Chapter VII: Part 7

The saliva with which the boa covers his prey hastens the process of decomposition; the muscular flesh thus becomes softened into such a gelatinous state, that he can force entire limbs of larger, and bodies of smaller, animals down his throat without division. The Creoles call this gigantic serpent from these circumstances, “Tragavenado,” which means “Stag swallower:” they tell fabulous stories of snakes being seen with the antlers of a stag (which it was impossible to swallow) sticking in their throats. I have several times seen the boa swimming in the Orinoco, and in the smaller forest streams, the Tuamini, the Temi and the Atabapo. It holds its head above the water like a dog. Its skin is finely spotted. It is said to attain a length of 48 feet; but the largest skins which have as yet been brought to Europe and carefully measured do not exceed 21 to 23 feet. The South American boa (which is a Python) differs from the East Indian. On the Ethiopian boa, see Diodor. lib. iii. p. 204, ed. Wesseling.

[50] p. 25.--“_Using ants, gums, and earth as food._”

It was a very prevalent report on the coasts of Cumana, New Barcelona, and Caraccas, visited by the Franciscan monks of Guiana on their return from the missions, that there were men on the banks of the Orinoco who ate earth. When, in returning from the Rio Negro, we descended the Orinoco in thirty-six days, we passed the day of the 6th of June, 1800, in the Mission inhabited by the earth-eating Otomacs. This little village is called La Concepcion de Uruana, and is very picturesquely situated at the foot of a granite rock. I found its geographical position to be 7° 8′ 3″ N. lat., and 67° 18′ W. long. from Greenwich. The earth which the Otomacs eat is a soft unctuous clay; a true potter’s clay, of a yellowish-grey colour due to a little oxide of iron. They seek for it in particular spots on the banks of the Orinoco and the Meta, and select it with care. They distinguish the taste of one kind of earth from that of another, and do not consider all clays as equally agreeable to eat. They knead the earth into balls of about five or six inches diameter, which they burn or roast by a weak fire until the outside assumes a reddish tint. The balls are remoistened when about to be eaten. These Indians are generally wild uncultivated beings, and altogether averse to any kind of tillage. It is a proverb even among the most distant of the nations living on the Orinoco, when speaking of anything very unclean, to say that it is “so dirty, that the Otomacs eat it.”

As long as the waters of the Orinoco and the Meta are low these Indians live on fish and river tortoises. They kill the fish with arrows when at the surface of the water, a pursuit in which we have often admired their great dexterity. During the periodical swelling of the rivers the taking of fish ceases, for it is as difficult to fish in deep river water as in the deep sea. It is in this interval, which is of two or three months’ duration, that the Otomacs swallow great quantities of earth. We have found considerable stores of it in their huts, the clay balls being piled together in pyramidal heaps. The very intelligent monk, Fray Ramon Bueno, a native of Madrid (who lived twelve years among these Indians), assured us that one of them would eat from three quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter in a day. According to the accounts which the Otomacs themselves give, this earth forms their principal subsistence during the rainy season, though they eat at the same time occasionally, when they can obtain it, a lizard, a small fish, or a fern root. They have such a predilection for the clay, that even in the dry season, when they can obtain plenty of fish, they eat a little earth after their meals every day as a kind of dainty. These men have a dark copper-brown complexion, and unpleasing Tartar features. They are fat, but not large-bellied. The Franciscan monk who lived among them as a missionary, assured us that he could perceive no alteration in their health during the earth-eating season.

The simple facts are therefore as follows:--The Indians eat large quantities of earth without injury to their health; and they themselves regard the earth so eaten as an alimentary substance, _i. e._ they feel themselves satisfied by eating it, and that for a considerable time; and they attribute this to the earth or clay, and not to the other scanty articles of subsistence which they now and then obtain in addition. If you inquire from an Otomac about his winter provision, (in tropical South America the rainy season is usually called winter), he points to the heap of clay balls stored in his hut. But these simple facts by no means determine the questions, whether the clay be really an alimentary substance? whether earths be capable of assimilation? or whether they merely serve to appease hunger by distending the stomach? I cannot pretend to decide these questions. (Rel. hist. T. ii. p. 618-620.) It is curious that the usually credulous and uncritical Father Gumilla positively denies the earth-eating as such. (Historia del Rio Orinoco, nueva impr. 1791, T. i. p. 179.) He affirms that the balls of clay had maize-meal and crocodile-fat mixed with them. But the missionary, Fray Ramon Bueno, and our friend and travelling companion, the lay brother Fray Juan Gonzalez, who was lost at sea off the Coast of Africa with part of our collections, both assured us that the Otomacs never mix crocodile fat with the clay; and of the meal said to be mixed with it we heard absolutely nothing during our stay in Uruana. The earth which we brought back with us, and which Vauquelin analysed, is thoroughly pure and unmixed. May Gumilla, by a confusion of things wholly distinct, have been alluding to the preparation of bread from the long pod of a kind of Inga, which is previously buried in the earth in order to hasten the commencement of the first stage of decay? That the health of the Otomacs should not suffer from eating so much earth appears to me particularly remarkable. Have they become accustomed to it in the course of several generations?

In all tropical countries, human beings shew an extraordinary and almost irresistible desire to swallow earth; and not alkaline earths, which they might be supposed to crave to neutralize acid, but unctuous and strong-smelling clays. It is often necessary to confine children to prevent them from running out to eat earth immediately after a fall of rain. I have observed with astonishment the Indian women in the village of Banco on the Magdalena River, whilst engaged in shaping earthen vessels on the potter’s wheel, put great lumps of clay into their mouths. The same thing was remarked at an earlier period by Gili. (Saggio di Storia Americana, T. ii. p. 311.) Wolves also eat earth, and especially clay, in winter. It would be important to examine carefully the excrements of animals and men that eat earth. With the exception of the Otomacs, individuals of all other races who indulge for any length of time the strange desire of earth-eating have their health injured by it. At the mission of San Borja, we saw the child of an Indian woman, who, his mother said, would hardly eat anything but earth. He was, however, wasted nearly to a skeleton.

Why is it that in the temperate and cold zones this morbid craving for eating earth is so much more rare, and is almost entirely confined, when it is met with, to children and pregnant women; while in the tropics it would appear to be indigenous in all quarters of the globe? In Guinea the negroes eat a yellowish earth, which they call Caouac. When brought as slaves to the West Indies, they try to obtain a similar earth, and affirm that in their own country the habit never did them any harm. In the American Islands they were made ill by it, and it was forbidden in consequence; but a kind of earth (un tuf rouge jaunâtre) was, in 1751, sold secretly in the market in Martinique. “Les negres de Guinée disent que dans leur pays ils mangent habituellement une certaine terre, dont le goût leur plait, sans en être incommodés. Ceux qui sont dans l’abus de manger du Caouac en sont si friands qu’il n’y a pas de châtiment qui puisse les empêcher de dévorer de la terre.” (Thibault de Chanvalon, Voyage à la Martinique, p. 85.) In the Island of Java, between Sarabaya and Samarang, Labillardière saw small square reddish-coloured cakes exposed for sale in the villages. The natives called them tana ampo (tanah, in Malay and Javanese, signifies earth). On examination and enquiry he found that the cakes consisted of reddish clay, and that they were eaten. (Voyage à la Récherche de la Pérouse, T. ii. p. 322.) The edible clay of Samarang has recently been sent to Berlin by Mohnike, in 1847, in the shape of rolled tubes, like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It is a fresh-water formation deposited on limestone, and consisting of microscopic Polygastrica, Gaillonella, Naviculas, and Phytolitharia. (Bericht über die Verhandl. der Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, aus dem J. 1848, S. 222-225.) The inhabitants of New Caledonia, to appease their hunger, eat pieces as big as the fist of friable steatite, which Vauquelin found to contain in addition no inconsiderable quantity of copper. (Voyage à la Récherche de la Pérouse, T. ii. p. 205.) In Popayan, and several parts of Peru, calcareous earth is sold in the streets as an eatable for the Indians; it is used with Coca (the leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum.) Thus we find the practice of eating earth diffused throughout the torrid zone, among indolent races inhabiting the finest and most fertile parts of the globe. But accounts have also come from the North, through Berzelius and Retzius, according to which, hundreds of cartloads of earth containing Infusoria are said to be annually consumed by the country people, in the most remote parts of Sweden, as breadmeal, and even more from fancy (like the smoking of tobacco) than from necessity! In Finland this kind of earth is occasionally mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells of animalculæ, so small and soft that they do not crunch perceptibly between the teeth; it fills the stomach, but gives no real nourishment. In periods of war, chronicles and documents preserved in archives often give intimation of earths containing infusoria having been eaten; speaking of them under the vague and general name of “mountain meal.” It was thus during the Thirty Years’ War in Pomerania (at Camin); in the Lausitz (at Muskau); and in the territory of Dessau (at Klieken); and subsequently in 1719 and 1733 at the fortress of Wittenberg. (See Ehrenberg über das unsichtbar wirkende organische Leben, 1842, S. 41.)

[51] p. 25.--“_Figures graven on the rock._”

In the interior of South America, between the 2d and 4th degrees of North latitude, a forest-covered plain is enclosed by four rivers, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiare. In this district are found rocks of granite and of syenite, covered, like those of Caicara and Uruana, with colossal symbolical figures of crocodiles and tigers, and drawings of household utensils, and of the sun and moon. At the present time this remote corner of the earth is entirely without human inhabitants, throughout an extent of more than 8000 square geographical miles. The tribes nearest to its boundaries are wandering naked savages, in the lowest stage of human existence, and far removed from any thoughts of carving hieroglyphics on rocks. One may trace in South America an entire zone, extending through more than eight degrees of longitude, of rocks so ornamented; viz. from the Rupuniri, Essequibo, and the mountains of Pacaraima, to the banks of the Orinoco and of the Yupura. These carvings may belong to very different epochs, for Sir Robert Schomburgk even found on the Rio Negro representations of a Spanish galiot (Reisen in Guiana und am Orinoko, übersetzt von Otto Schomburgk, 1841, S. 500), which must have been of a later date than the beginning of the 16th century; and this in a wilderness where the natives were probably as rude then as at the present time. But it must not be forgotten that, as I have elsewhere noticed, nations of very different descent, when in a similar uncivilized state, having the same disposition to simplify and generalise outlines, and being impelled by inherent mental dispositions to form rhythmical repetitions and series, may be led to produce similar signs and symbols. (Compare Relation hist. T. ii. p. 589, and Martius über die Physionomie des Pflanzenreichs in Brasilien, 1824, S. 14.)

At the Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 17th of November, 1836, there was read a memoir by Sir Robert Schomburgk “On the Religious Traditions of the Macusi Indians, who inhabit the Upper Mahu and a part of the Pacaraima Mountains;” a nation, consequently, who for a century (since the journey of the adventurous Hortsmann,) have not changed their residence. Sir Robert Schomburgk says: “The Macusis believe that the sole survivor of a general deluge repeopled the earth by changing stones into human beings.” This myth (the fruit of the lively imagination of these nations, and which reminds us of Deucalion and Pyrrha), shews itself in a somewhat altered form among the Tamanaks of the Orinoco. When asked how mankind survived the great flood, the “age of waters” of the Mexicans, they reply without any hesitation, that ‘one man and one woman took refuge on the high mountain of Tamanacu, on the banks of the Asiveru, and that they then threw over their heads and behind their backs the fruits of the Mauritia-palm, from the kernels of which sprang men and women who repeopled the earth.’ Some miles from Encaramada, there rises, in the middle of the savannah, the rock Tepu-Mereme, or the painted rock. It shews several figures of animals and symbolical outlines which resemble much those observed by us at some distance above Encaramada, near Caycara, in 7° 5′ to 7° 40′ lat. and 66° 28′ to 67° 23′ W. long. from Greenwich. Rocks thus marked are found between the Cassiquiare and the Atabapo (in 2° 5′ to 3° 20′ lat.), and what is particularly remarkable, 560 geographical miles farther to the East in the solitudes of the Parime. This last fact is placed beyond a doubt by the journal of Nicholas Hortsmann, of which I have seen a copy in the handwriting of the celebrated D’Anville. That simple and modest traveller wrote down every day, on the spot, what had appeared to him most worthy of notice, and he deserves perhaps the more credence because, being full of dissatisfaction at having failed to discover the objects of his researches, the Lake of Dorado, with lumps of gold and a diamond mine, he looked with a certain degree of contempt on whatever fell in his way. He found, on the 16th of April, 1749, on the banks of the Rupunuri, at the spot where the river winding between the Macarana mountains forms several small cascades, and before arriving in the district immediately round Lake Amucu, “rocks covered with figures,”--or as he says in Portuguese, “de varias letras.” We were shown at the rock of Culimacari, on the banks of the Cassiquiare, signs which were called characters, arranged in lines,--but they were only ill-shaped figures of heavenly bodies, boa-serpents, and the utensils employed in preparing manioc-meal. I have never found among these painted rocks (piedras pintadas) any symmetrical arrangement or any regular even-spaced characters. I am therefore disposed to think that the word “letras” in Hortsmann’s journal must not be taken in the strictest sense.

Schomburgk was not so fortunate as to rediscover the rock seen by Hortsmann, but he has seen and described others on the banks of the Essequibo, near the cascade of Warraputa. “This cascade,” he says, “is celebrated not only for its height but also for the quantity of figures cut on the rock, which have great resemblance to those which I have seen in the Island of St. John, one of the Virgin Islands, and which I consider to be, without doubt, the work of the Caribs, by whom that part of the Antilles was formerly inhabited. I made the utmost efforts to detach portions of the rock which contained the inscription, and which I desired to take with me; but the stone was too hard, and fever had taken away my strength. Neither promises nor threats could prevail on the Indians to give a single blow with a hammer to these rocks,--the venerable monuments of the superior mental cultivation of their predecessors. They regard them as the work of the Great Spirit, and the different tribes who we met with, though living at a great distance, were nevertheless acquainted with them. Terror was painted on the faces of my Indian companions, who appeared to expect every moment that the fire of heaven would fall on my head. I saw clearly that my endeavours would be fruitless, and I contented myself with bringing away a complete drawing of these memorials.” The last determination was certainly the best, and the editor of the English Journal, to my great satisfaction, adds a note to the effect that it is to be wished that no one else may be more successful than Mr. Schomburgk, and that no future traveller from civilized countries may do anything towards the destruction of these monuments of the unprotected Indians.

The symbolical signs seen by Robert Schomburgk in the Valley of the Essequibo, near the rapids of Waraputa, (Richard Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, Th. i. S. 320), were remarked by him to bear a great resemblance to genuine Carib ones in one of the small Virgin Islands (St. John’s); but notwithstanding the wide extent of the invasions of the Caribs, and the ancient power of this fine race, I cannot believe that all the rock engravings,--which, as I have said, form an immense belt traversing a great part of South America from west to east,--are to be regarded as their work. I am inclined rather to view these remains as traces of an ancient civilisation,--belonging, perhaps, to an epoch when the tribes whom we now distinguish by various appellations were still unknown. Even the veneration everywhere testified by the Indians of the present day for these rude sculptures of their predecessors, shews that they have no idea of the execution of similar works. There is another circumstance which should be mentioned: between Encaramada and Caycara, on the banks of the Orinoco, a number of these hieroglyphical figures are sculptured on the face of precipices at a height which could now be reached only by means of extraordinarily high scaffolding. If one asks the natives how these figures can have been cut, they answer, laughing, as if it were a fact of which none but a white man could be ignorant, that “in the days of the great waters their fathers went in canoes at that height.” Thus a geological fancy is made to afford an answer to the problem presented by a civilisation which has long passed away.

Let me be permitted to introduce here a remark which I borrow from a letter addressed to me by the distinguished traveller, Sir Robert Schomburgk. “The hieroglyphical figures are more widely extended than you had perhaps supposed. During my expedition, which had for its object the examination of the Corentyn River, I not only observed some colossal figures on the rock of Timeri (4-1/2° N. lat. and 57-1/2° W. long.), but I also discovered similar ones near the great cataracts of the Corentyn, in 4° 21′ 30″ N. lat. and 57° 55′ 30″ W. long. These figures are executed with much greater care than any which I discovered in Guiana. Their size is about ten feet, and they appear to represent human figures. The head-dress is extremely remarkable; it encompasses the head, spreading out considerably in breadth, and is not unlike the halos represented in paintings as surrounding the heads of Saints and Sacred Persons. I have left my drawings of these figures in the colony, but I hope some day to be able to lay them all before the public. I saw ruder figures on the Cuyuwini, a river which empties itself into the Essequibo in latitude 2° 16′ N., entering it from the north-west; and I have since seen similar figures on the Essequibo itself in 1° 40′ N. lat. These figures extend, therefore, as ascertained by actual observation, from 7° 10′ to 1° 40′ N. lat., and from 57° 30′ to 66° 30′ W. long. Thus the zone of pictured rocks extends, so far as it has been at present examined, over a space of 192000 square geographical miles, comprising the basins of the Corentyn, the Essequibo, and the Orinoco; a circumstance from which we may form some inferences respecting the former amount of population in this part of the continent.”

Other remarkable remains of a degree of civilisation which no longer exists, are the granite vases with graceful labyrinthine ornaments, and the earthen masks resembling Roman ones, which have been discovered on the Mosquito coast, among wild Indians. (Archæologia Britan. vol. v. 1779, p. 318-324; and vol. vi. 1782, p. 107.) I have had them engraved in the “Picturesque Atlas” which accompanies the historical portion of my Travels to the Equinoctial Regions. Antiquaries are astonished at the similarity of these ornaments (resembling a well-known Grecian form), to those of the Palace of Mitla, near Oaxaca, in Mexico. In looking at Peruvian carvings, I have never remarked any figures of the large-nosed race of men, so frequently represented in the bas-reliefs of Palenque in Guatimala, and in the Aztec paintings. Klaproth remembered having seen individuals with similar large noses among the Chalcas, a northern Mogul tribe. It is well known that many tribes of the North American red or copper-coloured Indians have fine aquiline noses; and that this is an essential physiognomic distinction between them and the present inhabitants of Mexico, New Granada, Quito, and Peru. Are the large-eyed, comparatively fair-complexioned people, spoken of by Marchand as having been seen in 54° and 58° lat. on the north-west coast of America, descended from an Alano-Gothic race, the Usüni of the interior of Asia?

[52] p. 25.--“_Apparently weaponless, and yet prepared for murder._”

The Otomacs often poison the thumb-nail with Curare. A mere scratch of the nail is deadly if the curare mixes with the blood. We obtained specimens of the climbing plant, from the juice of which the curare is prepared, at Esmeralda on the Upper Orinoco, but unfortunately we did not find it in blossom. Judging by its physiognomy it appears to be related to Strychnos (Rel. hist. T. ii. p. 547-556). Since the notice in the work referred to of the curare or ourari (previously mentioned by Raleigh, both as a plant and as a poison), the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk have done much towards making us accurately acquainted with the nature and preparation of this substance, of which I was the first to bring a considerable quantity to Europe. Richard Schomburgk found the plant in blossom in Guiana on the banks of the Pomeroon and the Sururu in the territory of the Caribs, who are not, however, acquainted with the manner of preparing the poison. His instructive work (Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, Th. i. S. 441-461), contains the chemical analysis of the juice of the Strychnos toxifera, which, notwithstanding its name and its organic structure, does not contain, according to Boussingault, any trace of strychnine. Virchou and Münter’s interesting physiological experiments make it probable that the curare or ourari poison does not kill by mere external absorption, but only when absorbed by living animal substance of which the continuity has been severed (_i. e._ which has been wounded slightly); that it does not belong to the class of tetanic poisons; and that its particular effect is to take away the power of voluntary muscular movement, whilst the involuntary functions of the heart and intestines still continue. Compare, also, the older chemical analysis of Boussingault, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, T. xxxix. 1828, p. 24-37.

[*] [The circumstance referred to was even more remarkable. Casks of palm oil, part of the cargo of the ship wrecked near Cape Lopez, were conveyed by the current to Finmarken, and stranded near the North Cape. Vide Editor’s note in the English translation of “Cosmos,” vol. i. p. xcvii.]--_Tr._

THE

CATARACTS OF THE ORINOCO.

In the preceding section, which was made the subject of an academical lecture, I sought to depict those boundless plains which, according to the varying modification of their natural characters induced by climatic relations, appear to us sometimes as Deserts devoid of vegetation, and sometimes as Steppes, or widely-extended grassy plains or Prairies. In so doing I contrasted the Llanos of the southern part of the New Continent with the dreadful seas of sand which form the African Deserts; and these again with the Steppes of Central Asia, the habitation of world-assailing pastoral nations, who at a former period, when pressed hitherward from the East, spread barbarism and devastation over the earth.

If on that occasion, (in 1806,) I ventured to combine widely distributed portions of the earth’s surface in a single picture of nature, and to entertain a public assembly with images whose colouring was in unison with the mournful disposition of our minds at that epoch, I will now, limiting myself to a narrower circle of phenomena, sketch the more cheerful picture of river scenery composed of foaming rapids and rich luxuriant vegetation. I propose to describe in particular two scenes of nature in the wildernesses of Guiana,--the celebrated Cataracts of the Orinoco, Atures and Maypures,--which, previous to my visit, few Europeans had ever seen.

The impression left on our minds by the aspect of nature is frequently determined, less even by the peculiar character of the strictly terrestrial portion of the scene, than by the light thrown on mountain or plain, either by a sky of azure purity, or by one veiled by lowering clouds; and in the same manner descriptions of nature act upon us more powerfully or more feebly, according as they are more or less in harmony with the requirements of our feelings. For it is the inward mirror of the sensitive mind which reflects the true and living image of the natural world. All that determines the character of a landscape,--the outline of the mountains, which, in the far-vanishing distance, bound the horizon,--the dark shade of the pine forests,--the sylvan torrent rushing between overhanging cliffs to its fall,--all are in antecedent mysterious communion with the inner feelings and life of man.

On this communion rests the nobler portion of the enjoyment which nature affords. Nowhere does she penetrate us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur, nowhere does she speak to us with a more powerful voice, than in the tropical world, under the “Indian sky,” as, in the early middle ages, the climate of the torrid zone was called. If, therefore, I venture again to occupy this Assembly with a description of those regions, I do so in the hope that the peculiar charm which belongs to them will not be unfelt. The remembrance of a distant richly endowed land,--the aspect of a free and vigorous vegetation,--refreshes and strengthens the mind; in the same manner as our spirits, when oppressed with the actual present, love to escape awhile, and to delight themselves with the earlier youthful age of mankind, and with the manifestations of its simple grandeur.

Favouring winds and currents bear the voyager westward across the peaceful Ocean arm,[53] which fills the wide valley between the New Continent and western Africa. Before the American shore rises from the liquid plain, he hears the tumult of contending, mutually opposing, and inter-crossing waves. The mariner unacquainted with the region would surmise the vicinity of shoals, or a wonderful outbreak of fresh springs in the middle of the ocean,[54] like those in the neighbourhood of Cuba. On approaching nearer to the granitic coast of Guiana, he becomes sensible that he has entered the wide embouchure of a mighty river, which issues forth like a shoreless lake and covers the ocean around with fresh water. The green, and on the shallows the milk-white, tint of the fresh water contrasts with the indigo-blue colour of the sea, and marks with sharp outlines the limits of the river waves.

The name Orinoco, given to the river by its first discoverers, and which probably originated in some confusion of language, is unknown in the interior of the country. Nations in a rude state designate by proper geographical names only such objects as can be confounded with each other. The Orinoco, the Amazons, and the Magdalena rivers, are called simply “The River,” or “The Great River,” or “The Great Water;” whilst those who dwell on their banks distinguish even the smallest streams by particular names.

The current produced by the Orinoco, between the mainland and the Island of Trinidad with its asphaltic lake, is so strong, that ships with all sail set, and with a favourable breeze, can with difficulty make way against it. This deserted and dreaded part of the sea is called the Bay of Sadness (Golfo Triste); the entrance forms the Dragon’s Mouth (Boca del Drago). Here detached cliffs rise like towers above the foaming floods, and seem still to indicate the ancient site of a rocky bulwark[55], which, before it was broken by the force of the current, united the island of Trinidad with the coast of Paria.

The aspect of this region first convinced the great discoverer of the New World of the existence of an American continent. Familiar with nature, he inferred that so immense a body of fresh water could only be collected in a long course, and “that the land which supplied it must be a continent, not an island.” As, according to Arrian, the companions of Alexander, after crossing the snow-covered Paropanisus,[56] on reaching the Indus imagined, from the presence of crocodiles, that they recognised in that river a branch of the Nile; so Columbus, unaware of the similarity of physiognomy which characterises the various productions of the climate of Palms, readily supposed this new continent to be the eastern coast of the far-projecting continent of Asia. The mild coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity of the starry firmament, the balsamic fragrance of the flowers wafted to him by the land breeze,--all led him (as Herrara tells us in the Decades)[57], to deem that he had approached the garden of Eden, the sacred dwelling-place of the first parents of the human race. The Orinoco appeared to him to be one of the four rivers descending from Paradise, to divide and water the earth newly decked with vegetation. This poetic passage from the journal of Columbus’s voyage, or rather from a letter written from Hayti, in October 1498, to Ferdinand and Isabella, has a peculiar psychological interest. It teaches us anew that the creative imagination of the poet exists in the Discoverer as in every form of human greatness.

In considering the quantity of water which the Orinoco bears to the Atlantic, the question arises--Which of the great South American Rivers,--the Orinoco, the Amazons, or the River Plate,--is the largest? The question, however, thus put is not a determinate one, the idea of size in this case not being altogether definite. The River Plate has the widest embouchure, being 92 geographical miles across; but, like the British rivers, its length is comparatively small. Even at Buenos Ayres its depth is already so inconsiderable as to impede navigation. The Amazons is the longest of all rivers: its course from its origin in the Lake of Lauricocha to its mouth is 2880 geographical miles. But its breadth in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, near the cataract of Rentama, as measured by me at the foot of the picturesque mountain of Patachuma, hardly equals that of the Rhine at Mayence.

The Orinoco is narrower at its mouth than either the River Plate or the Amazons; and its length, according to positions astronomically determined by me, only amounts to 1120 geographical miles. But, on the other hand, far in the interior of Guiana, 560 miles from its mouth, I still found its breadth, when full, 16200 Parisian (17265 Eng.) feet. The periodical swelling of the river annually raises its level at this part of its course from 30 to 36 feet above its lowest level. Sufficient materials for an accurate comparison of the enormous rivers which intersect the continent of South America are still wanting. For such a comparison it would be needful to know in each case the profile of the river-bed, and the velocity of the water, which differs very greatly in different parts of the same stream.

If, in the Delta enclosed by its variously divided and still unexplored arms,--in the regularity of its periodical rise and fall--and in the number and size of its crocodiles,--the Orinoco shews points of resemblance to the Nile, there is this further analogy between the two rivers, that after long rushing rapidly through many windings between wood-fringed shores formed by granitic and syenitic rocks and mountains, during the remainder of their course they slowly roll their waters to the sea, between treeless banks, over an almost horizontal bed. An arm of the Nile (the Green Nile, Bahr-el-Azrek) flows from the celebrated mountain-lake near Gondar, in the Abyssinian Gojam Alps, to Syene and Elephantis, through the mountains of Shangalla and Sennaar. In a similar manner the Orinoco rises on the southern declivity of the mountain chain which, in the 4th and 5th parallel of North latitude, extends westward from French Guiana towards the Andes of New Granada. The sources of the Orinoco[58] have never been visited by any European, or even by any natives who have been in communication with Europeans.

In ascending the Upper Orinoco in the summer of 1800, we passed the Mission of Esmeralda, and reached the mouths of the Sodomoni and the Guapo. Here rises high above the clouds the massive summit of the Yeonnamari or Duida, a grand and picturesque mountain which presents to the spectator one of the finest scenes of nature which the tropical world has to offer. Its altitude, according to my trigonometrical measurement, is 8278 (8823 Eng.) feet above the level of the sea. The southern slope of the mountain presents a treeless grassy surface, and the humid evening air is filled far and wide with the fragrance of the ripe ananas. The stalks of the pine apples, swelling with rich juice, rise between the lowly herbs of the meadow, and the golden fruit is seen shining at a distance from under its leafy crown of bluish-green. Where mountain springs or rivulets break forth from the turfy covering, the scene is further adorned by groups of tall fan-palms, whose foliage never feels the influence of a cool breeze.

On the east of the Duida mountain a dense thicket of wild Cacao groves begins, and amidst these are found trees of the celebrated Bertholletia excelsa, the most vigorous of the productions of the tropical world[59]. Here the Indians collect the materials for their blow-pipes, colossal grass-stalks having joints above 18 feet long from knot to knot.[60] Some Franciscan monks have penetrated as far as the mouth of the Chiguire, where the river is already so narrow that the natives have thrown across it, near the waterfall of the Guaharibes, a suspension bridge formed of the twining stems of climbing plants. The Guaicas, a race of comparatively light complexion but of small stature, armed with poisoned arrows, forbid any farther advance towards the east.

All, therefore, that has been put forward respecting the lake origin of the Orinoco is fabulous[61]. We seek in vain in nature for the Laguna of El Dorado, which is still marked in Arrowsmith’s maps as an inland sea 80 geographical miles in length. Has the little reedy lake of Amucu, from which the Pirara (a branch of the Mahu) flows, given rise to this fable? But the swamp in which the lake of Amucu is situated is four degrees of longitude to the east of the district in which the sources of the Orinoco must be sought.

It was an ancient custom of dogmatising geographers to make all the larger rivers of the world originate in considerable lakes. To the lake forming the supposed origin of the Orinoco was transferred the site of the island of Pumacena, a rock of micaceous slate, the glitter of which, in the 16th century, played, in the fable of El Dorado, a memorable, and to deceived humanity often a fatal part. It is the belief of the natives, that the Magellanic clouds of the southern hemisphere, and even the fine nebulæ in the constellation of the ship Argo, are a reflection of the metallic brilliancy of the silver mountains of the Parime.

The Orinoco is one of those rivers which, after many windings, seem to return back towards the region in which they took their rise. After following a westerly and then a northerly course, it runs again to the east, so that its mouth is almost in the same meridian as its source. From the Chiguire and the Gehette as far as the Guaviare the Orinoco flows to the west, as if it would carry its waters to the Pacific. It is in this part of its course that it sends out towards the south a remarkable arm, the Cassiquiare, but little known in Europe, which unites with the Rio Negro, (called by the natives the Guainia), and offers perhaps the only example of a bifurcation forming in the very interior of a continent a natural connection between two great rivers and their basins.

The nature of the ground, and the junction of the Guaviare and Atabapo with the Orinoco, cause the latter to turn suddenly towards the north. In the absence of correct geographical knowledge, the Guaviare flowing in from the west was long regarded as the true origin of the Orinoco. The doubts raised by an eminent geographer, M. Buache, since 1797, as to the probability of a connection with the Amazons, have I hope been entirely refuted by my expedition. In an uninterrupted navigation of 920 geographical miles I passed through the singular network of rivers, from the Rio Negro, by the Cassiquiare, into the Orinoco; traversing in this manner the interior of the Continent, from the Brazilian boundary to the coast of Caraccas.

In the upper portion of the basin of the Orinoco and its tributaries, between the 3rd and 4th degrees of north latitude, nature has several times repeated the enigmatical phenomenon of the so-called “black waters.” The Atabapo, whose banks are adorned with Carolinias and arborescent Melastomas, and the Temi, Tuamini, and Guainia, are all rivers of a coffee-brown colour. In the shade of the palm groves this colour seems almost to pass into ink-black. When placed in transparent vessels, the water appears of a golden yellow. The image of the Southern Constellations is reflected with wonderful clearness in these black streams. Where their waters flow gently, they afford to the observer, when taking astronomical observations with reflecting instruments, a most excellent artificial horizon. A cooler atmosphere, less torment from stinging mosquitoes, greater salubrity, and the absence of crocodiles (fish, however, are also wanting), mark the region of these black rivers. They probably owe their peculiar colour to a solution of carburetted hydrogen, to the luxuriance of the tropical vegetation, and to the quantity of plants and herbs on the ground over which they flow. On the western declivity of the Chimborazo, towards the coast of the Pacific, I remarked that the flooded waters of the Rio de Guayaquil gradually assumed a golden yellow or almost coffee-brown colour, when covering the meadows for some weeks.

In the vicinity of the mouths of the Guaviare and Atabapo grows the Piriguao,[62] one of the noblest of palm trees, whose smooth and polished trunk, between 60 and 70 feet high, is adorned with a delicate flag-like foliage curled at the margins. I know no palm which bears such large and beautifully coloured fruits. They resemble peaches, and are tinged with yellow mingled with a roseate crimson. Seventy or eighty of them form enormous pendulous bunches, of which each tree annually ripens three. This fine tree might be called the peach palm. The fleshy fruits are from the luxuriance of vegetation most often devoid of seeds, and offer to the natives a nutritious farinaceous food which, like plantains and potatoes, can be prepared in a variety of ways.

Hitherto, or as far as the mouth of the Guaviare, the Orinoco flows along the southern declivity of the Sierra de Parime; and from its southern bank the vast forest-covered plain of the Amazons River stretches far beyond the equator, even to the 15th degree of south latitude. When the Orinoco turns suddenly to the north near San Fernando de Atabapo, it breaks through a part of the mountain chain along the base of which it had previously flowed; and this is the site of the great waterfalls of Atures and Maypures. The river bed is here everywhere hemmed in by colossal masses of rock, and divided as it were into separate reservoirs by natural dikes.

In front of the entrance of the Meta there stands in the middle of a mighty whirlpool an isolated cliff, to which the natives have given the very appropriate name of the “rock of patience;” because when the waters are low it sometimes costs those who are ascending the river two days to pass it. Here the Orinoco, eating deep into the land, forms picturesque rocky bays. Opposite to the Indian mission of Carichana the traveller is surprised by the singular prospect which presents itself to his view. His eye is involuntarily riveted on an abrupt granitic rock, el Mogote de Cocuyza, a cube with vertically precipitous sides, above 200 feet high and bearing on its upper surface a forest of trees of rich and varied foliage. Resembling a Cyclopean monument in its simple grandeur, this mass of rock rises high above the tops of the surrounding palms, its sharp outlines appearing in strong relief against the deep azure of the sky, and its summit uplifting high in air a forest above the forest.

In descending the Orinoco from this point, still within the range of the Carichana mission, we arrive at the part of the river where the stream has forced for itself a way through the narrow pass of Baraguan. Here we recognise everywhere traces of chaotic devastation. To the north, (towards Uruana and Encaramada), masses of granite of extraordinarily notched and serrated outline and grotesque aspect shine with dazzling whiteness high above the thickets from amidst which they rise.

It is in this region, after receiving the Apure, that the Orinoco leaves the granitic chain of mountains and flows eastward to the Atlantic, dividing the impenetrable forests of Guiana from the grassy plains on which the vault of heaven seems everywhere to rest as on the horizon of the ocean. Thus the elevated cluster of the Parime mountains, which occupies the entire space between the sources of the Jao and the Caura, is surrounded on three sides, to the South, to the West, and to the North, by the Orinoco. Below Carichana the course of the river is uninterrupted by rocks or rapids to its mouth, excepting at the whirlpool of the Boca del Infierno (Hell’s mouth) near Muitaco, where, however, the rocks which occasion the rapid do not extend across the entire bed of the river as at Atures and Maypures. In these lower parts of the river in the vicinity of the sea, the only danger feared by the boatmen is that of encountering the great natural rafts, consisting of trees torn from the banks by the swelling of the river, against which canoes are often wrecked during the night. These rafts, covered like meadows with flowering water plants, remind the spectator of the floating gardens of the Mexican lakes.

After this rapid review of the course of the Orinoco, and of its general relations to the surrounding country, I pass to the description of the Falls of Maypures and Atures.

Between the sources of the rivers Sipapo and Ventuari a granite ridge projects from the elevated mountain group of Cunavami, and advances far to the west towards the mountains of Uniama. Four streams, which may be said to mark the limits of the cataracts of Maypures, descend from this ridge; two, the Sipapo and the Sanariapo, on the eastern side of the Orinoco; and two, the Cameji and the Toparo, on its western side. Near the Missionary village of Maypures the mountains retire and form a wide bay open to the south-west.

The foaming stream flows at the present time at the foot of the eastern mountain declivity, and far to the west we recognise the ancient bank now forsaken by the water. A grass-covered plain, only about thirty feet above the present highest level of the river, extends between the two chains of hills. The Jesuits have built upon it a small church formed of the trunks of palm trees.

The geological aspect of the district, the shapes of the rocks of Keri and Oco, which have so much the character of islands, the water-worn hollows in the first named of these rocks, situated at exactly the same height as the cavities in the opposite island of Uivitari, all testify that the Orinoco once filled the whole of this now dry gulf or bay. Probably the waters formed a wide lake as long as the northern dike was able to withstand their pressure. When it gave way, the prairie now inhabited by the Guareke Indians must have been the first part which appeared above the waters; which may subsequently, perhaps, have long continued to surround the rocks of Keri and Oco, which rising like mountain fortresses from the ancient bed of the river, present a picturesque aspect. As the waters gradually diminished they withdrew altogether to the foot of the eastern hills, where the river now flows.

This conjecture is confirmed by several circumstances. The Orinoco, like the Nile near Philæ and Syene, has the property of imparting a black colour to the reddish white masses of granite which it has bathed for thousands of years. As far as the waters reach, one may remark on the rocky shore the leaden-coloured coating described in page 189: its presence, and the hollows before mentioned, mark the ancient height of the waters of the Orinoco.

In the rock of Keri, in the islands of the Cataracts, in the gneiss hills of Cumadaminari above the island of Tomo, and lastly at the mouth of the Jao, we trace these black-coloured hollows at elevations of 150 to 180 (160 to 192 English) feet above the present height of the river. Their existence teaches us a fact of which we may also observe indications in the river beds of Europe; viz. that the streams whose magnitude now excites our astonishment are only the feeble remains of the immense masses of water belonging to an earlier age of the world.

These simple remarks and inferences have not escaped even the rude natives of Guiana. The Indians everywhere called our attention to the traces of the former height of the waters. There is in a grassy plain near Uruana an isolated granite rock, on which, according to the report of trustworthy witnesses, there are at a height of more than eighty feet drawings of the sun and moon, and of many animals, particularly crocodiles and boas, engraven or arranged almost in rows or lines. Without artificial aid it would now be impossible to ascend this perpendicular precipice, which deserves to be carefully examined by future travellers. The hieroglyphical rock engravings on the mountains of Uruana and Encaramada are equally remarkable in respect to situation.

If one asks the natives how these figures can have been cut in the rocks, they answer that it was done when the waters were so high that their fathers’ boats were only a little lower than the drawings. Those rude memorials of human art would in such case have belonged to the same age as a state of the waters implying a distribution of land and water very different from that which now prevails, and belonging to an earlier condition of the earth’s surface; which must not, however, be confounded with that in which the earlier vegetation which adorned our planet, the gigantic bodies of extinct land animals, and the oceanic creatures of a more chaotic state, became entombed in the indurating crust of globe.

At the northernmost extremity of the cataracts, attention is excited by what are called the natural drawings or pictures of the Sun and Moon. The rock Keri, to which I have several times referred, has received its name from a white spot which is conspicuous from a great distance, and in which the Indians have thought they recognised a remarkable similarity to the disk of the full moon. I was not myself able to climb the steep precipice, but the white mark in question is probably a large knot of quartz formed by a cluster of veins in the greyish-black granite.

Opposite to the Keri rock, on the twin mountain of the island of Uivitari, which has a basaltic appearance, the Indians shew with mysterious admiration a similar disk which they venerate as the image of the Sun, Camosi. Perhaps the geographical position of the two rocks may have contributed to these denominations, as the Keri (or Moon Rock) is turned to the West, and the Camosi to the East. Some etymologists have thought they recognised in the American word Camosi a similarity to Camosh, the name of the Sun in one of the Phœnician dialects, and to Apollo Chomeus, or Beelphegor and Ammon.

Unlike the grander falls of Niagara (which are 140 French or 150 English feet high) the “Cataracts of Maypures” are not formed by the single precipitous descent of a vast mass of waters, nor are they “narrows” or passes through which the river rushes with accelerated velocity, as in the Pongo of Manseriche in the River of the Amazons. The Cataracts of Maypures consist of a countless number of little cascades succeeding each other like steps. The “Raudal” (the name given by the Spaniards to this species of cataract) is formed by numerous islands and rocks which so restrict the bed of the river, that out of a breadth of 8000 (8526 E.) feet there often only remains an open channel of twenty feet in width. The eastern side is now much more inaccessible and dangerous than the western.

At the confluence of the Cameji with the Orinoco, goods are unladen in order that the empty canoe, or, as it is here called, the Piragua, may be conveyed by Indians well acquainted with the Raudal to the mouth of the Toparo, where the danger is considered to be past. Where the separate rocks or steps (each of which is designated by a particular name) are not much above two or three feet high, the natives, if descending the stream, venture, remaining themselves in the canoe, to let it go down the falls: if they are ascending the stream they leave the boat, swim forward, and when after many unsuccessful attempts they have succeeded in casting a rope round the points of rock which rise above the broken water, they draw up their vessel, which is often either overset or entirely filled with water in the course of these laborious proceedings.

Sometimes, and it is the only case which gives the natives any uneasiness, the canoe is dashed in pieces against the rocks; the men have then to disengage themselves with bleeding bodies from the wreck and from the whirling force of the torrent, and to gain the shore by swimming. Where the rocky steps are very high and extend across the entire bed of the river, the light boat is brought to land and drawn along the bank by means of branches of trees placed under it as rollers.

The most celebrated and difficult steps, those of Purimarimi and Manimi, are between nine and ten feet high. I found with astonishment by barometric measurements, (geodesical levelling being out of the question from the inaccessibility of the locality, its highly insalubrious atmosphere, and the swarms of mosquitoes which fill the air), that the whole fall of the Raudal from the mouth of the Cameji to that of the Toparo hardly amounts to 28 or 30 feet (30 or 32 English). I say, “I found with astonishment;” for this shews that the dreadful noise and wild dashing and foaming of the river are the results of the narrowing of its bed by countless rocks and islands, and of the counter currents produced by the form and situation of the masses of rock. The best ocular demonstration of the small height of the whole fall is obtained by descending from the village of Maypures to the bed of the river by the rock of Manimi.