandering among the tribes of Guiana, who inhabit the vast regions from the coast of the Atlantic to the interior, between the Cassiquiare and the upper Trombetas, we have met with many an Indian female who in figure and comeliness might have vied with some of our European beauties. Although they are rather small in size, their feet and hands are generally exquisite, their ankles well turned, and their waists, left to nature and not forced into artificial shape by modern inventions, resemble the beau ideal of classical sculpture.”—The Discoverie of Guiana, ut sup., p. 41. ↑
18 The reader, I am sure, will be interested in the following paragraph from Peter Martyr on the plantain.
Speaking of the fruit of the Cassia tree (as he calls the plantain), he, in Michael Lok’s translation, says,—
“The Egyptian common people babble that this is the apple of our first created Father Adam, whereby hee ouerthrewe all mankinde. The straunge and farraine Marchantes of vnprofitable Spices, perfumes, Arabian Yseminating odours, and woorthlesse precious stones trading those Countries for gaine, call those fruites the Muses. For mine owne part I cannot call to minde, by what name I might call that tree or stalke in Latine,” p. 273. De Novo Orbe, the Historie of the West Indies, comprised in eight Decades whereof three haue beene formerly translated into English by R. Eden, whereunto the other fiue are newly added by the industrie and painfull Trauaile of M. Lok, Gent., London, 1612. ↑
19 The Anaconda is called by the inhabitants of Guiana, La Culebra de Agua, or Water Serpent. It is also named El Traga Venado—Deer Swallower—while in British Guiana it is known as the Camoudi. Mr. Waterton, speaking of it, says, “The Camoudi snake has been killed from thirty to forty feet long; though not venomous, his size renders him destructive to the passing animals. The Spaniards in the Oroonoque positively affirm that he grows to the length of seventy or eighty feet, and that he will destroy the strongest and largest bull. His name seems to confirm this; there he is called ‘matatoro,’ which literally means ‘bull-killer.’ Thus be may be ranked among the deadly snakes; for it comes nearly to the same thing in the end, whether the victim dies by poison from the fangs, which corrupts his blood, and makes it stink horribly, or whether his body be crushed to mummy, and swallowed by this hideous beast.”—Wanderings in South America, First Journey. ↑
20 Neue Reisen, p. 698, Berlin. Cf. Wandertage eines Deutschen Touristen im Strom und Küstengebiet des Orinoko, Chap. XXXIII–XXXV, von Eberhard Graf zu Erbach, Leipzig, 1892. ↑
21 “The navigator,” writes the illustrious savant, “in proceeding along the channels of the delta of the Orinoco at night, sees with surprise the summit of the palm trees illumined by large fires. These are the habitations of the Guarons (Titivitas and Waraweties of Raleigh), which are suspended from the trunks of trees. These tribes hang up mats in the air, which they fill with earth, and kindle, on a layer of moist clay, the fire necessary for their household wants. They had owed their liberty and their political independence for ages to the quaking and swampy soil, which they pass over in the time of drought, and on which they alone know how to walk in security to their solitude in the delta of the Orinoco; to their abode on the trees, where religious enthusiasm will probably never lead any American stylites. Vol. III, Chap. XXV. ↑
22 History of the New World, printed for the Hakluyt Society, pp. 237, 238. ↑
23 Historia del Almirante de las Indias, Don Cristobal Colón, Escrita por Don Fernando Colón, p. 178, Madrid, 1892. ↑
24 Dec. II, Bk. IV. Eden’s translation. ↑
26 With reason does the pious missionary call the moriche palm—Mauritia flexuosa—”nuevo arbol de la vida, y milagro del Supremo Autor de la naturaleza”—a new tree of life, and a miracle of the Author of Nature—for this tree alone furnishes the Indian with victum et amictum—food and raiment.—Historia Natural Civil y Geografica de las naciones situadas en las Riberas del Rio Orinoco, Vol. I, Cap. IX, Barcelona, 1882. Compare the following lines of Thomson’s Seasons:—
“Wide o’er his isles, the branching Oronoque
Rolls a brown deluge, and the native drives
To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees,
At once his home, his robe, his food, his arms.”
27 Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 9. ↑
28 Discoverie of Gviana, p. 50. ↑
29 Unter den Tropen, Erster Band, p. 521, Jena, 1871. ↑
30 El Delta del Orinoco tomado de la esploracion al alto bajo Orinoco y central en 1850, por Andres E. Level, Vol. III, de la Memoria de la Dirección General de Estradistica al Presidente de los Estados Unidos de Venezuela, en 1873. ↑
