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THE TROPICAL WORLD.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

PRIMITIVE FOREST.

THE TROPICAL WORLD:

ASPECTS OF MAN AND NATURE
IN
THE EQUATORIAL REGIONS OF THE GLOBE.

BY
DR. G. HARTWIG,
AUTHOR OF ‘THE SEA AND ITS LIVING WONDERS,’ ‘THE SUBTERRANEAN WORLD,’
‘THE HARMONIES OF NATURE,’ AND ‘THE POLAR WORLD.’

WITH EIGHT CHROMOXYLOGRAPHIC PLATES AND NUMEROUS WOODCUTS.

NEW EDITION.

LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1873.

All rights reserved.

PREFACE.

The numerous alterations I have made in this new edition of the ‘Tropical World,’ both by the attentive revision of its former contents, and the addition of new chapters descriptive of the chief characteristics of the various tropical races of man; as well as the care I have taken to condense as much information as possible within narrow limits, will, I hope, justify my assertion that I have done my best to please indulgent readers, and to merit the favourable verdict of severer critics.

Dr. HARTWIG.

Salon Villas, Ludwigsburg (Würtemburg):
March 10, 1873.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

TROPICAL TORNADO.

CHAPTER I.
THE DIVERSITY OF CLIMATES WITHIN THE TROPICS.

Causes by which it is produced—Abundance and Distribution of Rain within the Tropics—The Trade Winds—The Belt of Calms—Tropical Rains—The Monsoons—Tornados—Cyclones—Typhoons—Storms in the Pacific—Devastations caused by Hurricanes on Pitcairn Island and Rarotonga.

On surveying the various regions of the torrid zone, we find that Nature has made many wonderful provisions to mitigate the heat of the vertical sun, to endow the equatorial lands with an amazing variety of climate, and to extend the benefit of the warmth generated within the tropics to countries situated far beyond their bounds.

Thus, while the greater part of the northern temperate zone is occupied by land, the floods of ocean roll over by far the greater portion of the equatorial regions—for both torrid America and Africa appear as mere islands in a vast expanse of sea.

The conversion of water, by evaporation, into a gaseous form is accompanied by the abstraction of heat from surrounding bodies, or, in popular language, by the production of cold; and thus over the surface of the ocean the rays of the sun have a tendency to check their own warming influence, and to impart a coolness to the atmosphere, the refreshing effects of which are felt wherever the sea wind blows. There can, therefore, be no doubt that, if the greater part of the tropical ocean were converted into land, the heat of the torrid zone would be far more intolerable than it is.

The restless breezes and currents, the perpetual migrations of the air and waters, perform a no less important part in cooling the equatorial and warming the temperate regions of the globe. Rarefied by the intense heat of a vertical sun, the equatorial air-stream ascends in perpendicular columns high above the surface of the earth, and thence flows off towards the poles; while, to fill up the void, cold air-currents come rushing from the arctic and antarctic regions.

If caloric were the sole agent on which the direction of these antagonistic air-currents depended, they would naturally flow to the north and south; but the rotation of the earth gradually diverts them to the east and west, and thus the cold air-currents, or polar streams, ultimately change into the trade winds which regularly blow over the greater part of the tropical ocean from east to west, and materially contribute, by their refreshing coolness, to the health and comfort of the navigator whom they waft over the equatorial seas.

While the polar air-currents, though gradually warming as they advance, thus mitigate the heat of the torrid zone, the opposite equatorial breezes, which reach our coasts as moist south-westerly or westerly winds, soften the cold of our winters, and clothe our fields with a lively verdure during the greater part of the year. How truly magnificent is this grand system of the winds, which, by the constant interchange of heat and cold which it produces, thus imparts to one zone the beneficial influence of another, and renders both far more fit to be inhabited by civilized man. The Greek navigators rendered homage to Æolus, but they were far from having any idea of the admirable laws which govern the unstable, ever-fluctuating domains of the ‘God of the Winds.’

The same unequal influence of solar warmth under the line and at the poles, which sets the air in constant motion, also compels the waters of the ocean to perpetual migrations, and produces those wonderful marine currents which like the analogous atmospheric streams, furrow in opposite directions the bosom of the sea. Thanks to this salutary interchange, the Gulf Stream, issuing from the Mexican Sea, and thence flowing to the north and east, conveys a portion of its original warmth as far as the west coast of Spitzbergen and Nowaja Semlja; while in the southern hemisphere we see the Peruvian stream impart the refrigerating influence of the antarctic waters to the eastern coast of South America.

The geographical distribution of the land within the tropics likewise tends to counterbalance or to mitigate the excessive heat of a vertical sun; for a glance over the map shows us at once that it is mostly either insular or extending its narrow length between two oceans, thus multiplying the surface over which the sea is able to exert its influence. The Indian Archipelago, the peninsula of Malacca, the Antilles, and Central America, are all undoubtedly indebted to the waters which bathe their coasts for a more temperate climate than that which they would have had if grouped together in one vast continent.

The temperature of a country proportionally decreases with its elevation; and thus the high situation of many tropical lands moderates the effects of equatorial heat, and endows them with a climate similar to that of the temperate, or even of the cold regions of the globe. The Andes and the Himalaya, the most stupendous mountain-chains of the world, raise their snow-clad summits either within the tropics or immediately beyond their verge, and must be considered as colossal refrigerators, ordained by Providence to counteract the effects of the vertical sunbeams over a vast extent of land. In Western Tropical America, in Asia, and in Africa, we find immense countries rising like terraces thousands of feet above the level of the ocean, and reminding the European traveller of his distant northern home by their productions and their cooler temperature. Thus, by means of a few simple physical and geological causes acting and reacting upon each other on a magnificent scale, Nature has bestowed a wonderful variety of climate upon the tropical regions, producing a no less wonderful diversity of plants and animals.

But warmth alone is not sufficient to call forth a luxuriant vegetation: it can only exert its powers when combined with a sufficient degree of moisture; and it chiefly depends upon the presence or absence of water whether a tropical country appears as a naked waste or decked with the most gorgeous vegetation.

As the evaporation of the tropical ocean is far more considerable than that of the sea in higher latitudes, the atmospherical precipitations (dew, rain) caused by the cooling of the air are far more abundant in the torrid zone than in the temperate regions of the earth. While the annual fall of rain within the tropics amounts, on an average, to about eight feet, it attains in Europe a height of only thirty inches; and under the clear equatorial sky the dew is often so abundant as to equal in its effects a moderate shower of rain.

But this enormous mass of moisture is most unequally distributed; for while the greater part of the Sahara and the Peruvian sand-coast are constantly arid, and South Africa and North Australia suffer from long-continued droughts, we find other tropical countries refreshed by almost daily showers. The direction of the prevailing winds, the condensing powers of high mountains and of forests, the relative position of a country, the nature of its soil, are the chief causes which produce an abundance or want of rain, and consequently determine the fertility or barrenness of the land. Of these causes, the first-mentioned is by far the most general in its effects—so that a knowledge of the tropical winds is above all things necessary to give us an insight into the distribution of moisture over the equatorial world.

I have already mentioned the trade winds, or cool reactionary currents called forth by the ascending equatorial air-stream; but it will now be necessary to submit them to a closer examination, and follow them in their circular course throughout the tropical regions. In the Northern Atlantic, their influence, varying with the season, extends to 22° N. lat. in winter, and 39° N. lat. in summer; while in the southern hemisphere they reach no farther than 18° S. lat. in winter, and 28° or 30° S. lat. in summer.

In the Pacific, their limits vary between 21° and 31° N. lat., and between 23° and 33° S. lat.; so that, on the whole, they have here a more southern position, owing, no doubt, to the vast extent of open sea; while in the Atlantic the influence of the neighbouring continents forces them to the north, and even causes the trade winds of the southern hemisphere to ascend beyond the equatorial line. Their character is that of a continual soft breeze—strongest in the morning, remitting at noon, and again increasing in the evening. In the neighbourhood of the coasts, except over very small islands, they become weaker, and generally cease to be felt at a distance of about fifteen or twenty miles from the sea, though, of course, at greater heights they continue their course uninterruptedly over the land.

For obvious reasons the trade winds have been much more accurately investigated upon the ocean than on land, particularly in the Northern Atlantic, which is better known in its physical features than any other sea, as being a highway for numberless vessels to which the study of the winds is a matter of the greatest importance; yet, in spite of so many disturbing influences, their course, even over the continents, has been ascertained by travellers. North-easterly winds almost constantly sweep over the Sahara; and in South Africa, Dr. Livingstone informs us that north-easterly and south-easterly winds blow over the whole continent between 12° and 6° S. lat., even as far as Angola, where they unite with the sea winds.

In Brazil, the presence of the trade winds has been determined with still greater accuracy. Thus easterly breezes almost perpetually sweep over the boundless plains up to the slopes of the Andes, and even in Paraguay (25° S. lat.) a mild east wind constantly arises in summer after the setting of the sun.

As the trade winds originate in the coldest, and thence pass onwards to the warmer regions, they are, of course, constantly absorbing moisture as they advance over the seas. Saturated with vapours, they reach the islands and continents, where, meeting with various refrigerating influences (mountain-chains, forests, terrestrial radiation), their condensing vapours give rise to an abundance both of rain and dew. It is owing to their influence that in general, within the tropics, the eastern coasts, or the eastern slopes of the mountains, are better watered than the interior of the continents or lands with a western exposure.

An example on the grandest scale is afforded to us by South America, where the Andes of Peru and Bolivia so effectually drain the prevailing east winds of their moisture, that while numberless rivulets, the feeders of the gigantic Marañon, clothe their eastern gorges with a perpetual verdure, their western slopes are almost constantly arid. Such is the influence of this colossal barrier in interrupting the course of the air-current, that the trade wind only begins to be felt again on the Pacific at a distance of one hundred or even one hundred and fifty miles from the shore.

In South Africa, also, we find the eastern mountainous coast-lands covered with giant timber—in striking contrast with the parched savannas or dreary wastes of the interior; and in the South Sea the difference of verdure between the east and west coasts of the Sandwich Islands, the Feejees, and many other groups, never fails to arrest the attention of the mariner.

The trade winds of the northern and southern hemispheres do not, however, blow in one continuous stream over the whole breadth of the tropical ocean, but are separated from each other by a zone or belt of calms, occasioned by their mutually paralysing each other’s influence on meeting from the north and the south-east, and by the attraction of the sun, which, when in the zenith, changes the easterly air-currents into an ascending stream. From this dependence on the position of the sun, it may easily be inferred that the zone of calms fluctuates, like the trade winds themselves, to the north or south, according to the seasons; and that it is far from invariably occupying the same degrees of latitude, or the same width, at all times of the year. In the Atlantic, from the causes previously mentioned, it constantly remains to the north of the line, where its breadth averages five or six degrees; in the Pacific it more generally extends during the antarctic summer, on both sides of the equator.

Besides the intensity of its heat, the zone of calms is characterised by heavy showers, which regularly fall in the afternoon, and are caused by the cooling of the saturated air-columns in the higher regions of the air.

Daily, towards noon, dense clouds form in the sky, and dissolve in torrents of rain under fearful electrical explosions, now sooner, now later, of shorter or longer continuance, with increasing or abating violence, as the sun is more or less in his zenith. Towards evening the vapours disperse, and the sun sets in a clear, unclouded horizon. Thus towns or countries situated within the calms, such as Para, Quito, Bogota, Guayaquil, the Kingsmill Islands, may be said to have a perennial rainy season, as showers fall at every season of the year. To the north and south of the belt of calms, we find in both hemispheres a broad zone, characterised by two distinct rainy seasons, separated by two equally distinct periods of dry weather. The rainy seasons take place while the sun is crossing the zenith, and more or less paralysing the power of the trade winds. Cayenne, Honduras, Jamaica, Pernambuco, Bahia, afford us examples of these well-defined alterations. In Jamaica, for instance (18° N. lat.), the first rainy season begins in April, the second in October; the first dry season in June, and the second in December.

Towards the verge of the tropics follow the zones which are characterised by a single rainy season, but of a longer continuance, generally lasting six months, throughout the summer, or from one equinoctium to another. In these parts, the rainy season is also the warmest period of the year, since here the different height of the sun in winter and summer is already so considerable, that at the time of culmination the clouds and rain are not able to reduce the temperature below that of the clear and dry winter months; while in the zones which are situated nearer to the equator, the rainy season, in spite of the sun’s culmination, is always the coolest.

To sum up the foregoing remarks in a few words: the two rainy seasons, which characterise the middle zone between each tropic and the line, have a tendency to pass into one annual rainy season on advancing towards the tropics, and to merge into a permanent rainy season on approaching the equator. As the sun goes to the north or south, he opens the sluices of heaven, and closes them as he passes to another hemisphere.

Such may be said to be the normal state which would everywhere obtain within the equatorial regions if one unbounded ocean covered their surface, and none of the disturbing influences previously mentioned interfered; but as we find the trade winds so frequently deflected from their course, we must also naturally expect the general or theoretical order of the dry and rainy seasons to be liable to great modifications.

Thus, in the Indian Ocean and in the Chinese Sea, terrestrial influences prevail during the summer which completely divert the trade wind, there called the North-east Monsoon, from its regular path. From the wide lands of south-eastern Asia, glowing, during the summer months, with a torrid heat, the rarefied air, as it rises into the higher regions, completely overpowers the usual course of the trade wind, and changes it into the south-western monsoon, which blows from May to September.

Hence, during the summer months, the saturated sea wind, striking against the western ghauts, brings rain to the coast of Malabar, while the opposite coast of Coromandel remains dry; but the inverse takes place when, from the sun’s declining to the south, the north-east trade wind resumes its sway.

Similar deflections from the ordinary course of the trade winds occur also on the coast of Guinea (5° N. Lat.), in the Mexican Gulf, and in that part of the Pacific which borders on Central America, through the influence of the heated plains of Africa, Utah, Texas, and New Mexico, and have a similar influence on the distribution of moisture. Thus the sea monsoon, which prevails during the summer months on the coast of northern Guinea, carries a rainy season over the land as far as the eighteenth or nineteenth degree of northern latitude, and fertilises a vast extent of country which, from its position on the western side of an immense continent, would otherwise have been as naked and barren as the Sahara.

As the tropical rains, though generally confined only to part of the year, and then only to a few hours of the day, fall in so much greater abundance than under our constantly drooping skies, it may naturally be supposed that the single showers must be proportionally violent. Descending in streams so close and so dense that the level ground, unable to absorb it sufficiently fast, is covered with a sheet of water, the rain rushes down the hill-sides in a volume that wears channels in the surface. For hours together the noise of the torrent, as it beats upon the trees and bursts upon the roofs, occasions an uproar that drowns the ordinary voice and renders sleep impossible. In Bombay nearly nine inches of rain have been known to fall in one day, and twelve inches in Calcutta, or nearly half the mean annual quantity of rain on the east coast of England. During one single storm which Castelnau witnessed at Pebas, on the Amazon, there fell not less than thirty inches of rain—nearly as much as the annual supply of our west coast. The hollow trunk of an enormous tree in an exposed situation gave the French traveller the means of accurate measurement.

As in the equatorial regions the atmospherical precipitations are far more considerable than in the temperate zones, so also their storms rage with a violence unknown in our climes. In the Indian and Chinese Seas these convulsions of nature generally take place at the change of the monsoons; in the West Indies, at the beginning and at the end of the rainy seasons. The tornado which devastated the Island of Guadeloupe on the 25th July, 1846, blew down buildings constructed of solid stone, and tore the guns of a battery from their carriages; another, which raged some years back in the Mauritius, demolished a church and drove thirty-two vessels on the strand. On the Beagle’s arrival in Port Louis, after her long and arduous surveying voyage, a fleet of crippled vessels, the victims of a recent hurricane, might have been seen making their way into the harbour—some dismasted, others kept afloat with difficulty, firing guns of distress or giving other signs of their helpless condition. ‘On the now tranquil surface of the harbour lay a group of shattered vessels, presenting the appearance of floating wrecks. In almost all, the bulwarks, boats, and everything on deck, had been swept away; some, that were towed in, had lost all their masts; others, more or less of their spars; one had her poop and all its cabins swept away; many had four or five feet of water in the hold, and the clank of the pumps was still kept up by the weary crew.’[1]

Such are the terrible effects of the tornados and cyclones of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans; but the storms of the miscalled Pacific are no less furious and destructive. A hurricane, which on the 15th of April, 1845, burst over Pitcairn Island, washed all the fertile mould from the rocks, and, uprooting 300 cocoa-nut trees, cast them into the sea. Every fishing-boat on the island was destroyed, and thousands of fruit-bearing bananas were swept away.

The celebrated missionary, John Williams,[2] describes a similar catastrophe which befell the beautiful island of Rarotonga on the 23rd of December, 1831. The chapels, school-houses, mission-houses, and nearly all the dwellings of the natives, no less than a thousand in number, were levelled to the ground. Every particle of food on the island was destroyed. Of the thousands of banana or plantain trees which had covered and adorned the land, scarcely one was left standing, either on the plains, in the valleys, or upon the mountains. Stately trees, that had withstood the storms of ages, were laid prostrate on the ground, and thrown upon each other in the wildest confusion; while even of those that were still standing, many were left without a branch, and all perfectly leafless. So great and so general was the destruction, that no spot escaped; for the gale, veering gradually round the island, did most effectually its devastating work.

Though the tropical storms are thus frequently a scourge, they are often productive of no less signal benefits. Many a murderous epidemic has suddenly ceased after one of these natural convulsions, and myriads of insects, the destroyers of the planter’s hopes, are swept away by the fierce tornado. Besides, if the equatorial hurricanes are far more furious than our storms, a more luxurious vegetation effaces their vestiges in a shorter time. Thus Nature teaches us that a preponderance of good is frequently concealed behind the paroxysms of her apparently unbridled rage.

SAVANNAH ON FIRE.

CHAPTER II.
THE LLANOS.

Their Aspect in the Dry Season—Vegetable Sources—Land Spouts—Effects of the Mirage—A Savannah on Fire—Opening of the Rainy Season—Miraculous Changes—Exuberance of Animal and Vegetable Life—Conflict between Horses and Electrical Eels—Beauty of the Llanos at the Termination of the Rainy Season—The Mauritia Palm.

In South America, the features of Nature are traced on a gigantic scale. Mountains, forests, rivers, plains, there appear in far more colossal dimensions than in our part of the world. Many a branch of the Marañon surpasses the Danube in size. In the boundless primitive forests of Guiana more than one Great Britain could find room. The Alps would seem but of moderate elevation if placed aside of the towering Andes; and the plains of Northern Germany and Holland are utterly insignificant when compared with the Llanos of Venezuela and New Grenada, which, stretching from the coast-chain of Caraccas to the forests of Guiana, and from the snow-crowned mountains of Merida to the Delta of the Orinoco, cover a surface of more than 250,000 square miles.

Nothing can be more remarkable than the contrast which these immeasurable plains present at various seasons of the year—now parched by a long-continued drought, and now covered with the most luxuriant vegetation. When, day after day, the sun, rising and setting in a cloudless sky, pours his vertical rays upon the thirsty Llanos, the calcined grass-plains present the monotonous aspect of an interminable waste. Like the ocean, their limits melt in the hazy distance with those of the horizon; but here the resemblance ceases, for no refreshing breeze wafts coolness over the desert, and comforts the drooping spirits of the wanderer.

In the wintry solitudes of Siberia the skin of the reindeer affords protection to man against the extreme cold; but in these sultry plains there is no refuge from the burning sun above and the heat reflected from the glowing soil below, save where, at vast intervals, small clumps of the Mauritia palm afford a scanty shade. The water-pools which nourished this beneficent tree have long since disappeared; and the marks of the previous rainy season, still visible on the tall reeds that spring from the marshy ground, serve only to mock the thirst of the exhausted traveller. The long-legged jabiru and the scarlet ibis have forsaken the dried-up swamp which no longer affords them any subsistence, and only here and there a solitary Caracara falcon lingers on the spot, as if meditating on the vicissitudes of the seasons.

NEPENTHES.

Yet even now the parched savannah has some refreshment to bestow, as Nature—which in the East Indian forests fills the pitchers of the Nepenthes with a grateful liquid,—here also displays her bounty; for the globular melon-cactus, which flourishes on the driest soil, and not seldom measures a foot in diameter, conceals a juicy pulp under its tough and brickly skin. Guided by an admirable instinct, the wary mule strikes off with his fore-feet the long, sharp thorns of this remarkable plant, the emblem of good-nature under a rough exterior, and then cautiously approaches his lips to sip the refreshing juice. Yet, drinking from these living sources is not unattended with danger, and mules are often met with that have been lamed by the formidable prickles of the cactus. The wild horse and ox of the savannah, not gifted with the same sagacity, roam about a prey to hunger and burning thirst—the latter hoarsely bellowing, the former snuffing up the air with outstreched neck to discover by its moisture the neighbourhood of some pool that may have resisted the general drought.

Besides their interminable extent, the Llanos have several other points of resemblance to the sea. As here the water-spout, raised by contending air-currents, rises to the clouds and sweeps over the floods, thus also the glowing dust of the savannah, set in motion by conflicting winds, ascends in mighty columns and glides over the desert plain. Then woe to the traveller who cannot escape by a timely flight; for, seizing him with irresistible violence the sand spout carries him along in its embrace, and hurls him senseless to the ground.

As if ‘on a painted ocean,’ the becalmed ship rests on the glassy sea. No breath of air ruffles the surface of the waters.

The pennant hangs lazily from the mast; the water-casks are empty; the torments of thirst, aggravated by the heat of a vertical sun, become intolerable. But, suddenly, as if by magic, a beautiful island rises from the floods; waving palm-trees seem to welcome the mariner: he fancies he hears the purling of the brook and the splashing of the waterfall. Yet still the vessel moves not from the spot, and soon the fading phantom that mocked his misery leaves him the victim of increased despair.

Similar delusions of the mirage, produced by the refraction of the light as it passes through atmospherical strata of unequal warmth, and consequently of unequal density, likewise take place over the surface of the Llanos, which then assume the semblance of a sea, heaving and rocking in wave-like motion. In the Lybian desert, in the dread solitudes of the polar ocean, in every zone, we meet with the same phenomenon, produced by the same cause.

As in the arctic regions the intense cold during winter retards the pulsations, or even suspends the operations of life, so in the Llanos the long continuance of drought causes a similar stagnation in animated nature. The thinly-scattered trees and shrubs do not indeed cast their foliage, but the greyish-yellow of their leaves announces that vegetation is suspended. Buried in the clay of the dried-up pools, the alligator and the water-boa lie plunged in a deep summer-sleep, like the bear of the north in his long winter slumber; and many animals which, at other times, are found roaming over the Llanos,—such as the graceful aguti, the hoggish peccary, and the timid deer of the savannah,—have left the parched plains and migrated to the forest or the river. The large maneless puma and the spotted jaguar, following their prey to less arid regions, are now no longer seen in their former hunting-grounds, and the Indian has also disappeared with the stag whom he pursued with his poisoned arrows. In the Siberian Tundras the reindeer and the migratory birds are scared away by winter; here life is banished or suspended by an intolerable aridity.

AGUTI.

PECCARY.

Sometimes the ravages of fire complete the image of death on the parched savannah.

‘We had not yet penetrated far into the plain,’ says Schomburgk, ‘when we saw to the south-east high columns of smoke ascending to the skies, the sure signs of a savannah fire, and at the same time the Indians anxiously pressed us to speed on, as the burning torrent would most likely roll in our direction. Although at first we were inclined to consider their fears as exaggerated, yet the next half-hour served to convince us of the extreme peril of our situation. In whatever direction we gazed, we nowhere saw a darker patch in the grass-plain announcing the refuge of a water-pool; we could already distinguish the flames of the advancing column, already hear the bursting and crackling of the reeds, when fortunately the sharp eye of the Indians discovered some small eminences before us, only sparingly covered with a low vegetation, and to these we now careered as if Death himself were behind us. Half a minute later, and I should never have lived to relate our adventures. With beating hearts we saw the sea of fire rolling its devouring billows towards us; the suffocating smoke, striking in our faces, forced us to turn our backs upon the advancing conflagration, and to await the dreadful decision with the resignation of helpless despair.

‘And now we were in the midst of the blaze. Two arms of fire encircled the base of the little hillock on which we stood, and united before us in a waving mass, which, rolling onwards, receded farther and farther from our gaze. The flames had devoured the short grass of the hillock, but had not found sufficient nourishment for our destruction. Whole swarms of voracious vultures followed in circling flight the fiery column, like so many hungry jackals, and pounced upon the snakes and lizards which the blaze had stifled and half-calcined in its murderous embrace. When, with the rapidity of lightning, they darted upon their prey and disappeared in the clouds of smoke, it almost seemed as if they were voluntarily devoting themselves to a fiery death. Soon the deafening noise of the conflagration ceased, and the dense black clouds in the distance were the only signs that the fire was still proceeding on its devastating path over the wide wastes of the savannah.’

At length, after a long drought, when all Nature seems about to expire under the want of moisture, various signs announce the approach of the rainy season. The sky, instead of its brilliant blue, assumes a leaden tint, from the vapours which are beginning to condense. The black spot of the ‘Southern Cross,’ that most beautiful of constellations, in which, as the Indians poetically fancy, the Spirit of the savannah resides, becomes more indistinct as the transparency of the atmosphere diminishes. The mild phosphoric gleam of the Magellanic clouds expires. The fixed stars, which shone with a quiet planetary light, now twinkle even in the zenith. Like distant mountain-chains, banks of clouds begin to rise over the horizon, and accumulating in masses of increasing density, ascend higher and higher, until at length the lightning flashes from their dark bosom, and with the loud crash of thunder, the first rains burst in torrents over the thirsty land. Scarce have the showers had time to moisten the earth, when the dormant powers of vegetation begin to awaken with almost miraculous rapidity. The dull, tawny surface of the parched savannah changes as if by magic into a carpet of the liveliest green, enamelled with thousands of flowers of every colour. Stimulated by the light of early day, the mimosas expand their delicate foliage, and the fronds of the beautiful mauritias sprout forth with all the luxuriance of youthful energy.

And now, also, the animal life of the savannah awakens to the full enjoyment of existence. The horse and the ox rejoice in the grasses, under whose covert the jaguar frequently lurks, to pounce upon them with his fatal spring. On the border of the swamps, the moist clay, slowly heaving, bursts asunder, and from the tomb in which he lay embedded rises a gigantic water-snake or a huge crocodile. The new-formed pools and lakes swarm with life, and a host of water-fowl—ibises, cranes, flamingos, mycterias—make their appearance, to regale on the prodigal banquet. A new creation of insects and other unbidden guests now seek the wretched hovels of the Indians, which are sparingly scattered over the higher parts of the savannah. Countless multitudes of ants, sandflies, and mosquitos; rattlesnakes, expelled by the cold and moisture from the lower grounds; repulsive geckos, which with incredible rapidity run along the overhanging rafters; nauseous toads, which, concealing themselves by day in the dark corners of the huts, crawl forth in the evening in quest of prey; lizards, scorpions, centipedes; in a word, worms and vermin of all names and forms,—emerge from the inundated plains, for the tropical rains have gradually converted the savannah, which erewhile exhibited a waste as dreary as that of the Sahara, into a boundless lake. The swollen rivers of the steppe—the Apure, the Arachuna, the Pajara, the Arauca—pour forth their mighty streams over the plains, and boats are now able to sail for miles across the land from one river-bed into another.

On the same spot where, erewhile, the thirsty horse anxiously snuffed the air to discover by its moisture the presence of some pool, the animal is now obliged to lead an amphibious life. The mares retreat with their foals to the higher banks, which rise like islands above the waters, and as from day to day the land contracts within narrower limits, the want of forage obliges them to swim about in quest of the grasses that raise their heads above the fermenting waters. Many foals are drowned; many are surprised by the crocodiles, that fell them by a stroke of their jagged tail, and then crush them between their jaws. Horses and oxen are not seldom met with, which, having fortunately escaped these huge saurians, bear on their limbs the marks of their sharp teeth.

‘This sight,’ says Humboldt, ‘involuntarily reminds the observer of the great pliability with which nature has endowed several plants and animals. Along with the fruits of Ceres, the horse and the ox have followed man over the whole earth, from the Granges to the La Plata, and from the coast of Africa to the mountain-plain of Antisana, which is more elevated than the lofty peak of Teneriffe. Here the northern birch-tree, there the date-palm, protects the tired ox from the heat of the mid-day sun. The same species of animal which contends in eastern Europe with bears and wolves, is attacked in another zone by the tiger and the crocodile.’

ELECTRICAL EEL. (GYMNOTUS ELECTRICUS.)

But it is not the jaguar and the alligator alone which lie in wait for the South American horse, for even among the fishes he has a dangerous enemy. The rivers and marshes of the Llanos are often filled with electrical eels, which send forth at will from the under part of the tail a stunning shock. These eels are from five to six feet long. They are able, when in full vigour, to kill the largest animals, when they suddenly unload their electrical organs in a favourable direction. Humboldt having accidentally set his foot on a gymnote which had just been taken out of the water felt the whole day severe pains in the knees and almost in every joint. Lizards, turtles, and frogs seek the morasses where they are safe from their discharges, and all other fishes, aware of their power, fly at the sight of the formidable gymnotes. They stun even the angler on the high river-bank, the moist line serving as a conductor for the electric fluid. The capture of these eels affords a highly entertaining and animated scene. Mules and horses are driven into the pond which the Indians surround, until the unwonted noise and splashing of the waters rouse the fishes to an attack. Gliding along, they creep under the belly of the horses, many of whom die from the shock of their strokes; while others, with mane erect, and dilated nostrils, endeavour to flee from the electric storm which they have roused. But the Indians, armed with long poles, drive them back again into the pool.

Gradually the unequal contest subsides. Like spent thunderclouds, the exhausted fishes disperse, for they require a long rest and plentiful food to repair the loss of their galvanic powers. Their shocks grow weaker and weaker. Terrified by the noise of the horses, they timidly approach the banks, when, wounded with harpoons, they are dragged on shore with dry and nonconducting pieces of wood; and thus the strange combat ends.

The Llanos are never more beautiful than at the end of the rainy season, before the sun has absorbed the moisture of the soil. Then every plant is robed with the freshest green; an agreeable breeze, cooled by the evaporating waters, undulates over the sea of grasses, and at night a host of stars shines mildly upon the fragrant savannah, or the silvery moonbeam trembles on its surface. Where on the margin of the primitive forest, girt with colossal cactuses and agaves, groups of the mauritia rise majestically over the plain, the stateliest park ever planted by man must yield in beauty to the charming picture of these natural gardens, bordered here by impenetrable thickets, and there by the blue mountain-chain, behind which the fancy paints scenes of still more enchanting loveliness.

The mauritia, the chief ornament of the park-like savannah, and no less useful than the date-tree of the African oasis, provides the Indian with almost every necessary, and fully deserves the name of ‘tree of life,’ bestowed upon it by the poetical fancy of the Jesuit Gumilla. Rising to the height of a hundred feet, its slender trunk is surmounted by a magnificent tuft of large, fan-shaped fronds, of a brilliant green, under whose canopy the scaly fruits, resembling pine cones, hang in large clusters. Like the banana, they afford a food differing in taste according to the stages of ripeness in which they are plucked; and before the blossoms of the male palm have expanded, its trunk contains a nutritious pith like sago, which, dried in thin slices, forms one of the chief articles of the Indian’s bill of fare. Like his brethren of the Eastern world, he also knows how to prepare an intoxicating ‘toddy’ from the juice of the flower-spathes; the leaves serve to cover his hut; out of the fibres of their petioles he manufactures twine and cordage; and the sheaths at their base afford him material for his sandals.

At the mouth of the Orinoco the very existence of the yet unsubdued Guaranas depends on the mauritia, which gives them both food and liberty. Formerly, when this tribe was more numerous than at the present day, they raised their huts on floorings stretched from trunk to trunk, and formed of the leaf-stalks of their tutelary palm. Thus, like the monkeys and parrots of their native wilds, they lived in the trees during the inundations of the Delta in the rainy season. These platforms were partly covered with moist clay, on which fire was made for household purposes; and the flames afforded a strange sight to travellers sailing on the river at night. Even now the light-footed Guaranas owe their independence to the marshy nature of their territory, and to their arboreal life.

The fruits of the mauritia, besides affording food to the Indian, are eagerly devoured by monkeys and parrots. On approaching a group of palms at the time when the fruits are ripening, the profound silence which within the tropics chiefly characterises the noon, is interrupted by a scream of warning, and soon after a numerous troop of birds wheels screeching about the grove.

When the Spaniards first settled in the beautiful mountain valleys of Caraccas and on the Orinoco, they found the Llanos, in spite of their abundant verdure, almost entirely uninhabited by man, for the Indians were unacquainted with pastoral life; and if the mauritia had not here and there tempted a few savages to settle on the open savannahs, they would have been left entirely to the animal life which from time immemorial had thriven on their herbage. But the Spaniards introduced new quadrupeds into the new world,—the ox, the horse, the ass, our faithful companions over the whole surface of the globe,—and the progeny of these domestic animals, returning to their wild state, has multiplied amazingly in the vast pastures of the Llanos. Man has followed them into their new domain; and small hamlets, often situated whole days’ journeys one from another, and consisting only of a few wretched huts, though generally dignified with the name of towns, proclaim that he has at least made a beginning to establish his empire over these boundless plains.

HIGH TABLE-LANDS OF PERU.

CHAPTER III.
THE PUNA, OR THE HIGH TABLE-LANDS OF PERU AND BOLIVIA.

Striking Contrast with the Llanos—Northern Character of their Climate—The Chuñu—The Surumpe—The Veta: its Influence upon Man, Horses, Mules, and Cats—The Vegetation of the Puna—The Maca—The Llama: its invaluable Services—The Huanacu—The Alpaca—The Vicuñas: Mode of Hunting Them—The Chacu—The Bolas—The Chinchilla—The Condor—Wild Bulls and Wild Dogs—Lovely Mountain Valleys.

Between the two mighty parallel mountain chains of the Cordillera and the Andes,[3] the giant bulwarks of Western South America, we find, extending throughout the whole length of Peru and Bolivia, at a height of from ten to fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, vast plateaus, or table-lands, which are named, in the language of the country, the Puna, or ‘the Uninhabited.’ They present a striking contrast to the Llanos of Venezuela; for though situated, like these sultry plains, within the torrid zone, their great elevation paralyses the effects of a vertical sun, and transfers the rigours of the north to the very centre of the tropical world.

Their climate is hardly less bleak and winterly than that of the high snow-ridges which bound them on either side. Cold winds sweep almost constantly over their surface, and during four months of the year they are daily visited by fearful storms. The suddenly darkened sky discharges, under terrific thunder and lightning, enormous masses of snow, until the sun breaks forth again. But soon the clouds obscure its brilliancy; and thus winter and summer, here reign alternately,—not, as in our temperate climes, during several months, but within the short space of a single day. In a few hours the change of temperature often amounts to forty or forty-five degrees, and the sudden fall of the thermometer is rendered still more disagreeable to the traveller by biting winds, which so violently irritate the skin of the hands and face, that it springs open and bleeds from every fissure. An intolerable burning and swelling accompany these wounds, so as to prevent the use of the hands for several days. On the lips it is also very disagreeable, as the pain increases by eating and speaking; and an incautious laugh produces deep rents, which bleed for a long time and heal with difficulty.

This evil, which is called Chuñu by the Peruvian Indians, is also very painful on the eyelids; but it becomes absolutely insupportable by the addition of the Surumpe, a very acute and violent inflammation of the eyes, caused by the sun’s reflection from the snow. In consequence of the rarefied air and the biting winds, the visual organs are constantly in a state of irritation, which renders them far more sensitive to any strong light than would be the case in a more congenial atmosphere. The rapid change from a clouded sky to the brilliancy of a sunny snow-field, causes a painful stinging and burning, which increases from minute to minute to such a degree, that even the stoical Indian, when afflicted with this evil, will sit down on the road-side and utter cries of anguish and despair. Chronical ophthalmia, suppuration of the eyelids, and total blindness, are the frequent consequences of an intense surumpe, against which the traveller over the high lands carefully guards himself by green spectacles or a dark veil.

A third plague of the wanderer in the Puna is the Veta, which is occasioned by the great rarefaction of the air. Its first symptoms, which generally appear at an elevation of 12,000 feet, consist in giddiness, buzzing in the ear, headache, and nausea. Their intensity increases with the elevation, and is aggravated by a lassitude, which augments to such a degree as to render walking impossible, by a great difficulty of respiration, and violent palpitation of the heart. Absolute rest mitigates these symptoms; but on continuing the journey they reappear with increased violence, and are then frequently accompanied by fainting and vomiting. The capillary vessels of the eye, nose, and lips burst, and emit drops of blood. The same phenomenon appears also in the mucous membrane of the respiratory and digestive organs; so that blood-spitting and bloody diarrhœa frequently accompany the Veta, and are sometimes so violent as to cause death.

The influence of diminished atmospheric pressure likewise shows itself in the horses that are unaccustomed to mountain travelling. They begin to pace more slowly, frequently stand still, tremble all over, and fall upon the ground. If not allowed to rest, they invariably die. By way of a restorative their nostrils are slit open, which seems to be of use by allowing a greater influx of air.

As the dry sand of the rainless coast prevents the putrefaction of animal substances which are buried in it, the power of the dry Puna-winds in a like manner arrests the progress of decomposition. Under their influence, a dead mule changes in a few days into a mummy, so that even the entrails do not exhibit the least sign of putrefaction.

It may easily be imagined that, under these circumstances, vegetation can only appear in stunted proportions, and indeed the Puna presents the monotonous aspect of a northern steppe, its whole surface being covered with dun and meagre herbage, which at all times gives it an autumnal or even wintry aspect. A few arid compositæ and yellow echinocacti are quite unable to relieve the dreary landscape; and even the large-flowered calceolarias, the blue gentians, the sweet-smelling verbenas, and many other Alpine plants, the usual ornaments of the higher mountain regions, are here almost suffocated by the dense grasses. But rarely the eye meets with a solitary queñua tree (Polylepis racemosa) of crippled growth, or with large spaces covered with red-brown ratania shrubs, which are carefully collected for fuel, or for roofing the wretched huts of the scanty population of these desolate highlands.

The cold climate of the Puna naturally confines agriculture to very narrow limits. The only cultivated plant which grows to maturity is the Maca (a species of tropæolum), the tuberous roots of which are used like the potato, and form in many parts the chief food of the inhabitants. This plant grows best at an elevation of twelve or thirteen thousand feet, and is not planted in the lower regions, where its roots are said to be completely unpalatable. Barley is also cultivated in the Puna, but never ripens, and is cut green for forage.

The animal kingdom is more amply represented; for there is no want of food on the grass-covered plains, and wherever this exists, there is room for the development of animals appropriate to the climate.

THE LLAMA.

Thus the Llama and its near relations, the Alpaca, the Huanacu, and the Vicuña, the largest four-footed animals which Peru possessed before the Spaniards introduced the horse and the ox, are all natives of the Puna. Long before the invasion of Pizarro, the llama was used by the ancient Peruvians as a beast of burthen, and was not less serviceable to them than the camel to the Arabs of the desert. The wool served for the fabrication of a coarse cloth; the milk and flesh, as food; the skin, as a warm covering or mantle; and without the assistance of the llama, it would have been impossible for the Indians to transport goods or provisions over the high table-lands of the Andes, or for the Incas to have founded and maintained their vast empire. The llama is also historically remarkable as being the only animal domesticated by the aboriginal Americans. The reindeer of the north[4] and the bison of the prairies enjoyed then, as they do now, their savage independence: the llama alone was obliged to submit to the yoke of man. But the llama reminds us of the dromedary not only by a similar destiny and similar services, but also by a strong resemblance in form and structure, so as to be classed by naturalists in the same family. The unsightly hump is wanting, but the llama possesses the same callosities on the breast and on the knees, the same divided hoof and a similar formation of the toes and stomach. Thus Nature has formed in the llama a species of mountain camel, admirably adapted to the exigencies of a totally different soil and climate; and surely it is not one of the least wonders of creation to see animals so similar in many respects emerge, without any connecting links, at the opposite extremities of the globe.

The ordinary load of the llama is about one hundred pounds, and its rate of travelling with this burthen over rugged mountain passes is from twelve to fifteen miles a-day. When overloaded it lies down, and will not rise until relieved of part of its burthen. ‘The Indians,’ says Tschudi, ‘often travel with large herds of llamas to the coast to fetch salt. Their journeys are very small, rarely more than three or four leagues; for the llamas never feed after sunset, and are thus obliged to graze while journeying, or to rest for several hours. While reposing they utter a peculiar low tone, which at a distance resembles the sound of an Æolian harp. A loaded herd of llamas traversing the high table-lands affords an interesting spectacle. Slowly and stately they proceed, casting inquisitive glances on every side. On seeing any strange object which excites their fears, they immediately scatter in every direction, and their poor drivers have great difficulty to gather the herd.’ The Indians, who are very fond of these animals, decorate their ears with ribbons, hang little bells about their necks, and always caress them before placing the burthen on their back. When one of them drops from fatigue, they kneel at its side and strive to encourage it for further exertion by a profusion of flattering epithets and gentle warnings. Yet, in spite of good treatment, a number of llamas perish on the way to the coast or to the forests, as they cannot stand the hot climate.

The Huanacu is of a greater size than the llama, and resembles it so much that it was supposed to be the wild variety until Tschudi, in his ‘Fauna Peruana,’ pointed out the specific differences between both. Its fleece is shorter and less fine; its colour brown, the under parts being whitish—but varieties of colour are never observed, as in the llama; the face is blackish grey, lighter and almost white about the lips. The huanacus generally live in small troops of from five to seven. They are very shy, but when caught young are easily tamed, though they always remain spiteful, and can hardly ever be trained to carry burthens.

The Alpaca is smaller than the llama, and resembles the sheep; but its neck is longer, and it has a more elegantly formed head. The wool which, on account of its admirable qualities, is extensively used in England, is very long, soft, fine, and of a silky lustre—sometimes quite white or black, but often also variegated.

THE ALPACA.

Shy, like the chamois or the steinbock, the Vicuña inhabits the most sequestered mountain-valleys of the Andes. It is of a more elegant shape than the alpaca, with a longer and more graceful neck, and a more curly wool of extreme fineness. During the rainy season, the vicuñas retire to the crests of the Cordillera, where vegetation is reduced to the scantiest limits; but they never venture on the bare summits, as their hoof, accustomed to tread only on the turf, is very tender and sensitive. When pursued, they never fly to the ice-fields, but only along the grass-grown slopes. In the dry season, when vegetation withers on the heights, they descend to seek their food along the sources and swampy grounds. From six to fifteen she-vicuñas live under the protection and guidance of a single male, who always remains a few paces apart from his harem, and keeps watch with the most attentive care. At the least approach of danger he immediately gives the alarm by a shrill cry, and rapidly steps forward. The herd, immediately assembling, turns inquisitively towards the side whence danger is apprehended, and then, suddenly wheeling, flies, at first slowly, and constantly looking back, but soon with unrivalled swiftness. The male covers the retreat, frequently standing still and watching the enemy. The females reward the faithful care of their leader with an equally rare attachment; for when he is wounded or killed, they will keep running round him with shrill notes of sorrow, and rather be shot than flee. The cry of the vicuña is a peculiar whistle, which, though greatly resembling the shrill neighing of the llama, may easily be distinguished by a practised ear, when it suddenly pierces the thin air of the Puna, even from a distance where the sharpest eye is no longer able to distinguish the form of the animal.

The hunting of the vicuñas, which is very singular and interesting, takes place in April or May. Each family in the Puna villages is obliged to furnish the contingent of one of its members at least; and the widows accompany the hunters, to serve as cooks. The whole troop, frequently consisting of seventy or eighty persons, and carrying bundles of poles and large quantities of cordage, sets out for the more elevated plateaus, where the vicuñas are grazing. In an appropriate spot the poles are fixed into the earth, at intervals of twelve or fifteen paces, and united by the cordage, about two feet from the ground. In this manner a circular space, called Chacu, of about half a league in circumference, is enclosed, leaving on one side an entrance several hundred paces wide. The women attach to the cordage coloured rags, which wave to and fro in the wind. As soon as the Chacu is ready, the men disperse, and forming a ring many miles in circumference, drive all the intervening vicuña herds through the entrance into the circle, which is closed as soon as a sufficient number has been collected. The shy animals do not venture to spring over the cord and its fluttering rags, and are thus easily killed by the bolas of the Indians. These bolas consist of three balls of lead or stone, two of which are heavy, and one lighter, each ball being attached to a long leather thong. The thongs are knotted together at their free extremity. When used, the lighter ball is taken in the hand, and the two others swung in a wide circle over the head. At a certain distance from the mark, about fifteen or twenty paces, the hand-ball is let loose, and then all three fly in hissing circles towards the object which they are intended to strike, and encompass it in their formidable embrace. The hindlegs of the vicuñas are generally aimed at. It is no easy matter to throw the bolas adroitly, particularly when on horseback; for the novice often wounds either himself or his horse mortally, by not giving the balls the proper swing, or letting them escape too soon from his hand. The flesh of the vicuñas is divided in equal portions among the hunters. When dried in the air, and then pounded and mixed with Spanish pepper, its taste is not unpleasing. The Church, however, manages to get the best part of the animal, for the priest generally appropriates the skin. As soon as all the entrapped vicuñas are killed, the chacu is taken to pieces, and set up again ten or twelve miles further off. The whole chase lasts a week, and the number of the animals slaughtered frequently amounts to several hundreds.

In the times of the Incas, the Puna chases were conducted on a much grander scale. Annually from 25,000 to 30,000 Indians assembled, who were obliged to drive all the wild animals from a circuit of more than a hundred miles into an enormous chacu. As the circle narrowed, the ranks of the Indians were doubled and trebled, so that no animal could escape. The pernicious quadrupeds, such as bears, cuguars, and foxes, were all killed, but only a limited number of stags, deer, vicuñas, and huanacus; for the provident Incas did not lose sight of the wants of futurity, and were more economical of the lives of animals than their brutal successors, the Christian Spaniards, were of the lives of men.

In spite of the persecutions to which they are subject, not only from hunters but from the ravenous condor, who frequently robs them of their young, the vicuñas do not seem to diminish, and are often seen roaming about in large numbers—the inaccessible wilds to which they are able to retreat amply securing them against extermination.

CHINCHILLA.

Besides these four remarkable Camelides, we find among the animals peculiar to the Puna the stag-like Tarush (Cervus antisiensis); the timid deer, who also descends from the high mountain-plains into the coast-valleys and the forest region; the Viscachas and the Chinchillas. The Peruvian Viscachas (Lagidium peruanum and pallipes), live at an elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, between 33° and 18° S. lat., and resemble the rabbit in form and colour, but have shorter ears and a long rough tail. Their far is soft, but not nearly so fine as that of the near-related Chinchilla (Chinchilla lanigera). This little creature, which is somewhat larger than our squirrel, has large and brilliant eyes, an erect tail, strong bristles on the upper lip, and almost naked, rounded ears. It lives in burrows, feeding chiefly upon roots, and is found in such numbers in the Chilian Andes that its holes considerably increase the difficulty of travelling. The fur is too well known to require any further description. Where ruminants and rodents abound it may easily be imagined that beasts of prey will not be wanting. The cunning fox (Canis Azaræ) waylays both the chinchillas and the water-birds; and, impelled by hunger, the Puma, or American lion, ascends even to the borders of eternal snow in quest of the vicuña and the deer. But the monarch of the Puna is unquestionably the mighty condor, who, soaring over the highest peaks of the Andes, sees on one side the Pacific rolling its heavy breakers against the coast, and on the other the Marañon vanishing in the hazy distance of the primitive forest.

The frequent showers and snow-falls of the Puna naturally give rise to numerous swamps and lagunes, which afford nourishment to an abundance of birds,—such as the beautiful snow-white Huachua goose (Chloéphaga melanoptera), with dark-green wings of a metallic lustre; the licli, a species of plover; the ibis; the long-legged flamingo; the Quiulla gull (Larus serranus), and the gigantic coot (Fulica gigantea), which, unable to fly, dives in the cold waters, and builds its nest on the solitary stones which rise above the surface.

To the aboriginal animals of the Puna man has added the horse, the ox, the dog, and the sheep. In the more sheltered valleys there are estates possessing from 60,000 to 80,000 sheep, and from 400 to 500 oxen. During the wet season the herds are driven into the Altos or highest regions, often to a height of 15,000 feet; but when the frosty nights of the dry period of the year parch the grass, they are obliged to descend to the swampy valleys, where they have much to suffer from hunger. In many parts of the Puna, wild bulls render travelling very dangerous, as they sometimes rush upon man without any previous notice, though they generally announce their approach by a hoarse bellowing. But even then it is almost impossible to escape them in the open plain, and more than once Tschudi was only able, by a well-aimed shot, to save himself from the attack of one of these formidable animals.

Though not so dangerous, the half-wild Puna dogs (Canis Ingæ, Tschudi) are extremely troublesome to the traveller,—false, spiteful animals, which ferociously attack enemies far stronger than themselves; and, like the bull-dog, will rather suffer themselves to be cut to pieces than retreat. They have a particular antipathy to the white race, and it is rather a bold undertaking for the European traveller to approach the hut of an Indian that is guarded by these animals.

The frosts of winter and an eternal spring are nowhere found in closer proximity than in the Peruvian highlands, for deep valleys cleave the windy Puna; and when the traveller, benumbed by the cold blasts of the mountain-plains, descends into these sheltered gorges he almost suddenly finds himself transported from a northern climate to a terrestrial paradise. Situated at a height where the enervating power of the tropical sun is not felt, and where at the same time the air is not too rarefied, these pleasant mountain vales, protected by their rocky walls against the gusts of the Puna, enjoy all the advantages of a genial sky. Here the astonished European sees himself surrounded by the rich corn-fields, the green lucerne meadows, and the well-known fruit trees of his distant home, so that he might almost fancy that some friendly enchanter had transported him to his native country, if the cactuses and the agaves on the mountain-slopes by day, and the constellations of another hemisphere by night, did not remind him of the vast distance which separates him from the land of his birth.

There are regions in this remarkable country where the traveller may in the morning leave the snow-decked Puna hut, and before sunset pluck pine-apples and bananas on the cultivated margin of the primeval forest; where in the morning the stunted grasses and arid lichens of the naked plain remind him of the arctic regions, and where he may repose at night under the fronds of gigantic palms.

GUANO ISLAND.

CHAPTER IV.
THE PERUVIAN SAND-COAST.

Its desolate Character—The Mule is here the ‘Ship of the Desert.’—A Shipwreck and its Consequences—Sand-Spouts—Medanos—Summer and Winter—The Garuas—The Lomas—Change produced in their Appearance during the Season of Mists—Azara’s Fox—Wild Animals—Birds—Reptiles—The Chincha or Guano Islands.

Between the Cordilleras to the east and the Pacific to the west extends, from 3° to 21° S. lat., 540 leagues long and from 3 to 20 leagues broad, a desert coast, the picture of death and desolation. Traversed by spurs of the mighty mountain-chain, which either gradually sink into the plain, or form steep promontories washed by the ocean, it rises and falls in alternate heights and valleys, where the eye seldom sees anything but fine drift-sand or sterile heaps of stone.

Only where, at considerable intervals, some rivulet, fed by a glacier or a small mountain lake, issues from the ravines of the Andes to lose itself after a short course in the Pacific, green belts, like the oases of the African desert, break the general monotony, and appear more charming from the contrast with the nakedness of the surrounding waste. The planter carefully husbands the last drop of water from those scanty streams; for, as the tribes of the Sahara can only, by dint of constant industry, preserve their date-palm islands against the waves of the surrounding sand-sea, thus also the inhabitant of the Peruvian coast can only by perpetual irrigation protect his plantations from the encroachments of the neighbouring desert! But the fruits which he reaps and garners are very different from those which are produced by the African oasis; for, while none of the plants of the Peruvian sand-coast has ever found its way to the Sahara, the sycamores and tamarinds of the latter are equally unknown on the eastern shores of the Pacific. Cotton and sugar, maize and batatas, manioc and bananas, here take the place of the date-palm of the Arab, and thrive only so far as the limits of irrigation extend.

In the surrounding wastes, where for miles and miles the traveller meets no traces of vegetation, and finds not one drop of water, the mule performs the part of the African camel; for, satisfied with a scantier food than the horse, it more easily supports the fatigues of a prolonged journey through the sand, and in Peru is fully entitled to be called the ship of the desert. The horse cannot support hunger and thirst longer than forty-eight hours without becoming so weak as hardly to be able to carry its rider; and if the latter is imprudent enough to urge it on to a more rapid pace, it falls a victim to his obstinacy, as it will obey the spur until it sinks never to rise again. Not so the mule, which, on feeling itself unable to advance, stands still, and will not move an inch until it has rested for a time; after which it willingly continues its journey. Yet, in spite of these excellent qualities, many mules succumb to the fatigues and privations of the desert; and as in the Sahara the caravan-routes are marked by camel-skeletons, so here long rows of mule-skulls and bones point out the road along the Peruvian sand-coast. Woe to him whom a shipwreck casts on these desolate shores; for he is almost inevitably doomed to destruction!

In general, a healthy man can withstand hunger and thirst during four or five days, but only in a temperate climate and when the body is at rest; while in the burning deserts of Peru, the want of water during forty-eight hours, combined with the fatigue of wading through the deep sands, can only end in death. Thirst can, undoubtedly, be supported ten times longer in the moist sea-air than in the thoroughly desiccated atmosphere of a tropical waste.

The dangers of these solitudes are increased by the great mobility of the soil. When a strong wind blows, huge sand-columns, rising like water-spouts to a height of eighty or a hundred feet, advance whirling through the desert, and suddenly encompass the traveller, who can only save himself by a rapid flight. Such is the instability of the soil, that in a few hours a plain will be covered with hillocks or Medanos, and recover after a few days its former level. The most experienced muleteers are thus constantly deceived in their knowledge of the road, and are the first to give way to despair, while seeking to extricate themselves from a labyrinth of newly-formed medanos. These constant transformations and shiftings in the desert, which Tschudi graphically calls ‘a life in death,’ take place more particularly in the hot season, when the least pressure of the atmosphere suffices to disturb the dried-up sands, whose weight increases during the winter by the absorption of moisture. The single grains then unite to larger masses, and more easily withstand the pressure of the wind.

The summer, or dry season, begins in November. The rays of the vertical sun strike upon the light-coloured sands, and are reflected with suffocating power. No plant except the cactuses and tillandsias, which manage to thrive where nothing else exists, takes root in the glowing soil; no animal finds food on the lifeless plain; no bird, no insect, hovers or buzzes in the stifling atmosphere. Only in the highest regions the condor, the monarch of the air, is seen sailing along in lonely majesty.

In May, which in these southern latitudes corresponds to our October, the scene changes. A thin, misty veil extends over the sea and the coast, and, increasing in density during the following months, only begins to diminish in October. At the beginning and the end of this damp season the mist generally ascends between nine and ten in the morning, and falls again at about three in the afternoon; but in August and September, when it is most dense, it rests for weeks immovably over the earth, never dissolving in rain, but merely descending in a fine, penetrating drizzle, called ‘garua’ by the inhabitants. In many parts rain has not been known to fall for centuries, except only after very severe earthquakes, and even then the phenomenon is not of constant occurrence. The mist seldom ascends to a vertical height of more than 1,200 feet, when it is replaced by violent showers of rain; and, remarkably enough, the limits between both can be determined with almost mathematical precision, as there are plantations, one half of whose surface is invariably moistened by garuas and the other by rain.

When the mists appear, the Lomas, or chains of hills which bound the sand-coast towards the east, begin to assume a new character; and, as if by magic, a garden is seen where but a few days before a desert extended its dreary nakedness. Soon also, animal life begins to animate the scene, as the Lomeros drive their cattle and horses to these newly-formed pasture-grounds, where for several months they find an abundance of juicy food, but no water. This, however, they do not require, as they always leave the Lomas in the best condition.

In some of the northern coast-districts, situated near the equatorial line, where the garuas seldom appear, the fertility of the land depends wholly upon the streams which issue from the mountains. The dew, which along the coasts of central and south Peru hardly moistens the soil to the depth of half an inch, is there so completely wanting, that a piece of paper exposed to the air during the night shows no sign of moisture in the morning; and so thoroughly does the dryness of the soil prevent putrefaction, that after 300 years the mummified corpses are still found unaltered, which the ancient Peruvians buried in a sitting posture.

Thus the aridity of the Sahara repeats itself in these American deserts, and is in some measure owing to the same cause, though their geographical position to the west of the Andes, whose eastern slopes absorb all the moisture of the prevailing trade-winds, chiefly accounts for their nakedness. Rain is wanting, as there is no vegetation of any great extent to condense the passing vapours; and, on the other hand, the want of moisture prevents plants from rooting on the unstable soil.

A glance at the animal world of the Peruvian coast shows us the same poverty of species as in the great African desert. A fox (Canis Azaræ) seems here to play the part of the hyæna and the jackal; and is found both in the cotton-plantations along the streams, and in the Lomas, where he is destructive to the young lambs. The large American felidæ, the puma, and the jaguar, seldom appear on the coast, where they attain a more considerable size than in the mountains. The cowardly puma is afraid of man; while the bloodthirsty jaguar penetrates into the plantations, where he lies in wait for the oxen and horses, and avoids with remarkable sagacity, the manifold traps and pitfalls that are laid for him by the hacienderos.

In the cultivated districts Opossums are found among the low bushes, in deserted dwellings, or in storerooms; armadillos (Dasypus tatuay) are sometimes shot in the fields, and wild hogs of an enormous size infest the thickets near some of the plantations.

OPOSSUM.

Instead of the antelope and the gazelle of the African deserts, the Venado, a species of deer, makes its appearance on the Peruvian coast. It chiefly lives in the low bushes, which are scattered here and there, and after sunset visits the cultivated fields where it causes considerable damage.

Besides the numerous sea- and strand-birds, the carrion vultures and the condor, often found in large numbers feasting upon the marine animals that have been cast ashore, are the most conspicious among the feathered tribes of the coast. A small falcon (Falco sparverius) is likewise often seen, and a small burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) haunts almost every ruinous building. The pearl-owl (Strix perlata), performing the useful services of our own barn-owl, is protected and encouraged in many plantations, as it thins the ranks of the mice. Swallows are scarce; nor do they build their nests on the houses, but on solitary walls, far from the habitations of man.

Among the singing birds, the beautiful crowned fly-catcher (Myoarchus coronatus) is one of the most remarkable. Its head, breast and belly are of a burning red; its wings and back blackish brown. It always sits upon the highest top of the bushes, flies vertically upwards, whirls about a short time singing in the air, and then again descends in a straight line upon its former resting-place. Some tanagras and parrots, and two starling-like birds, the red-breasted picho and the lustrous black chivillo, that are frequently kept in cages on account of their agreeable song, are found in the coast-valleys; and various pigeons, among others the neat little turtuli and the more stately cuculi, frequent the neighbourhood of the plantations.

Among the lizard tribes large and brilliantly green iguanas are found on the southern coast; but much more frequently dull and sombre agamas lurk among the rocks and stones. Snakes, both venomous and harmless, are in general tolerably rare, and occur both in the fruitful lands and the sand-plains.

The animated sea-shore forms a striking contrast to the death-like solitude of the interior. Troops of carrion vultures gather about the large marine animals cast ashore by the surf; numerous strand-birds are greedily on the look-out for the shell-fish left by the retreating tide, or for the crabs and sea-spiders that everywhere draw their furrows about the beach; and sea-otters and seals sun themselves on the cliffs along the whole coast, except in the neighbourhood of the seaports where they have been extirpated or driven away by incessant persecutions.

To the north of Chancay, steep sand-hills rise to the height of 300 or 400 feet, abruptly verging to the sea. The road leading along the side of these hills, would be extremely dangerous but for the unstable nature of the soil. For though at each false step the mule slides with his rider towards the sea, it is very easy for him to regain his footing on the yielding sand. A large stone on one of these hills bears a striking resemblance to a sleeping sea-lion, and almost perpendicularly beneath it lies a little cove, inhabited by a number of seals. At night the bark of these animals, mixing with the hollow roar of the breakers, fills the traveller with a kind of involuntary terror.

Myriads of sea-birds breed on the small islands along the coast or swarm about the bays, where the fish supply them with abundant food. The number of these birds, a matter formerly of only local interest, is now a subject of general importance, as to them are owing the deep guano beds which have converted the sterile Chincha Islands[5] into mines of wealth.

The want of rain, which renders the greatest part of the Peruvian coast so utterly barren, is of the utmost advantage for the production of the guano; for if the Chincha Islands, like the Orkneys or the Hebrides, had been exposed to frequent storms, or washed by unceasing showers, they would have been mere naked rocks, instead of affording the richest deposits of manure the world can boast of.

CHAPTER V.
THE AMAZONS, THE GIANT RIVER OF THE TORRID ZONE.

The Course of the Amazons and its Tributaries—The Strait of Obydos—Tide Waves on the Amazons—The Black-water rivers—The Rio Negro—The Bay of the Thousand Isles—The Pororocca—Rise of the River—The Gapo—Magnificent Scenery—Different Character of the Forests beyond and within the verge of Inundation—General Character of the Banks—A Sail on the Amazons—A Night’s Encampment—The ‘Mother of the Waters’—The Piranga—Dangers of Navigating on the Amazons—Terrific Storms—Rapids and Whirlpools—The Stream of the Future—Travels of Orellana—Madame Godin.

The Amazons, the giant stream of the tropical world, is of no less magnificent proportions than the Andes, where it takes its source. From the small Peruvian mountain-lake of Lauricocha, 12,500 feet above the sea, the Tunguragua, which is generally considered as the chief branch, rushes down the valleys. At Tomependa, in the province of Juan de Bracamoros, rafts first begin to burden its free waters; but, as if impatient of the yoke, it still throws many an obstacle in the navigator’s way; for twenty-seven rapids and cataracts follow each other as far as the Pongo de Manseriche, where, at the height of 1,164 feet above the level of the sea, it for ever bids adieu to the romance of mountain scenery.

Its width, which at Tomependa exceeds that of the Thames at Westminster Bridge, narrows to 150 feet in the defile of the Pongo, which in some places is obscured by overhanging rocks and trees, and where huge masses of drift-wood, torn from the slopes by the mountain torrents, are crushed and disappear in the vertex.

From the Pongo to the ocean, a distance of more than 2,000 miles, no rocky barrier impedes the further course of the monarch of streams; and according to Herndon (Exploration of the Valley of the Amazons, 1851–1853), its depth constantly remains above eighteen feet, so that it is navigable for large ships all the way from Para to the foot of the Andes! No other river runs in so deep a channel at so great a distance from its mouth, and the tropical rains, spreading over a territory nearly equal in extent to one-half of Europe, are alone able to feed a stream of such colossal dimensions!

The first considerable tributary of the Amazons is the Huallaga, which rises near the famous silver-mines of Cerro de Pasco, 8,600 feet above the level of the sea, and is 2,500 paces broad at the point where the rivers meet. Lower down at Nauta, the Ucayale, descending from the distant mountains of Cuzco, adds his waters to the growing stream, after a course nearly 400 miles longer than that of the Tunguragua itself. Where these mighty rivers meet, Lieutenant Lister Maw found a depth of thirty-five fathoms.

From the Brazilian frontier, where it still flows at an elevation of 630 feet above the sea, to the influx of the Rio Negro, the Amazons is called the Solimoens, as if one name were not sufficient for its grandeur. During its progress between these two points it receives on the left, the Iça and the Yapura, on the right, the Xavari, the Jutay, the Jurua, the Teffe, the Coary, and the Purus, streams which, in Europe, would only be equalled by the Danube, but are here merely the obscure branches of a giant trunk.

The Rio Negro is the most considerable northern vassal of the Amazons. It rises in the Sierra Tunuhy, an isolated mountain-group in the Llanos, and conveys part of the waters of the Orinoco to the Amazons, as if the latter were not already sufficiently great. After a course of 1,500 miles it flows into the vast stream, 3,600 paces broad and 19 fathoms deep. Brigs of war have already ascended the Amazons as far as the Rio Negro, and frigates would find no obstacle in their way.

The Madeira, the next great tributary of the regal stream, has thus been named from the vast quantities of drift-wood floating on its waters.

Farther on, after having with a side-arm embraced the island of Tupinambaranas, which almost equals Yorkshire in extent, the Amazons now reaches the strait of Obydos, where it narrows to 2,126 paces, and rolls along between low banks in a bed whose depth as yet no plummet hath sounded. The mass of waters which, during the rainy season, rushes in one second through the strait, is estimated by Von Martius at 500,000 cubic feet,—enough to fill all the streams of Europe with an exuberant current.

The tides extend as far as Obydos, though still 400 miles from the sea; and according to La Condamine, they are even perceptible as far as the confluence of the Madeira. But so slow is their progress upwards, that seven floods, with their intervening ebbs, roll simultaneously along upon the giant stream; and thus, four days after the tide-wave was first raised in the wide deserts of the South Sea, its last undulations expire in the solitudes of Brazil.[6]

The next considerable vassal of the Amazons is the shallow Tapajos.

Fancy six streams, like the Thames, strung successively together, and you have the length of this river; take the Rhine twice from its source in the glacier of Mount Adula to the sands of Katwyck, and you have the measure of the Xingu. Before the confluence of this last of its great tributaries,—for the Tocantines, though considered by some geographers as a vassal, is in reality an independent stream,—the breadth of the Amazons appeared to Von Martius equal to that of the Lake of Constance; but soon even this enormous bed becomes too narrow for the vast volume of its waters, for below Gurupa it widens to an enormous gulf, which might justly be called the ‘Bay of the Thousand Isles.’ Nobody has ever counted their numbers; no map gives us an idea of this labyrinth. If we reckon the island of Marajo, which equals Sicily in size, to the delta of the Amazons, its extreme width on reaching the ocean is not inferior to that of the Baltic in its greatest breadth.

Dangerous sand-banks guard the giant’s threshold; and no less perilous to the navigator is the famous Pororocca, or the rapid rising of the spring-tide at the shallow mouths of the chief stream and of some of its embranchments,—a phenomenon which, though taking place at the mouth of many other rivers, such as the Hooghly, the Indus, the Dordogne, and the Seine,[7] nowhere assumes such dimensions as here, where the colossal wave frequently rises suddenly along the whole width of the stream to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and then collapses with a roar so dreadful that it is heard at the distance of more than six miles. Then the advancing flood-wave glides almost imperceptibly over the deeper parts of the river-bed, but again rises angrily as soon as a more shallow bottom arrests its triumphant career.

Our knowledge of the courses of most of the tributaries of the Amazons is very imperfect, and science knows next to nothing of the natural history of their banks. Even a correct map of the main stream is still wanting, for though its general course and the most important bends are tolerably well laid down, the numerous islands and parallel channels, the great lakes and offsets, the deep bays and the varying widths of the stream are quite unknown.

The numerous tributary streams of the Amazons differ remarkably in the colour of their waters and may be divided into three groups—the white or pale yellowish-water rivers, the blue-water rivers and the black-water rivers.

The difference of colour between the white-water and blue-water rivers is evidently owing to the nature of the country they flow through; a rocky and sandy district will always have clear-water rivers; an alluvial or clayey one will have troubled streams.

The Rio Negro is the largest and most celebrated of the black-water rivers. All its upper tributaries, the smaller ones especially, are very dark, and, when they run over white sand, give it the appearance of gold, from the rich colour of the water, which, when deep, appears inky black. In the rainy season, when the dark clouds above cause the water to appear of a yet more funereal blackness and the rising waves break in white foam over the vast expanse, the scene, as may well be imagined, is gloomy in the extreme.

The peculiar colour of the black-water rivers appears to be produced by the solution of decaying leaves, roots and other vegetable matter. In the virgin forests in which most of these streams have their source the little brooks and rivulets are half choked up with dead leaves and rotten branches giving various brown tinges to the water. When these rivulets meet together and accumulate into a river, they of course have a deep brown hue very similar to that of our bog or peat water, if there are no other circumstances to modify it. But if the stream flows through a district of soft alluvial clay, the colour will of course be modified and the brown completely overpowered.

A peculiarity of the black waters is the absence of mosquitos along their banks, which thus afford agreeable places of refuge to the persecuted traveller. No inducement will make an Indian boatman paddle so hard as the probability of reaching one of these privileged spots before midnight and being enabled to enjoy the comforts of sleep till morning.

The basin of the Amazons extending over an area of 2,330,000 English square miles surpasses in dimensions that of any other river in the world. All western Europe could be placed in it without touching its boundaries and it would even contain our whole Indian empire. It is entirely situated in the Tropics, on both sides of the Equator, and receives over its whole extent the most abundant rains. The body of fresh water which it empties into the ocean is therefore far greater than that of any other river; not only absolutely but probably also relatively to its area, for as it is almost entirely covered by dense virgin forests, the heavy rains which penetrate them do not suffer so much evaporation as when they fall on the scorched Llanos of the Orinoco or the treeless Pampas of La Plata.

Some idea may be formed of the vastness of the territory drained by the Amazons from the fact that at the sources of its northern and southern tributaries, the rainy season takes place at opposite times of the year. So wonderful is the length of the stream that, while at the foot of the Andes it begins to rise early in January, the Solimoens swells only in February: and below the Rio Negro the Amazons does not attain its full height before the end of March.

The swelling of the river is colossal as itself. In the Solimoens and farther westwards the water rises above forty feet; and Von Martius even saw trees whose trunks bore marks of the previous inundation fifty feet above the height of the stream during the dry season.

Then for miles and miles the swelling giant inundates his low banks, and, majestic at all times, becomes terrible in his grandeur when rolling his angry torrents through the wilderness. The largest forest-trees tremble under the pressure of the waters, and trunks, uprooted and carried away by the stream, bear witness to its power. Fishes and alligators now swim where a short while ago the jaguar lay in wait for the tapir, and only a few birds, perching on the highest tree-tops, remain to witness the tumult which disturbs the silence of the woods.

When at length the river retires within its usual limits, new islands have been formed in its bed, while others have been swept away; and in many places the banks, undermined by the floods, threaten to crush the passing boat by their fall,—a misfortune which not seldom happens, particularly when high trees come falling headlong down with the banks into the river.

The lands flooded to a great depth at every time of high water are called in the language of the country ‘Gapo,’ and are one of the most singular features of the Amazons. They extend hundreds of miles along the river’s course, and vary in width on each side from one to ten or twenty miles. Through the Gapo a person may go by canoe in the wet season, without once entering into the main river. He will pass through small streams, lakes, and swamps, and everywhere around him will stretch out an illimitable waste of waters, but all covered with a lofty virgin forest. For days he will travel through this forest scraping against the trunks of trees, and stooping to pass beneath the leaves of prickly palms now level with the water though raised on stems forty feet high. In this trackless maze the Indian finds his way with unerring certainty, and by slight indications of broken twigs or scraped bark goes on day by day as if travelling on a beaten road.

The magical beauty of tropical vegetation reveals itself in all its glory to the traveller who steers his boat through the solitudes of these aquatic mazes. Here the forest forms a canopy over his head; there it opens, allowing the sunshine to disclose the secrets of the wilderness; while on either side the eye penetrates through beautiful vistas into the depths of the woods. Sometimes, on a higher spot of ground, a clump of trees forms an island worthy of Eden. A chaos of bushropes and creepers flings its garlands of gay flowers over the forest, and fills the air with the sweetest odours. Numerous birds, rivalling in beauty of colour the passifloras and bignonias of these hanging gardens, animate the banks of the lagune, while gaudy macaws perch on the loftiest trees; and as if to remind one that death is not banished from this scene of paradise, a dark-robed vulture screeches through the woods, or an alligator rests, like a black log of wood or a sombre rock, on the dormant waters.

BLUE MACAW.

The inundations of the Amazons essentially modify the character of the bordering forest; for it is only beyond their verge that the enormous fig and laurel trees, the Lecythas and the Bertholletias, appear in all their grandeur. As here the underwood is less dense and more dwarfish, it is easy to measure the colossal trunks, and to admire their proportions, often towering to a height of 120 feet, and measuring fifteen feet in diameter above the projecting roots. Enormous mushrooms spring from the decayed leaves, and numberless parasites rest upon the trunks and branches. The littoral forest, on the contrary, is of more humble growth. The trunks, branchless in their lower part, clothed with a thinner and a smoother bark, and covered with a coat of mud according to the height of the previous inundation, stand close together, and form above a mass of interlacing branches. These are the sites of the cacao-tree and of the prickly sarsaparilla, which is gathered in large quantities for the druggists of Europe. Leafless bushropes wind in grotesque festoons among the trees, between whose trunks a dense underwood shoots up, to perish by the next overflowing of the stream. Instead of the larger parasites, mosses and jungermannias weave their carpets over the drooping branches. But few animals besides the numerous water-birds inhabit this damp forest zone, in which, as it is almost superfluous to add, no plantation has been formed by man.

The many islands of the delta of the Amazons are everywhere encircled by mangroves; but sailing stream upwards, the monotonous green of these monarchs of the shore is gradually replaced by flowers and foliage, which, in every variety of form and colour, for hundreds and hundreds of miles characterise the banks of the river.

During the dry season prickly astricarias, large musaceæ, enormous bamboo-like grasses, white plumed ingas, and scarlet poivreas, are most frequently seen among the numberless plants growing along the margin of the stream. Above the shrubbery of the littoral forest numberless palms tower, like stately columns, to the height of a hundred feet; while others of a lower stature are remarkable for the size of their trunks, on which the foot-stalks of the fallen leaves serve as supports for ferns and other parasites.

It stands to reason that in a length of more than 3,000 miles the species of plants must frequently change; yet the low banks of the Amazons, and of its vassals, as soon as they have emerged from the mountains where they rise, have everywhere a similar character. On sailing down the river for hundreds of miles, the eye may at length grow weary of the uniformity of a landscape, which remains constantly the same; but the interest increases as the mind becomes more and more impressed by the grandeur of its dimensions. A broad stream, now dividing into numerous arms, and now swelling into a lake; a dark forest-border, which on so flat a ground seems at a distance like an artificial but colossal hedge: these are the only elements of which the landscape is composed. No busy towns rise upon the banks, and it is only at vast intervals that one finds a few wretched huts, which are soon again lost in the forest; but a sky so brilliant spreads over the whole scene, and the rays of the sun beam upon a nature of such luxuriance, that the traveller, far from feeling the voyage monotonous, proceeds on his journey with increasing interest, and every morn salutes with new joy the majestic wilderness.

The boat floats along, borne by the current of the river, which, in the dry season, generally flows at the rate of four English miles in an hour. Even during the night the journey is usually continued, when no special danger claims a greater caution, and a landing only takes place when the desire becomes general to enjoy a perfectly quiet night’s rest, or when a broad sand bank happens to be invitingly near. Generally an island is selected, as affording both greater security from beasts of prey and a clearer ground. The Indians are not obliged to fetch fire-wood from a distance, for trees, drifted by the floods, are constantly found at the upper end of the river-islands, where they remain until the next inundation once more raises them; and thus many of them are ultimately drifted by the ocean currents to distant lands. The Indians sometimes set fire to the whole pile, and then the flames, taking an unexpected direction, may force the company to flee as fast as possible to the raft, and to settle in a safer place, while they continue to blaze over the forest, or to cast a lurid light over the waters.

Fires are frequently lighted for a more useful purpose on the banks of the stream, as they never fail to attract a number of large fishes, which the dexterous Indians know how to strike with their harpoons. While some are thus engaged, others are lurking for the tortoises that pay their nightly visits to the bank, anxious to bury their numerous eggs in the sand. Thus almost every landing on one of these river-islands furnishes fresh provisions for the continuance of the journey; for the captured tortoises are bound to the raft, where, in the enjoyment of water and shade, they continue to live for a long time.

As soon as the supper is finished, the Indians, after throwing an additional log upon the watch-fire, all stretch themselves on the ground, under their dark-coloured toldos, or mosquito covers, which on the white sand have the appearance of as many coffins. Their tranquil breathing soon tells that they are enjoying the deep repose peculiar to their race; but sleep forsakes the European amid scenes so novel and so grand. The soul is struck with impressions which compel it to reflection. The ripple breaks lightly on the bank; no noise, save the crackling of the fire, breaks the stillness of the night. Only from time to time the splashing of a fish is heard in the distant centre of the stream. The same stillness reigns in the skies; for not the slightest cloud dims the brightness of the stars. But suddenly the waters begin to rustle at a distance, as if wave were rolling after wave, and as the strange sound draws nigh, an unusual agitation becomes apparent in the water. The awakening Indians whisper anxiously, for they imagine an enormous reptile to be the cause of the phenomenon. They also believe the lagunes of the great stream to be the seat of a prodigious serpent, equal in size and power to the fabulous sea-snake; for the yacu-mama, or ‘mother of the waters,’ as this imaginary monster is called, attracts by a single inspiration every living creature—man, quadruped, or bird—that passes within a hundred feet of its jaws. As the maelstrom sucks down the helpless boat that comes within its vortex, thus the mighty air-current forces its prey into the wide mouth of the monster lurking in the thicket. For this reason an Indian will never venture to enter an unknown lagune without blowing his horn, as the yacu-mama is said to answer, and thus to give him time for a speedy flight. The ‘mother of the waters’ is said to be at least fifty paces long, and to measure ten or twelve yards in circumference. Thus fancy is as busy in creating imaginary terrors in the lagunes of the Marañon as on the rocky shores of Scandinavia.

Infinitely more dangerous than this fabulous serpent, more dreadful even than the cayman or the anaconda, are the pirangas, a small species of salmon, which in many places attack the unfortunate swimmer with their sharp teeth, and taint the waters with his blood. Castelnau saw how a stag, which threw itself in the river to avoid the hunter’s pursuit, was soon killed by the pirangas. The Roman knight that cast his slaves to the murænas,[8] would, no doubt, have been rejoiced to people his ponds with fish like these; and Tiberius would have been delighted to have possessed them at Capræa!

A night encampment in the Amazons is, however, not always so pleasant as the foregoing description might lead one to suppose; for many islands are so infested with mosquitos that they are quite intolerable, and the growl of a jaguar or the sight of a crocodile (for this animal is by no means afraid of fire) not unfrequently disturbs the company. Complete security from these persecutions and visits is only to be found in the centre of the stream; for here a cayman is seldom seen, and the wings of the insects are too weak to carry them to such a distance from the shore.

The most striking features of the Amazons, besides its vast expanse of smooth water, generally from three to six miles wide, are the great beds of aquatic grass which line its shores, large masses of which are often detached and form floating islands; the quantity of fruits and leaves and great trunks of trees which it carries down, and its level banks clad with high unbroken masses of verdure. In places the white stems and leaves of the Cecropias give a peculiar aspect, and in others the straight dark trunks of lofty forest trees form a living wall along the water’s edge. There is much animation, too, on this great stream. Numerous flocks of parrots and the great red and yellow macaws fly across every morning and evening, uttering their hoarse cries. Many kinds of herons and rails frequent the marshes on its banks, and a great handsome duck (Chenalobex jubata) is often seen swimming about the bays and inlets. But perhaps the most characteristic birds of the Amazons are the gulls and terns which are in great abundance. All night long their cries are heard over the sand banks where they deposit their eggs, and during the day they may constantly be seen, sitting in a row on a floating log, sometimes a dozen or twenty side by side, and going for miles down the stream as grave and motionless as if they were on some very important business. These birds deposit their eggs in little hollows in the sand, and the Indians say that during the heat of the day they carry water in their beaks to moisten them, and prevent them being roasted by the scorching sun. Besides these there are divers and darters in abundance, porpoises are constantly blowing in every direction, and alligators are often seen slowly swimming across the river. An amazing number of fishes peoples the waters of the Amazons and its tributaries. They supply the Indians with the greater part of their animal food, and are at all times more plentiful and easier to be obtained than birds or game from the forest. Mr. Wallace found 205 species in the Rio Negro alone, and as most of those which inhabit the upper part of the river are not found near its mouth, where there are many other kinds equally unknown in the clearer, darker, and probably colder waters of its higher branches, he estimates that at least 500 species exist in the Rio Negro and its tributary streams. In fact, in every small river and in different parts of the same river distinct kinds are found, so that it is impossible to estimate the number in the whole valley of the Amazons with any approach to accuracy.

To describe the countless tribes of insects that swarm in the dense forests of that vast basin would be equally vain. In no country in the world is there more variety and beauty, nowhere are there species of larger size and of more brilliant colours. The great mass of the beetles are indeed inferior to those of tropical Africa, India, and Australia, but it is in the lovely butterflies that the Amazonian forests are unrivalled, whether we consider the endless variety of the species, their large size, or their gorgeous colour. South America is the richest part of the world in this group of insects, and the Amazons seems the richest part of South America.

In more than one respect the Amazons reminds one of the ocean, from whose bosom its waters originally arose. Like the sea, it forms a barrier between various species of animals; for the monkeys on its northern bank are different from those of the forests on its southern side, and many an insect—nay, even many a bird—finds an impassable barrier in the enormous width of the river. Like the sea, it has a peculiar species of dolphin, and hundreds of miles up the stream, sea-mews and petrels, deceived by its grandeur, screech or shoot in arrowy flight over its fish-teeming waters. As over the ocean, or in the desert, the illusions of the mirage are also produced over the surface of the Marañon. The distant banks, not always clearly defined even in the morning, disappear wholly at noon, and the rays of the sun are then so refracted that the long rows of palms appear in an inverted position.

The dreadful storms which burst suddenly over the Amazons, likewise recall to memory the tornados of the ocean. The howlings of the monkeys, the shrill tones of the mews, and the visible terror of all animals, first announce the approaching conflict of the elements. The crowns of the palms rustle and bend, while as yet no breeze is perceptible on the surface of the stream; but, like a warning voice, a hollow murmur in the air precedes the black clouds ascending from the horizon, like grim warriors ready for battle. And now the old forest groans under the shock of the hurricane; a night-like darkness veils the face of nature; and, while torrents of rain descend amid uninterrupted sheets of lightning and terrific peals of thunder, the river rises and falls in waves of a dangerous height. Then it requires a skilful hand to preserve the boat from sinking; but the Indian pilots steer with so masterly a hand, and understand so well the first symptoms of the storm, that it seldom takes them by surprise, or renders them victims of its fury.

Among the dangers of the Amazons, the rapids must not be forgotten that frequently arise where large tracts of the bank, undermined by the floods, have been cast into the river. The boat is almost unavoidably lost when carried by the current among the branches of the trees, which, though submerged, still remain attached to the ground, and sweep furiously through the eddy, overturning or smashing all that comes within their reach.

Perhaps no country in the world contains such an amount of vegetable matter on its surface as the valley of the Amazons. Its entire extent, with the exception of some very small portions, is covered with one dense and lofty primeval forest, the most extensive and unbroken which exists upon the earth. It is the great feature of the country, that which at once stamps it as a unique and peculiar region. It is not here, as on the coasts of southern Brazil, or on the shores of the Pacific, where a few days’ journey suffices to carry us beyond the forest district, and into the parched plains and rocky sierras of the interior. Here one may travel for weeks and months inland in any direction, and find scarcely an acre of ground unoccupied by trees.

It is far up in the interior where the great mass of this mighty forest is found; not on the lower part of the river, near the coast as is generally supposed. Bounded on one side by the Andes, on the other by the Atlantic, it extends from east to west for a distance of 2,600 miles; and from 7 N. latitude on the banks of the Orinoco, to 18 S. latitude on the northern slope of the great mountain chain of Bolivia, a distance of more than 1,700 miles. From a point about sixty miles south-east of Tabatinga, on the Upper Amazons, a circle may be drawn of 1,100 miles in diameter, the whole area of which will be virgin forest. Such are the magnificent proportions of these wonderful woods, which speak to the imagination as forcibly as the ocean or the Great Sahara.

The forests of no other part of the world, not even the immense fir-woods of Siberia or of North America, are so extensive and unbroken as this. Those of Central Europe are trifling in comparison, nor in India are they very continuous or extensive. Africa contains some large forests situated on the east and west coasts, and in the interior south of the Equator, but the whole of them would bear but a small proportion to that of the Amazons. In a general survey of the tropical world, we may, therefore, look upon South America as pre-eminently the land of forests, contrasting strongly with Asia or Africa, where deserts are the most characteristic features.

If the Nile—so remarkable for its historical recollections, which carry us far back into the by-gone ages—and the Thames, unparalleled by the greatness of a commerce which far eclipses that of ancient Carthage or Tyre—may justly be called the rivers of the past and the present, the Amazons has equal claims to be called the stream of the future; for a more splendid field nowhere lies open to the enterprise of man.

All the gifts of Nature are scattered in profusion over the vast territory drained by the river. The mountains, where it rises, teem with mineral treasures, and the very ideal of fertility is realised in those well-watered plains, where the equatorial sun developes life in boundless luxuriance. The most useful and costly productions of the tropical world,—sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo, tobacco, maize, rice; quinquina in the higher regions of the Marañon, where wheat and the vine find a congenial climate; cacao and vanille, sarsaparilla and caoutchouc, various palms of the most manifold uses; trees and shrubs, some rivalling our oaks in the solidity of their timber, others fit by the beauty of their grain to adorn palaces; dyes, resins, gums, spices, drugs,—all, in one word, that is capable of satisfying the wants of the frugal or the fancies of the rich, might there be raised in profusion over a space surpassing England at least forty times in extent. The whole actual population of the globe could easily live in content and plenty in the almost uninhabited valleys of the Marañon and its tributary streams.

With these magnificent prospects the present forms a melancholy contrast. Here and there some small town or wretched village rises on the banks of the mighty stream; and a few Indians roam over the forests, through which it rolls along, or enjoy the produce of its prolific waters. The vast province of Para, the garden of Brazil, the paradise of unborn millions, has scarcely four inhabitants on a geographical square mile; while even the northern province of Archangel, the land of the stunted fir and the mossy tundra, has a population four times as large. But since the last few years, steamboats regularly ascend the giant stream and some of its tributaries almost to the foot of the Andes; railroads are being made where navigation is impeded by rapids, and ere long civilization and industry will have dawned over the vast woodlands of the Amazon.

Eight years after Columbus had revealed the existence of a new world, Vincent Yañez Pinson, the companion of his first voyage, sailed with four ships from the port of Palos (13th January, 1500), steered boldly towards the south, crossed the line, and discovered the mouth of the Amazons. Forty years later Gonsalo Pizarro, governor of Quito, left his capital with 340 Spaniards and 4,000 Indian carriers to conquer the unknown countries to the east of the Andes. The march over the Puna and the high mountain ridges proved fatal to the greater part of their wretched attendants; and even the Spaniards—accustomed to brave every climate and hardship wherever gold held forth its glittering promise—had much to suffer from the excess of cold and fatigue. But when they descended into the low country their distress increased. During two months it rained incessantly, without any interval of fair weather long enough to enable them to dry their clothes. They could not advance a step, unless they cut a road through woods, or made it through marshes. The land, either altogether without inhabitants, or occupied by the rudest and least industrious tribes in the New World, yielded little food. Such incessant toil and continual scarcity were enough to shake the most stedfast hearts; but the heroism and perseverance of the Spaniards of the sixteenth century surmounted obstacles which to all others would have seemed insuperable. Allured by false accounts of rich countries before them, they struggled on, until they reached the banks of the Napo, one of the rivers whose waters add to the greatness of the Marañon. There, with infinite labour, they built a bark, which they expected would prove of great use in conveying them over rivers, in procuring provisions, and in exploring the country. This was manned with fifty soldiers, under the command of Francis Orellana, the officer next in rank to Pizarro.

The stream carried them down so quickly that they were soon far ahead of their countrymen, who followed slowly and with difficulty by land. At first Orellana may have had no intention to betray the trust bestowed upon him by his commander; but on reaching the Marañon, the aspect of the stream rolling majestically to the east proved a temptation too strong for his ambition; and, forgetting his duty to his fellow-soldiers, he resolved to follow the course of the river, which seemed to beckon him onwards to riches and renown. But one among his followers, Sanchez de Vargas, whose name well deserves a record, had the courage to remonstrate against this breach of faith, for which he was landed as a criminal, without food or help of any kind. After a dangerous and romantic navigation of seven months, whose real adventures he afterwards embellished with fabulous tales of El Dorados and warlike Amazons, Orellana at length reached the mouth of the stream. Drifted by the current, he thence safely steered for the Spanish settlement in the island of Cubagua, and soon after embarked for Spain. The magnificence of his discovery threw a veil over his guilt; and having been appointed governor of the territory whose grandeur he had been the first to reveal, he once more crossed the ocean. But he was not destined to reach the scene where his ambition dreamt of exploits worthy to eclipse the fame of Cortes or Pizarro; a mortal disease befell him on the passage, and in the sea he found a nameless grave.

But what had meanwhile become of the leader whom he had so basely abandoned in the wilderness? The consternation of Pizarro on not finding the bark at the confluence of the Napo and the Marañon, where he had ordered Orellana to wait for him, may well be imagined. But, imputing his absence to some unknown accident, he advanced above fifty leagues along the banks of the river, expecting every moment to see the bark appear with abundant provisions and joyful tidings. At length he met with the faithful Vargas, and now no doubt remained about the treachery of his lieutenant and his own desperate situation. The spirit of his stoutest-hearted veterans sank within them; all demanded to be led back instantly, and Pizarro, though he assumed an appearance of tranquillity, did not oppose their inclination. But they were now 1,200 miles from Quito, and a march of many months had to be made without the hopes which had soothed their previous sufferings. Hunger compelled them to sacrifice all their dogs and horses, to devour the most loathsome reptiles, to gnaw the leather of their saddles and sword-belts. All the Indians and 210 Spaniards perished in this wild expedition, which lasted nearly two years. When at length the survivors arrived at Quito, they were naked like savages, and so worn out with famine and fatigue that they looked more like spectres than men.

Two hundred years after the adventures of Pizarro and Orellana, the French naturalist, La Condamine, performed his celebrated voyage from Bracamoros to Para. He was accompanied by the learned M. Godin des Odonnais, who, leaving his wife on the eastern slope of the Andes, returned alone to Europe in the year 1479. After a separation of several years Madame Godin undertook to descend the Amazons to Para, where her husband was waiting for her. She embarked with her two brothers, a doctor, three female servants, and some Indians, in a large open boat. At the very first opportunity the doctor abandoned the party, and was soon followed by the Indians.

The unskilled travellers vainly attempted to steer their boat; it foundered on a sand bank, and Madame Godin with difficulty saved her life. They then made a raft, which met with the same misfortune. Undaunted by these repeated disasters, but completely inexperienced, they now resolved to proceed on foot through the forest; but hunger and fatigue soon drove them to despair, and they all perished, except Madame Godin, who, though physically the weakest, was morally the strongest of the party. Tattered, emaciated, exhausted, she at length met some Indians who treated her with the greatest kindness. The long struggle for her life, amid dangers and hardships without number, had bleached her hair, and stamped her with the marks of extreme old age. The good-natured savages guided her to the next European settlement, whence she continued her journey to Para without any further adventures. But the dreadful scenes she had witnessed, and the loss of the dear relations and faithful companions who one after the other had dropped from her side, had too severely shocked her nerves; and, though she escaped death in the wilderness, it was only to fall a prey to hopeless insanity.

CHAPTER VI.
THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS OF TROPICAL AMERICA.

Their peculiar Charms and Terrors—Disappointments and Difficulties of the Botanist—The Bush-ropes—Variety of Trees and Plants—Trees with Buttresses—Numberless parasites—Character of the Primitive Forest according to its Site—Its Aspect during the Rainy Season—A Hurricane in the Forest—Beauty of the Forest after the Rainy Season—Our Home Scenes equally beautiful—Bird Life on the rivers of Guiana—Morning Concert—Repose of Nature at Noon—Nocturnal Voices of the Forest.

The peculiar charms of a tropical primeval forest are enhanced by the mystery of its impenetrable thickets; for however grand its lofty vaults, or lovely its ever-changing forms of leaf or blossom, fancy paints scenes still more beautiful beyond, where the eye cannot penetrate, and where, as yet, no wanderer has ever strayed. But imagination also peoples the forest with peculiar terrors; for man feels himself here surrounded by an alien, or even hostile, nature: the solitude and silence of the woods weigh heavily on his mind; in every rustling of the falling leaves a venomous snake seems ready to dart forth; and who knows what ravenous animal may not be lurking in the dense underwood that skirts the tangled path?

In Europe there is no room for such feelings; for in our part of the world there are no woods that may not be visited, even in their deepest recesses: no thorny bush-ropes stretch their intricate cordage before the wanderer; no masses of matted shrubs block up his way. But it is very different in the boundless forests of tropical America. Here the jaguar sometimes loses himself in such impenetrable thickets that, unable to hunt upon the ground, he lives for a long time on the trees, a terror to the monkeys; here the padres of the mission-stations, which are not many miles apart in a direct line, often require more than a day’s navigation to visit each other, following the windings of small rivulets in their courses, as the forest renders communication by land impossible.

Even the more open parts of the forest are full of mysteries. In our woods the summits of the highest trees are accessible; there is no blossom that we are not able to pluck—no plant that we are not able to examine, from its root to its topmost branches; but in the Brazilian forest, where the matted bush-ropes wind round the trunks like immense serpents waiting for their prey or stretch like the rigging of a ship from one tree to another, and blossom at a giddy height, it is frequently as impossible to reach their flowers as it is to distinguish to which of the many interlacing stems they may belong.

If any one should be inclined to tax this description with exaggeration, let him try to pluck the flowers of the lianas, or to ascend by climbing their flexible cordage. The tiger-cat and the monkey, perhaps also the agile Indian, may be able to accomplish the feat; but it would be utterly hopeless for the European to undertake it. Nor is it possible to drag down these inaccessible creepers; for, owing to their strength and toughness, it would be easier to pull down the tree to which they attach themselves than to force them from their hold. Here two or three together twisting spirally round each other form a complete living cable as if to bind securely the monarchs of the forest; there they form tangled festoons, and covered themselves with smaller creepers and parasitic plants, hide the parent stem from sight.

No botanist ever entered a primitive forest without envying the bird to whom no blossom is inaccessible, who, high above the loftiest trees, looks down upon the sea of verdure, and enjoys prospects whose beauty can hardly be imagined by man.

A majestic uniformity is the character of our woods, which often consist but of one species of tree, while in the tropical forests an immense variety of families strive for existence, and even in a small space one neighbour scarcely ever resembles the other. Even at a distance this difference becomes apparent in the irregular outlines of the forest, as here a dome-shaped crown, there a pointed pyramid, rises above the broad flat masses of green, in ever-varying succession. On approaching, the differences of colour are added to the irregularities of form; for while our forests are deprived of the ornament of flowers, many tropical trees have large blossoms, mixing in thick bunches with the leaves, and often entirely overpowering the verdure of the foliage by their gaudy tints. Thus splendid white, yellow, or red-coloured crowns are mingled with those of darker or more humble hue. At length when, on entering the forest, the single leaves become distinguishable, even the last traces of harmony disappear. Here they are delicately feathered, there lobed—here narrow, there broad—here pointed, there obtuse—here lustrous and fleshy, as if in the full luxuriance of youth, there dark and arid, as if decayed with age. In many the inferior surface is covered with hair; and as the wind plays with the foliage, it appears now silvery, now dark green—now of a lively, now of a sombre hue. Thus the foliage exhibits an endless variety of form and colour; and where plants of the same species unite in a small group, they are mostly shoots from the roots of an old stem. This is chiefly the case with the palms; but the species of the larger trees are generally so isolated in the wood, that one rarely sees two alike on the same spot. Each is surrounded by strangers that begrudge it the necessary space and air; and where so many thousand forms of equal pretensions vie for the possession of the soil, none is able to expand its crown or extend its branches at full liberty. Hence there is a universal tendency upwards; for it is only by overtopping its neighbours that each tree can attain the region of freedom and of light; and hence also the crowns borne aloft on those high columnar trunks are comparatively small. Shooting up straight and tall in this general struggle, they present no fantastic branches, no projecting limbs, like the sturdy oaks of our forests, and each, supported by the surrounding crowd, loses depth and tenacity of root. They may partly be compared to a body of military: the storm may rage, the lightning blast, the earthquake shake, and though many fall, the body at large scarcely feels the loss. Separate them and they will be found far inferior in power to the wild warrior, who, accustomed to stand alone, trusts to his own strength and dexterity to bear him through the worst storms of fate.

Among the trees the various kinds that have buttresses projecting around their base are the most striking and peculiar. Some of these buttresses are much longer than they are high, springing from a distance of eight or ten feet from the base, and reaching only four or five feet high on the trunk; while others rise to the height of twenty or thirty feet, and can even be distinguished as ribs on the stem to forty or fifty. They are complete wooden walls from six inches to a foot thick, sometimes branching into two or three, and extending straight out to such a distance as to afford room for a comfortable hut in the angle between them. Other trees again appear as if they were formed by a number of slender stems growing together. They are deeply furrowed for their whole height, like the pillars in a cathedral, and in places these furrows reach quite through them, like windows in a narrow tower, yet they run up as high as their loftiest neighbours, with a straight stem of uniform diameter. Another most curious form is presented by those which have many of their roots high above the ground, appearing to stand on many legs, and often forming archways large enough for a man to walk beneath.

The stems of all these trees, and the climbers that wind or wave around them, support a multitude of dependants. Tillandsias and other Bromeliaceæ, resembling wild pine-apples, large climbing Arums, with their dark green, arrowhead-shaped leaves, peppers in great variety, and large-leaved ferns, shoot out at intervals all up the stem to the very topmost branches. Between these, creeping ferns and delicate little species like our Hymenophyllum abound, and in moist dark places the leaves of these are again covered with minute creeping mosses and Jungermannias, so that we have parasites on parasites, and on these parasites again. On looking upwards the infinite variety of foliage, strongly defined against the clear sky, is a striking characteristic of the tropical forest, and the bright sunshine lighting up all above, while a sombre gloom reigns below, adds to the grandeur and solemnity of the scene.

As these vast woods occupy sites of a very different character,—here extending along low river-banks, there climbing the slopes of gigantic mountains,—here under the equator, there on the verge of the tropics, where many of the trees, annually casting their foliage, remind one of the winter of the temperate zone—it is of course quite impossible to embrace all their varieties of form and aspect in one general description.

On descending from the heights of the Andes to the plains of the Marañon, the eye is attracted, in the more elevated forests (the region of the quinquina trees), by a variety of fantastically flowering orchids—and of arborescent ferns, with their lacelike giant leaves—by large dendritic urticeas—by wonderful bignonias, banisterias, passifloras, and many other inextricably tangled bush-ropes and creepers. Farther downwards, though the lianas still appear in large numbers, the eye delights in palms of every variety of form, in terebinthinaceas, in leguminosas, whose sap is rich with many a costly balsam; in laurels, bearing an abundance of aromatic fruit; or it admires the broad-leaved heliconias, the large blossoms of the solaneas, and thousands of other flowers, remarkable for the beauty of their colour, the strangeness of their form, or their exquisite aroma.

In the deep lowlands the forest assumes a severe and dismal character: dense crowns of foliage form lofty vaults almost impenetrable to the light of day; no underwood thrives on the swampy ground; no parasite puts forth its delicate blossoms under the shade of the mighty trees and only mushrooms sprout abundantly from the humid soil.

Nothing can equal the gloom of these forests during the rainy season. Thick fogs obscure the damp and sultry air, and clouds of mosquitos whirl about in the mist. The trees are dripping with moisture; the flowers expand their petals only during the few dry hours of the day, and every animal seeks shelter in the thicket. No bird, no butterfly comes forth; the snorting of the capybaras, and the monotonous croaking of frogs and toads, are the only sounds that break the dull silence. Night darkens with increasing sadness over these dismal solitudes; no star is visible; the moon disappears behind thick clouds; and the roar of the jaguar, or the howling of the stentor-monkey, issue like notes of distress from the depth of the melancholy woods.

A hurricane bursting over the primeval forest is one of the most terrific scenes of nature. A hollow uproar in the higher regions of the air, as if the wild huntsman of the German legends were sweeping along with his whole pack of phantom hounds, precedes the explosion of the storm, while the lower atmosphere still lies in deep repose. The roaring and rushing descends lower and lower; the higher branches of the trees strike wildly against each other; the forked lightning flashes through the night-like darkness; the thunder, repeated by a hundred echoes, rolls through the thicket; and trees, uprooted by the fury of the storm, fall with a loud crash, bearing down every stem of minor growth in their sweeping ruin. The howlings and wailings of terrified animals accompany the wild sounds of the tempest.

After the wet season the woods appear in their full beauty. Before the first showers, the long-continued drought had withered their leaves, and dried up many of the more delicate parasites, and during its continuance the torrents of rain despoiled them of all ornament; but when the clouds disperse and the animals come forth from their retreats to stretch their stiffened limbs in the warm sunshine, then also the vegetable world awakens to new life; and where, a few days before, the eye met only with green in every variety of shade, it now revels in the luxuriance of beautiful flowers, which embalm the air with exquisite fragrance.

At this time of the year the banks of the rivers of Guiana winding through the primitive woods are of magical beauty. Through the underwood which often overhangs wide spaces of the stream, the large white blossoms of the inga shine forth, along with the scarlet brushes of the magnificent combretia. Elegant palms, armed with a panoply of thorns, and bearing a profusion of red fruit, rise above this lovely foreground; and farther on, noble forest trees are seen festooned with creepers and parasites covered with flowers.

These fairy bowers are enlivened by birds of splendid plumage, particularly in the early morning, when the luscious green of the high palm-fronds or the burning yellow of the lofty leopoldinias, touched by the first rays of the sun, suddenly shines forth. Then hundreds of gaudy parrots fly across the river; numberless colibris dart like winged gems through the air; whole herds of cotingas flutter among the blossoms; ducks of brilliant plumage cackle on the branches of submerged trees; on the highest tree-tops the toucan yelps his loud pia-po-ko! while, peeping from his nest, the oriole endeavours to imitate the sound; and the scarlet ibis flies in troops to the coast, while the white egrette flutters along before the boat, rests, and then again rises for a new career.

Yet pick out even the loveliest of these privileged spots where the most gorgeous flowers of the tropics expand their glowing petals, and for every scene of this kind we may find another at home of equal beauty and with an equal amount of brilliant colour.

‘Look at a field of buttercups and daisies,’ says Mr. Wallace, a very competent judge, ‘a hill-side covered with gorse and broom, a mountain rich with purple heather, or a forest glade azure with a carpet of wild hyacinths, and they will bear a comparison with any scene the tropics can produce. I have never seen anything more glorious than an old crab-tree in full blossom, and the horse-chestnut, lilac, and laburnum will vie with the choicest tropical trees and shrubs. In the tropical waters are no more beautiful plants than our white and yellow water lilies, our irises and flowering rush, for I cannot consider the flower of the Victoria Regia more beautiful than that of the Nymphæa alba, though it may be larger, nor is it so abundant an ornament of the tropical waters as the latter is of ours.’

Let us, therefore, unseduced by the highly coloured statements of travellers, learn to be contented with the beauties which Nature has lavished on our woods and fields, nor deem that England—

‘Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride,
And brighter streams than famed Hydaspes glide’—

has received but a step-motherly share in the distribution of her gifts.

Like the ocean, the forest has its voices, now swelling into uproar, now subsiding into silence; but while the wind and the breaker are the only musicians of the sea, the woods resound with animal voices.

In general, the morning hours are the loudest; for the creatures that delight in daylight, though not more numerous than the nocturnal species, have generally a louder voice. Their full concert, however, does not begin immediately after sunrise; for they are mostly so chilled by the colder night, that they need to be warmed for some time before awakening to the complete use of their faculties. First, single tones ring from the higher tree-crowns, and gradually thousands of voices join in various modulation—now approaching, now melting into distance. Pre-eminent in loudness is the roar of the howling monkeys, though without being able fully to stifle the discordant cries and chattering of the noisy parrots. But the sun rapidly ascends towards the zenith, and one musician after the other grows mute and seeks the cool forest shade, until finally the whole morning concert ceases. Where the rays of light break through the foliage and play upon the underwood, or on the damp ground, gaudy butterflies flutter about, beetles of metallic brilliancy warm themselves, and richly-robed or dark-vested snakes creep forth; for these indolent creatures are also fond of basking in the sun.

IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER.

As the heat grows more intense, the stillness of the forest is only interrupted at intervals by single animal voices. Sometimes it is the note of the ivory-billed woodpecker, resounding like the distant axe of the forester, or the wail of the sloth breaking forth from the dense thicket. Sometimes human voices seem to issue from the depth of the forest, and the astonished huntsman fancies himself close to his comrades of the chase, or in the more dangerous neighbourhood of a wild tribe of Indians. With deep attention he listens to the sounds, until he discovers them to be the melancholy cry of the wood-pigeon.

The deepest silence reigns at noon, when the sun becomes too powerful even for the children of the torrid zone; and many creatures, particularly the birds, sink into a profound sleep. Then all the warm-blooded animals seek the shade, and only the cold reptiles—alligators, lizards, salamanders—stretch themselves upon the glowing rocks in the bed of the forest streams, or on sunny slopes, and, with raised head and distended jaws, seem to inhale with delight the sultry air.

As the evening approaches, the noise of the morning begins to re-awaken. With loud cries the parrots return from their distant feeding-grounds to the trees on which they are accustomed to rest at night; and, as the monkeys saluted the rising sun, so, chattering or howling, they now watch him sinking in the west.

With twilight a new world of animals—which, as long as the day lasted, remained concealed in the recesses of the forest—awakens from its mid-day torpor, and prepares to enjoy its nightly revels. Then bats of hideous size wing their noiseless flight through the wood, chasing the giant hawk-moths and beetles, which have also waited for the evening hour, while the felidæ quit their lairs, ready to spring on the red stag near some solitary pool, or on the unwieldy tapir, who, having slept during the heat of the day, seeks, as soon as evening approaches, the low-banked river, where he loves to wallow in the mud. Then also the shy opossum quits his nest in hollow trees, or under some arch-like vaulted root, to search for insects or fruits, and the cautious agouti sallies from the bush.

In our forests scarcely a single tone is heard after sunset; but in the tropical zone many loud voices celebrate the night, where for hours after the sun has disappeared, the cicadæ, toads, frogs, owls, and goatsuckers chirrup, cry, croak, howl, and wail. The quietest hours are from midnight until about three in the morning. Complete silence, however, occurs only during very short intervals; for there is always some cause or other that prompts some animal to break the stillness. Sometimes the din grows so loud that one might fancy a legion of evil spirits were celebrating their orgies in the darkness of the forest. The howling of the aluates, the whine of the little sapajous, the snarl of the duruculi, the roaring of the jaguar, the grunt of the pecari, the cry of the sloth, and the shrill voices of birds, join in dreadful discord. Humboldt supposes the first cause of these tumults to be a conflict among animals, which, arising by chance, gradually swells to larger dimensions. The jaguar pursues a herd of pecaris or tapirs, which break wildly through the bushes. Terrified by the noise, the monkeys howl, awakening parrots and toucans from their slumber; and thus the din spreads through the wood. A long time passes before the forest returns to its stillness. Towards the approach of day the owls, the goatsuckers, the toads, the frogs, howl, groan, and croak for the last time; and as soon as the first beams of morning purple the sky, the shrill notes of the cicadæ mix with their expiring cries.

BOTOCUDO INDIANS ATTACKING A JAGUAR.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WILD INDIANS OF TROPICAL AMERICA.

The wild Forest Tribes—Their Physical Conformation and Moral Characteristics—Their Powers of Endurance not inferior to those of other Races—Their stoical indifference—Their Means of Subsistence—Fishing—Hunting—The Wourali Poison—Ornaments—Painting—Tattooing—Religion—The Moon, a Land of Abundance—The Botuto—The Piaches—The Savage Hordes of Brazil and Guiana—The Ottomacas—Dirt-eaters—Their Vindictive Ferocity and War Stratagems—The extinct Tribe of the Atures—A Parrot the last Speaker of their Language—Their Burial-cavern—The Uaupes Indians—Their large Huts—Horrid Custom of Disinterment—The Macus—The Purupurus—The ‘Palheta’—The Mandrucus—Singular resemblance of some of the Customs of the American Indians to those of Remote Nations—The Caribs—The Botocudos—Monstrous distension of the Ears and Under-lip—Their Bow and Arrow—Their Migrations—Bush-rope Bridge—Botocudo Funeral—‘Tanchon,’ the Evil Spirit.

Though nominally under the dominion of the European race, yet a considerable part of tropical America still remains in the undisturbed possession of its native tribes. While the stranger has established his chief settlements along the coast or in those parts of the interior which before his arrival were already the seats of a certain degree of culture, where before him the Incas had founded cities and a large agricultural population occupied the fertile table-lands of Anahuac, the wild hunter, unsubjected to the rules and trammels of civilised life, still roams over the boundless woods or interminable savannahs through which the Amazons, the Orinoco, and a hundred other great streams wend their way from the Andes to the Ocean. Here the primitive American can still be studied; here he exhibits the same traits of character and follows the same mode of life as his fathers before him, in the times of Cortez or Pizarro.

Many of the forest tribes, indeed, have been converted to Christianity, and live in missions or small settlements situated far apart on the banks of the great rivers; others are willing to barter the drugs, india-rubber, or rare birds and insects, they gather in the woods for articles of European manufacture; but many desiring no more than what their native wilds supply, never or but seldom cross the path of civilised man.

Though divided into a large number of hostile tribes, and scattered over an immense extent of country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and far beyond the bounds which separate one tropic from the other, yet the American Indians so nearly resemble each other, both in their features and the qualities of their minds, as evidently to be descended from one source. Their complexion is of a reddish-brown, more or less resembling the colour of copper. There is, however, a great diversity of shade among the several tribes, which appears to be less dependent on the influence of climate than on an original disposition, varying in the different branches of the American race. The elevation above the sea, or the vicinity of the equator, seems to have no great influence, for both Ulloa and Humboldt were astonished to find the Indians as bronze-coloured or as brown in the cold regions of the Cordilleras as in the hot plains of Venezuela. On the sultry banks of the Orinoco there are even tribes characterised by a remarkable fairness of complexion, living in the vicinity of others more than commonly brown. D’Orbigny makes this lightness of colour coincide with the woody and shady character of the quarters inhabited; the Maripas, for instance, who inhabit the most exposed countries, being also the darkest in hue.

The hair of the American Indians is always black, long, coarse, and uncurled. With rare exceptions they carefully eradicate their scanty beard. Their forehead is generally low, their black and deep-seated eyes have their upper angles turned upwards, and their cheek-bones are broad and high. While they thus in some of their features resemble the Mongol type, they widely differ from it by the form of their nose, which is as prominent as in the Caucasian race. The mouth is large, the lips broad, but not thick as those of the Negro; the chin short and round, the jaws remarkably strong and broad. The expression of the eye is in some tribes mild and serene, in others it shows a forbidding mixture of melancholy and ferocity. There is generally a remarkable rigidity in the features of the American, very different from that lively play in a European countenance, which often reflects as a mirror every emotion of the mind. Some tribes are of small stature, others athletic; the limbs are generally well-turned; the feet small; the body of just proportions.

The beardless countenance and smooth skin seem to indicate a defect of vigour which does not exist in reality. In those parts of the continent where hardly any labour is requisite to procure subsistence, and the powers of the body and mind are not called forth, indolence indeed produces its usual effects, weakness and languor; but wherever the aboriginal American is accustomed to toil, he is found capable of performing such tasks as equal any effort of the natives either of Africa or of Europe. In many of the silver mines of Mexico, where the ore is conveyed to the surface by human labour, the native Indians will climb steep ladders with 240 to 380 pounds, and perform this hard work for six hours consecutively. Their muscular strength seemed truly astonishing to Humboldt, who, though having no weight but his own to carry, felt himself utterly exhausted after ascending from a deep mine.[9] In propelling a boat against a rapid stream, or in supporting the fatigues of a long march, the Indian evinces similar powers of endurance and exertion, which prove him to be not inferior in this respect to the other races of man.

The uniformity which prevails in the features of the American aboriginals, exists also in the qualities of their minds, which generally exhibit an apparent indifference to pain or pleasure that would have done honour to a Stoic. Insensible to the charms of beauty and the power of love, they treat their women with coldness and indifference, being at no pains to win their favour by the assiduity of courtship, and still less solicitous to preserve it by indulgence and gentleness. Grave, even unto sadness, they have nothing of that giddy vivacity peculiar to many Europeans. Frequently placed in situations of danger and distress, depending on themselves alone, and wrapped up in their own thoughts and schemes, their minds are tinted with an habitual melancholy. Their attention to others is small, the range of their own ideas narrow. Hence that taciturnity which is so disgusting to men accustomed to exchange their thoughts in social conversation. When not engaged in some active pursuit, the wild Americans often sit whole days in one posture without opening their lips.

When they go forth to war or to the chase, they usually march in a line at some distance from one another, and without exchanging a word. The same profound silence is observed when they row together in a canoe. It is only when they are animated by intoxicating liquors, or roused by the excitement of the dance, that they relax from their usual insensibility and give some signs of sympathy with their kind.

All their thoughts intent upon self-preservation, they live only in the present, and seem alike indifferent to the past and the future. Gratitude, friendship, ambition, are sentiments of which they have no idea; and war or the pursuit of wild animals the only occupations which are able to rouse them from their stolid apathy.

Many tribes depend entirely upon fishing or the chase for their subsistence; others rear a few plants, which in a rich soil and a warm climate are soon trained to maturity. With a moderate exertion of industry and foresight the maize, the manioc, and the plantain would enable them to live in abundance, but such is their improvident laziness that the provisions they obtain by cultivating the ground are but limited and scanty, and thus when the woods and rivers withhold their usual gifts, they are often reduced to extreme distress.

The streams and lagunes of South America abound with an infinite variety of the most delicate fish, and Nature seems to have indulged the indolence of the Indian by the liberality with which she ministers in this way to his wants. They swarm in such shoals that in some places they are caught without art or industry. In others the natives have discovered a method of infecting the water with the juice of certain plants, by which the fish are so intoxicated that they float on the surface, and are taken with the hand.

In one of the shallow lagunes of the Amazons, the French traveller Castelnau witnessed fish-catching by this means on a grand scale. On the previous evening a quantity of branches of the Barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), after having been beaten with clubs, and divided among the canoes that were to take part in the sport, had been steeped in water, and then flung with the infusion into the lagune. At least five hundred Indians stood on the banks among the high rushes or on the trunks of trees, armed with arrows, harpoons, and clubs. At first only small fishes appeared upon the surface, and as if stunned, and then, suddenly awakening, sought to leap upon the bank. Then the larger species were seen to float on the water, or to make similar efforts to escape from the poisoned element. During the whole day the canoes of the Indians were passing on the lagune, and the same bustle reigned along the banks. The whistling of the arrows was incessantly heard, together with the beating of the clubs upon the water, while on land no less activity was displayed in cutting up, smoking, and salting the fish. Castelnau counted thirty-five different species, and estimated the number caught at 50,000 or 60,000, many measuring a foot or more in length. Although the lagune was thus poisoned, the Indians drank the water with impunity, and the river tortoises and alligators seemed to be equally untouched by the Barbasco juice which proved so fatal to the fishes.

The prolific quality of the rivers in South America induces many of the natives to resort to their banks, and to depend almost entirely for nourishment on what their waters so abundantly supply. But this mode of life requires so little enterprise or ingenuity that the petty nations adjacent to the Marañon and Orinoco are far inferior, in point of activity, intelligence, and courage, to the tribes which principally depend upon hunting for their subsistence. To form a just estimate of the intellectual capacities of the American, he must be seen when following the exciting pursuits of the chase. While engaged in this favourite exercise, he shakes off his habitual indolence, the latent powers and vigour of his mind are roused, and he becomes active, persevering, and indefatigable. His sagacity in finding his prey is only equalled by his address in killing it. His reason and his senses being constantly directed to this one object, the former displays such fertility of invention and the latter acquire such a degree of acuteness, as appear almost incredible. He discerns the footsteps of a wild beast, or detects it among the dark foliage, where its vestiges or presence would escape every other eye; he follows it with certainty through the pathless forest, and is able to subsist where the best European hunter would perish from want. If he attacks his game openly, his fatal arrow seldom errs from the mark; if he endeavours to circumvent it by art, it is almost impossible to avoid his toils.

Among several tribes the young men are not permitted to marry until they have given such proofs of their skill in hunting as put it beyond doubt that they are capable of providing for a family. Their ingenuity, always on the stretch and sharpened by emulation, as well as necessity, has struck out many inventions which greatly facilitate success in the chase.

Slow, and with noiseless step, so as scarcely to disturb the fallen leaves beneath his feet, the wily Macusi Indian approaches. His weapons are strong, and peculiar, and of so slight an appearance as to form a strange contrast to their terrific power. A colossal species of Bamboo (Arundinacea Schomburgkii), whose perfectly cylindrical culm often rises to the height of fifteen feet from the root before it forms its first knot, furnishes him with his blow-pipe; and the slender arrows which he sends forth with unerring certainty of aim, are made of the leaf-stalks of a species of palm tree (Maximiliana regia), hard and brittle, and sharp-pointed as a needle. You would hardly suppose these fragile missiles capable of inflicting the slightest wound at any distance, and yet they strike more surely and effectively than the rifleman’s bullet, for their point is dipped in the deadly juice of the Strychnos Urari, whose venomous powers are not inferior to those of the bush-master’s fang.

In vain, suspended by his prehensile tail, the Miriki, the largest of the Brazilian monkeys, retires to the highest forest trees; in vain the sloth clings like a heap of moss to the bough; touched by the fatal poison they both let go their aërial hold, and their lifeless bodies, whizzing through the air as they drop down, fall with a loud crash to the ground.

In a diluted form the wourali poison merely benumbs or stuns the faculties without killing, and is thus made use of by the Indians when they wish to catch an old monkey alive, and tame him for sale. On his falling down senseless, they immediately suck the wound, and wrapping him up in a strait jacket of palm leaves, dose him for a few days with sugar-cane juice or a strong solution of saltpetre. This method generally answers the purpose, but should his stubborn temper not yet be subdued, they hang him up in smoke. Then, after a short time, his useless rage gives way, and his wild eye, assuming a plaintive expression, humbly sues for deliverance. His bonds are now loosened, and even the most unmanageable monkey seems to forget that he ever roamed at liberty in the boundless woods.

It is chiefly on the Camuku mountains in Guiana that the formidable Urari plant is found, whose sombre-coloured, brown-haired leaves and rind seem by their sinister appearance to betray its deadly qualities.

The savage tribes of the South American woods know how to poison their arrows with the juices of various other plants, but none equals this in virulence and certainty of execution, and yearly the Indians of the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and even of the Amazons, wander to the Camuku mountains to purchase by barter the renowned Urari or Wourali poison of the Macusis. Nature has vouchsafed to these sons of the wilderness an inestimable gift in these venomous juices, which she has instilled in various plants of the forest, for by no other means would they be able to kill the birds and monkeys on whose flesh they chiefly subsist. How, or at what time, they made the discovery of their powers is unknown; at all events the combination of so many means for the attainment of the end in view—the preparation of the poison, the blow-pipe, and the arrows—denotes a high degree of ingenuity.

The tropical Indians are generally as free from the incumbrance of dress as it is possible to conceive, paint seeming to be looked upon as a sufficient clothing. Red, furnished by the pulp of the fruits of the Arnatto, or by the leaves of the Bignonia Chica, is the favourite colour, with which some tribes only besmear their faces, while others, who command a greater abundance of the material, not only paint their whole bodies, but even their canoes, their stools, and other articles of furniture. Red, yellow, and black are sometimes disposed in stripes, or in regular patterns, which it requires much time and patience to draw. The labour bestowed upon these paintings is the more to be wondered at, as a strong rain suffices to efface them. Some nations only paint when they are about to celebrate a festival, others are thus decorated the whole year round, and would be as ashamed to be seen unpainted as a European to appear unclothed.

The use of ornaments and trinkets of various kinds is almost confined to the men. A circlet of parrot and other gaudily-coloured feathers is worn round the head, but generally only on festive occasions. Tattooing is not so general or so elaborate as among the nations of the Malayan race, or the wild aboriginals of Australia.

The religion of the American Indians, if such it may be called, is of the lowest description. Some tribes, indeed, acknowledge a good principle, called Cachimana, who rules the seasons and causes the fruits of the earth to ripen; but, thankless for the benefits they enjoy, they pay far greater reverence to the evil principle, Tolokiamo, who, though not so powerful, is more cunning and active. The forest-Indians can hardly understand church and image worship. ‘Your God,’ they say to the Catholic missionaries, ‘shuts himself up in a house as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, in the mountains whence comes the rain.’

The moon is universally considered as the abode of the blessed, as the land of abundance. The Esquimo, for whom a plank thrown by the current on his treeless shore is a treasure, sees in the moon extensive plains covered with forests, while the Indian of the Orinoco perceives in its shining orb grassy savannahs, exempt from all insect plagues. ‘How pleasant it must be to live in the moon,’ said a Salina-Indian to Father Gumilla; ‘she is so beautiful and bright that surely no mosquitos can be there.’ Thus man is always disposed to transfer to some distant spot the seat of a felicity denied to him on earth.

On the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons no idols are worshipped, but the Botuto, the holy trumpet, is the great object of veneration. The Piaches, priests or medicine-men who have taken it under their care, and who, to be initiated in its mysteries are obliged to submit to fasts, scourging, and other painful or self-denying religious practices, carry it under the palm trees where, as they pretend, its sound ensures a rich harvest for the following year. Sometimes the great spirit Cachimana blows the trumpet himself, at others he makes known his will through the guardians of the sacred instrument. No woman is allowed to see it on pain of death, but hurries away when the sound of it is heard approaching through the woods, and remains invisible till after the ceremony is over, when the instrument is taken away to its hiding-place, and the women come out of their concealment. Some of these Botutos are particularly renowned and venerated by more than one tribe. Sometimes offerings of fruits and palm-wine are deposited near them, and prove, no doubt, very acceptable to the Piaches.

The wild Indians who people the vast forests and llanos of Brazil and Guaiana generally live in small hordes, separated from each other by mutual distrust, and often by open war. Their enmity is aggravated by the circumstance that even the neighbouring tribes speak totally different languages. Though when they first settled along the river-banks of tropical America they probably spoke one tongue; yet, lost in interminable woods, where sometimes a single mountain or a few miles of forest are an almost impervious barrier between hordes which, to communicate with each other, would require a few days’ navigation through a labyrinth of streams, mere dialects in process of time became separate languages, which from their dissimilarity perpetuate discord and hatred. The Indians avoid each other because they do not understand each other, and a mutual distrust and fear is the cause of their mutual animosity. Some of the Orinoco tribes, as for instance the Ottomacas and the Yaruras, are nomadic savages, the outcasts of humanity; others, like the Maquiritani and the Macos, are of milder manners, and live in fixed settlements, on the products of the soil.

The Ottomacas, of whom it is said by other Indians, ‘that there is nothing so disgusting that they will not eat,’ live the greater part of the year on fishes and turtles; but when the Orinoco and its tributaries swell during the periodical rains and render fishing next to impossible, they become ‘dirt-eaters’ and assuage their hunger with an unctuous clay. Such is their predilection for this strange aliment, in which chemistry detects no trace of organic matter, that even in times of abundance they mix some of it with their more nutritious food. The most remarkable fact is that during the two months of the year when they daily devour about three-quarters of a pound of clay, and are restricted to a meagre supply of vegetable or animal provisions, such as lizards, ants, and gum, the Ottomacas still remain healthy and strong, and never complain of indigestion. These barbarians are ugly, wild, vindictive; and besides being passionately fond of palm-wine and maize-spirit, use the powdered pods of a leguminous plant, the Acacia Niopo, as a means of intoxication. The hollow bone of a bird serves as a kind of pipe, through which they sniff up the powder, which is so irritating that a small quantity produces a strong fit of sneezing in those who are not accustomed to it. The effect of the Niopo is to deprive them for a couple of hours of their senses, and to render them furious in battle. Such is their malignant ingenuity that they poison their sharpened thumb-nails with the Wourali, so as to be able to inflict a death-wound with the slightest scratch, and such their tiger-like ferocity that they suck with fiendish delight the blood of their slain enemies. The country these wretches inhabit is described as romantically beautiful, a mournful contrast to a state of society where man is eternally armed against man. Such is the miserable state of insecurity of the weaker tribes that, when they approach a river’s bank, they carefully destroy with their hands the vestiges of their timid footsteps.

During the rainy season the swollen Orinoco, like the Amazons and other great streams, frequently undermines the trees on his banks, and carries them along on his turbid waters. These natural floats, covered with a profusion of parasites and climbing plants, form so many swimming islands, pleasing to the eye, but extremely dangerous to navigation; for woe to the pirogue which at night is caught in their intricate network of roots and branches! When the Indians wish to surprise a hostile horde they bind several canoes together and, concealing them under a covering of herbs and foliage, thus imitate the natural floats of the Orinoco.

Lurking, like murderous reptiles, under a canopy of verdure, the current carries them towards the unsuspecting objects of their stratagem, and they send forth the poisoned dart ere the enemy is aware of their approach. How happy might all these nations be if they would but apply to the arts of peace and improvement, the intelligence they waste upon the purposes of war!

Where the hordes are so small and the causes of destruction so great, it cannot be wondered at that whole tribes die away like single families, and come to be numbered among the beings of the past. Thus the Atures, who gave their name to the far-famed cataracts of the Upper Orinoco, are now no more, and, strange to say, the last words of their language were heard from the lips not of the last survivor of their race, but from those of a parrot. The Atures are also interesting from their careful mode of sepulture, in a burial cavern thus described by Humboldt: ‘The most remote part of the valley is covered by a thick forest. In this shady and solitary spot, on the declivity of a steep mountain, the cavern of Atariupe opens itself. It is less a cavern than a jutting rock in which the waters have scooped a vast hollow; when, in the ancient revolutions of our planet, they attained that height. We soon reckoned in the tomb of a whole extinct tribe nearly six hundred skeletons, well preserved, and so regularly placed that it would have been difficult to make an error in their number. Every skeleton reposes in a sort of basket made of the petioles of the palm tree. These baskets, which the natives call mapurès, have the form of a square bag; their sizes are proportioned to the age of the dead; there are some for infants cut off the moment of their birth: we saw them from ten inches to three feet long, the skeletons in them being bent together. The bones, not one of which is wanting, have been prepared in three different manners, either whitened in the air and the sun, or dyed red with arnatto, or, like real mummies, varnished with odoriferous resins, and enveloped in leaves of the heliconia or plantain tree. The Indians related to us that the fresh corpse is placed in damp ground, in order that the flesh remaining on the bone may be scraped off with sharp stones. Several hordes in Guiana still observe this custom. Earthern vases, half-baked, are found near the mapurès or baskets; they appear to contain the bones of the same family. The largest of the vases, or funeral urns, are three feet high and five feet and a half long. Their colour is greenish-grey, and their oval form is sufficiently pleasing to the eye, The handles are made in the shape of crocodiles or serpents; the edge is ornamented with meanders, labyrinths, and straight lines variously combined.’ When the reverence paid to the dead thus called forth the first germs of art, there surely must have been affectionate feelings of regret and sorrow, which raised the Atures above the level of mere callous savages, and add a melancholy interest to their extinction.

The Indians of the Amazons valley appear to be much superior, both physically and intellectually, to those of South Brazil and of most other parts of South America. Their superb figures generally equal the finest statues in beauty of outline; their broad chests exhibit a splendid series of convex undulations without a hollow in any part of it. The sons of a delicious climate, their bodies, invigorated by exercise, and enjoying from infancy an unconstrained liberty of action, show the perfection to which the human form may attain when circumstances favour its development. Such is the number of their tribes that Mr. Wallace enumerates no less than thirty along the bank of the River Uaupes, one of the tributaries of the Rio Negro, having almost all of them some peculiarities of language and custom, but all going under the general name of Uaupes, and distinguishing themselves as a body from the inhabitants of other rivers.

All these tribes construct their dwellings after one plan, which is peculiar to them. Their houses, formed in the shape of a parallelogram with a semicircle at one end, are the abode of numerous families, sometimes of a whole tribe. The roof is supported on the columnar trunks of palm trees. In the centre a clear opening is left, twenty feet wide, and on the sides are little partitions of palm-leaf thatch, dividing off rooms for the several families. These houses are built with much labour and skill; the main supports, beams, rafters, and other parts, are straight, well-proportioned to the strength required, and bound together with split creepers, in a manner that a sailor would admire. The thatch is of the leaf of some one of the numerous palms so well adapted to the purpose, and is laid on with great compactness and regularity. The walls, which are very low, are formed also of palm-thatch, but so thick and so well bound together that neither arrow nor bullet will penetrate it. At the gable end is a large doorway, from the top of which hangs a palm mat, supported by a pole during the day, and let down at night. A smaller door at the semicircular end is the private entrance of the chief, to whom this part of the house exclusively belongs. The furniture consists principally of hammocks, made of string twisted from the fibres of the leaves of the Mauritia flexuosa, of pots and cooking utensils made of baked clay, and of great quantities of small saucer-shaped baskets.

Tattooing is very little practised by the Uaupes; they all, however, have a row of circular punctures along the arm, and one tribe, the Tucanos, are distinguished from the rest by three vertical blue lines on the chin. They also pierce the lower lip, through which they hang three little threads of white beads. All the tribes bore their ears, and wear in them little pieces of grass ornamented with feathers. The Cobeus alone expand the hole to so large a size that a bottle cork could be inserted. The dead are almost always buried in the houses, but several tribes have the horrid custom of disinterring the corpse about a month after the funeral, and putting it in a great oven over the fire till all the volatile parts are driven off with an intolerable stench. The black carbonaceous mass which remains is then pounded into a fine powder and mixed in several large vats of caxiri, or maize-beer. This is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished, for they imagine that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers.

The belief, which is also common among the Negroes, that death in the prime of life does not proceed from a natural cause, but is owing to the evil practices of some enemy, leads to the same fatal consequences. Some poison given at a festival in a bowl of caxiri is generally used to avenge the dead; this is of course again retaliated—on perhaps the wrong party—and thus a long succession of murders may result from what at first was a mere groundless suspicion.

The Macus, one of the lowest and most uncivilised tribes of Indians in the Amazons district, lead a vagrant life similar to that of the African Bushmen, but with this advantage—that they have greater facility in procuring food, and live in a country abounding in water. They have no fixed place of abode, but sleep at night on a bundle of palm leaves, or stick up a few leaves to make a shed if it rains, or sometimes with bush-ropes construct a rude hammock, which, however, serves only once. They eat all kinds of birds, and fish, roasted or boiled in palm spathes, and all sorts of wild fruits. They have little or no iron, and use the tusks of the wild pig to scrape and form their bows and arrows, which they anoint with poison. As the Bushmen do with their neighbours, they often attack the houses of other Indians, situated in solitary places, and are consequently equally detested by the surrounding tribes.

On the banks of the Purus we find the Purupurus, who are almost all afflicted with a cutaneous disease, consisting in the body being spotted and blotched with white, brown, or nearly black patches of irregular size and shape, and having a very disagreeable appearance. When young their skins are clear, but as they grow up they invariably become more or less spotted. Their houses are of the rudest construction, like those of our gipsies, and so small as to be set up on the sandy beaches and carried away in their canoes whenever they wish to move. These canoes are likewise extremely primitive, having a flat bottom and upright sides—a mere square box, and quite unlike those of all other Indians. But what distinguishes them yet more from their neighbours is that they use neither the blow-pipe nor bow and arrow, but have an instrument called a ‘palheta,’ which is a piece of wood with a projection at the end, to secure the base of the arrow, the middle of which is held with the handle of the palheta in the hand, and thus thrown as from a sling; they have a surprising dexterity in the use of this weapon, and with it readily kill game, birds, and fish. They sleep in their houses, on the sandy beaches, making no hammocks nor clothing of any kind; they make no fire in their houses, which are too small, but are kept warm in the night by the number of persons in them. In the wet season, when the banks of the river are all flooded, they construct rafts of trunks of trees bound together with creepers, and on them erect their huts, and live there till the waters fall again, when they guide their raft to the first sandy beach that appears.

In the country between the Tapajoz and the Madeira, among the labyrinths of lakes and channels of the great island of the Tupinambranos, reside the Mandrucus, the most warlike Indians of the Amazons. These are probably the only perfectly tattooed nation in South America. The markings are extended all over the body; they are produced by pricking with the spines of a palm, and rubbing in the soot from burning pitch, to produce an indelible bluish tinge.

They build their houses with mud walls in regular villages, and, though very agricultural, make war every year with an adjoining tribe, the Parentintins, taking the women and children for slaves, and preserving the dried heads of the men in a large building or barrack, where all the men sleep at night, armed with their bows and arrows ready in case of alarm.

One of the singular facts connected with these Indians of the Amazons valley is the resemblance which exists between some of their customs and those of nations most remote from them.

The blow-pipe re-appears in the sumpitan of Borneo; the great houses of the Uaupes closely resemble those of the Dyaks of the same country, while many small baskets and bamboo boxes from Borneo and New Guinea are so similar in their form and construction to those of the Amazons that they would be supposed to belong to adjoining tribes. Then again the Mandrucus, like the Dyaks, take the heads of their enemies, smoke-dry them with equal care, preserving the skin and hair entire, and hang them up around their houses. In Australia the throwing-stick is used, and on a remote branch of the Amazons we see a tribe of Indians differing from all around them in substituting for the bow a weapon only found in such a remote portion of the earth, among a people differing from them in almost every physical character. How can such similarities be accounted for? Do they result from some remote and unknown connection between these nations, or are they mere accidental coincidences produced by the same wants acting upon people subject to the same conditions of climate, and in an equally low state of civilisation?

The Caribs, whom the cruelty of the Spaniards extirpated in the Lesser Antilles, still exist in a variety of tribes from the mouth of the Amazons to Lake Maracaybo. They are distinguished by an almost athletic stature, by a stately demeanour, and an intense national pride, for, remembering the times when they overran a considerable part of South America, they still consider themselves as a superior race. When a Carib enters the hut of another Indian he does not wait till food is offered him, but, looking round with a haughty mien, seizes what pleases him best, as if it were his own by right. Arrogant and tyrannical towards strangers, he is equally so towards his wives, and it would be difficult to find a Carib woman who does not show in numerous scars and wounds the marks of her husband’s brutality.

In point of intelligence, the Caribs are surpassed by no other Indians. They are excellent orators, and the earnest dignified manner in which they deliver their speeches shows them to be capable of a high degree of civilisation.

Among the tribes of Southern Brazil the Botocudos, who inhabit the primeval forests on the banks of the rivers Pardo, Doce, and Belmonte, are the most remarkable. The custom of piercing the ears and underlip for the purpose of inserting some ornament is found among many other nations, both of the Old and the New World, but nowhere is it carried to such an excess as among the Botocudos. At an early age pieces of round light wood, first small and gradually larger, are inserted into the apertures, until at length the ears almost reach down to the shoulders, and the lip, distended into a narrow rim, is made to project to a distance of seven or eight inches. At a later age, when the muscular fibres begin to lose their elasticity, it hangs down, and as, in consequence of the pressure of the wood, the front teeth soon fall out, it is hardly possible to conceive anything more hideous than a face thus artificially deformed. To add, probably, to their beauty, these savages shave their hair so as to leave but a small crown or tuft on the top of the head. The wourali is not in use among them, but their enormous bows and long sharp arrows render them formidable to their neighbours. A Botocudo, with his sharp eye and muscular arm, accustomed from infancy to the use of these murderous weapons, is indeed a greater object of terror in the gloomy impervious forest than the jaguar or the snake. When a horde, after having exhausted the neighbourhood of its game, is obliged to migrate to some other quarter, its removal is easily effected. A few dried palm-leaves alone remain to indicate the spot where the savages had fixed their dwellings, and soon even these slight vestiges disappear. In the primitive forest man, indeed, passes away like a shadow,

‘Sicut navis, quasi nubes, velut umbra,’

and leaves no more traces of his existence than the wild animals which he chased.

In these migratory journeys the heaviest burdens fall to the share of the women, who, besides a large heap of household articles, tied up in a bag of network, are often still obliged to carry a child on their back. Thus encumbered, they manage to cross small rivers on bridges of a very primitive construction. A cable made of bush-ropes is loosely suspended over the surface of the stream, and on this they walk, holding themselves by another cable similarly hung at a greater height.

The Botocudos are cannibals, like many other American tribes. After a battle they feast upon the dead bodies of their enemies, but more, it seems, from a spirit of vindictive rage than from a depraved taste for human flesh.