University of Virginia Library

Proverbs xxx. 18, 19.

“The left bank of the river (Oroonoko) is generally lower, but makes part of a plane which rises again west of Atures toward the Peak of Uniana, a pyramid nearly three thousand feet high, and placed on a wall of rock with steep slopes.”— Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. v. p. 43.

“Near Atures the old trees were decorated with beautiful orchideas, yellow bannisterias, blue-flowered bignonias, peperomias, arums and pothoses. A single trunk displays a greater variety of vegetable forms, than an extensive space of ground contains in our countries.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 49.

“On quitting the village of Turmero (near Caraccas) we discover a single tree, the famous zamang del Guayre, known throughout the province for the enormous extent of its branches, which form a hemispheric head five hundred and seventy-six feet in circumference. One side of the tree was entirely stripped of its foliage, owing to the drought; and on the other side there remained at once leaves and flowers. Tillandsias, lorantheæ, cactus, pitahayas, and other parasite plants, cover its branches and crack the bark. The inhabitants of these villages, but particularly the Indians, hold in veneration the zamang del Guayre, which the first conquerors found almost in the same state in which it now remains.”— Humb. P. N. vol iv. p. 116.

The cock of the rock, or rock manakin, with splendid orange-coloured plumage. “A considerable portion of the Oroonoko was dry, because the river had found an issue by subterraneous caverns. In these solitary haunts the rock manakin, with gilded plumage, (pipra rupicola,) one of the most beautiful birds of the tropics, builds its nest. The Raudalito of Carucari is caused by an accumulation of enormous blocks of granite. These blocks are piled together in such a manner as to form spacious caverns.”— Humb. P. N. vol. 5. p. 630.

“An innumerable multitude of insects spread a reddish light on the ground.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 623.

Bombax ceiba. Silk cotton tree. A tree of the first magnitude, with five-fingered leaves, somewhat resembling those of the horse-chesnut, and very large solitary white flowers.

Before we reach the confluence of the river Temi, a granitic hummock that rises on the western bank [of the Atabapo] near the mouth of the Guasacavi fixed our attention; it is called the rock of the Guahiba woman, or the Rock of the Mother, Piedra della Madre. If in these solitary scenes man scarcely leaves behind him any trace of his existence, it is doubly humiliating for a European to see perpetuated by the name of a rock, by one of those imperishable monuments of nature, the remembrance of the moral degradation of our species, the contrast between the virtue of a savage and the barbarism of civilized man In 1797, the missionary of San Fernando had led his Indians to the banks of the Rio Guaviare, on one of those hostile excursions, which are alike prohibited by religion and the Spanish laws. They found in an Indian hut, a Guahiba mother with three children, one or two of whom were still infants. They were occupied in preparing the flour of cassava. Resistance was impossible; the father was gone to fish and the mother tried in vain to flee with her children. Scarcely had she reached the savannah, when she was seized by the Indians of the mission, who go to hunt men, like the Whites and the Negroes in Africa. The mother and the children were bound, and dragged to the banks of the river. The monk, seated in his boat, waited the issue of an expedition, of which he partook not the danger. Had the mother made too violent a resistance, the Indians would have killed her, for every thing is permitted when they go to the conquest of souls (à la conquista espiritual), and it is children in particular they seek to capture, in order to treat them in the mission as poitos, or slaves of the Christians. The prisoners were carried to Fernando, in the hope that the mother would be unable to find her way back by land. Far from those children who had accompanied their father on the day in which she had been carried off, this unhappy woman showed signs of the deepest despair. She attempted to take back to her family the children who had been snatched away by the missionary; and fled with them repeatedly from the village of San Fernando, but the Indians never failed to seize her anew; and the missionary, after having caused her to be mercilessly beaten, took the cruel resolution of separating the mother from the two children who had been carried off with her. She was conveyed alone towards the missions of the Rio Negro, going up the Atabapo. Slightly bound, she was seated at the bow of the boat, ignorant of the fate that awaited her; but she judged by the direction of the sun, that she was removing farther and farther from her hut and native country. She succeeded in breaking her bonds, threw herself into the water, and swam to the left bank of the Atabapo. The current carried her to a shelf of rock which bears her name to this day. She landed and took shelter in the woods, but the President of the Missions ordered the Indians to row to the shore, and follow the traces of the Guahiba. In the evening she was brought back. Stretched upon the rock (la piedra de la Madre) a cruel punishment was inflicted on her with those straps of manatce leather, which serve for whips in that country, and with which the Aleades are always furnished. This unhappy woman, her hands tied behind her back with strong stalks of Mavacure, was then dragged to the mission of Javita. She was then thrown into one of the caravanseras that are called Casa del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark. Forests till then believed to be impenetrable separated the mission of Javita from that of San Fernando, which was twenty-five leagues distant in a straight line. No other path is known but that of the rivers; no man ever attempted to go by land from one village to another, were they only a few leagues apart. But such difficulties do not stop a mother who is separated from her children. Her children are at San Fernando de Atabapo; she must find them again, she must execute the project of delivering them from the hands of the Christians, of bringing them back to their father on the banks of the Guaviare. The Guahiba was carelessly guarded in the Caravansera. Her arms being wounded, the Indians of Javita had loosened her bonds, unknown to the Missionary and the Alcades. She succeeded by the help of her teeth in breaking them entirely; disappeared during the night; and at the fourth rising sun was seen at the mission of San Fernando, hovering around the hut where her children were confined. “What that woman performed,” added the missionary who gave us this sad narrative, “the most robust Indian would not have ventured to undertake.” She traversed the woods at a season when the sky is constantly covered with clouds and the sun during the whole day appears but for a few minutes. Did the course of the waters direct her way? The inundations of the rivers forced her to go far away from the main stream, through the midst of woods where the movement of the waters was almost imperceptible. How often must she have been stopped by the thorny lianas, that form a net-work around the trunks they entwine! How often must she have swam across the rivulets that run into the Atabapo! This unfortunate woman was asked how she had sustained herself during four days. She said, that, exhausted with fatigue, she could find no other nourishment than those great black ants called vachacos, which climb the trees in long bands, to suspend on them their resinous nests. We pressed the missionary to tell us, whether the Guahiba had peacefully enjoyed the happiness of remaining with her children; and if any repentance had followed this excess of cruelty. He would not satisfy our curiosity, but at our return from the Rio Negro we learnt that the Indian mother was not allowed time to cure her wounds, but was again separated from her children and sent to one of the missions of the Upper Oroonoko. Here she died, refusing all kind of nourishment, as the savages do in great calamities. Such is the remembrance annexed to this fatal rock, to the Piedra de la Madre.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 233.

“San Fernando de Atabapo is placed near the confluence of three great rivers, the Guaviare, the Atabapo, and the Oroonoko.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 200.

“The missionary of San Fernando has the title of President of the Missions of the Oroonoko.”— Ib. vol. v. p. 200.

“The President of the Mission gave us an animated account of his incursions on the river Guaviare. He related to us how much these journeys, undertaken ‘for the conquest of souls,’ are desired by the Indians of the mission. All, even women and old men, take part in them. On the vain pretext of recovering neophytes who have deserted the village, children above eight and ten years of age are carried off and distributed amongst the Indians as serfs.”— Ib. vol. v. p. 215.

“The Rio Paragua [or Upper Oroonoko], that part of the Oroonoko which you go up to the east of the mouth of the Guaviare, has clearer, more transparent, and purer water than the part of the Oroonoko below San Fernando. The waters of the Guaviare, on the contrary, are white and turbid.’— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 221.

“After a tranquil course of more than 160 leagues from the little Raudal of Guaharibos, east of Esmeralda, as far as the mountains of Sipapu, the river, augmented by the waters of the Jao, the Ventuari, the Atabapo, and the Guaviare, suddenly changes its primitive direction from east to west, and runs from south to north; and in crossing the land-strait (formed by the Cordilleras of the Andes of New Grenada and the Cordillera of Parima), in the plains of Meta, meets the advanced buttresses of the Cordillera of Parima. This obstacle is the cause of cataracts, &c.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 42.

—Golfo Triste.

The carunculated chatterer.— Lathan's Synopsis, vol. ii. p. 98. plate 40. Cotinga blanc.—Brisson and Buffon.

“These birds inhabit Cayenne and Brazil, and are said to have a very loud voice, to be heard half-a-league off, which is composed of two syllables, in, an, uttered with a drawling kind of tone, though some have compared it to the sound of a bell. The Brazilian name is Guirapanga.”— Latham.

It is called Campanero, or bell-man, and delights in lonely parts of the forests.

“Clusters of palm-trees [of the species called el Cucurito], the leaves of which, curled like feathers, rise majestically at an angle of seventy degrees, are dispersed amidst trees with horizontal branches, and their bare trunks, like columns of 100 or 120 feet high, shoot up into the air, and appearing distinctly against the sky, resemble a forest planted upon another forest.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 46.

“When you have passed the latitude of three degrees north and approach the equator, you seldom have an opportunity of observing the sun and stars. It rains almost the whole year, and the sky is constantly cloudy. As the breeze is not felt in this immense forest of Guyana, and the refluent polar-currents do not reach it, the column of air that reposes in this wooden zone is not renewed by drier strata.”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 246.

The fine pirijao palm bears fruit like peaches in flavour.— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 239.

The nets of the Indians are made of the petioles of palm-leaves.—Humb.

“On beating the bushes a shoal of fresh water dolphins four feet long surrounded our boat. These animals had concealed themselves beneath the branches of a fromager or bombax ceiba. They fled across the inundated forest, throwing out those spouts of compressed air and water which have given them in every language the name of blowers.”— Humb. vol. v. p. 240.

The South American Tigers. “The jaguars, or tigers, come into the village of Atures and devour the pigs of the poor Indians.”— Humb. vol. v. p. 76.

The name of Boa for the largest snakes is universally known.

“The waters of the Oroonoko are turbid and loaded with earthy matter; those of the Atabapo are pure, agreeable to the taste, without any trace of small, brownish by reflected, and of a pale yellow by transmitted light.”— Humb. vol. v. p. 227.

“What proves the extreme purity of the black waters is their limpidity; their transparency, and the clearness with which they reflect the images and colors of surrounding objects. The smallest fish are visible in them at the depth of twenty or thirty feet.” “Nothing can be compared with the beauty of the banks of the Atabapo.”— Ib. vol. v. p. 218.

“Opposite the point [of the Upper Oroonoko] where the bifurcation takes place, the granitic group of Duïda rises in an amphitheatre on the right bank of the river. This mountain, which the missionaries call a volcano, is nearly 8000 feet high. Perpendicular on the South and West, it has an aspect of solemn greatness: its summit is bare and stony; but wherever its less steep acclivities are covered with mould, vast forests appear suspended on its flanks. At the foot of Duïda is placed the mission of Esmeralda, a little hamlet with eighty inhabitants; surrounded by a lovely plain, bathed by rills of black but limpid water.”— Humb. vol. v. p. 502.

“A mineralogical error gave celebrity to Esmeralda. The granites of Cerro Duïda and Maraguaca contain in open veins fine rock crystals, some of them of great transparency, others colored by chlorite or blended with actinote, and they were taken for diamonds and emeralds.”— Ib. p. 506.

A conspicuous constellation in the southern hemisphere.

“It was among the cataracts that we began first to hear of the hairy man of the woods, called salvaje, that carries off women, constructs huts, and sometimes eats human flesh. The natives and missionaries have no doubt of the existence of this anthropomorphous monkey, which they singularly dread. Father Gili gravely relates the history of a lady in the town of Carlos (in Venezuela) who much praised the gentle character and attentions of the man of the woods. She lived several years with one in great domestic harmony, and only requested some hunters to take her back “because she was tired, she and her children (a little hairy also), of living far from the church and the sacraments.”—Humb. p. 81. “We will not admit, with a Spanish author, that the fable of the man of the woods was invented by the artifice of Indian women, who pretended to have been carried off, when they had been long absent from their husbands; we rather counsel travellers who shall visit the missions of the Oroonoko, to continue our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the woods; and examine whether it be some unknown species of bear, or some very rare monkey analogous to the simia chiropotes, or simia satanas, that can have given rise to such singular tales.”— Humb. vol. v. p. 84.

The absurdity of Humboldt's suggestion that the salvaje might be an unknown species of bear is too great to be passed over in silence. The accounts of this creature and its violence to women are exactly consistent with the habits of the ourang-outang, and it cannot reasonably be doubted that they are referable to some analogous species of monkey. He adds, “We were every where blamed, in the most cultivated class of society, for being the only persons to doubt the existence of the great anthropomorphous monkey of America.”— Ib. 82.

The fall of the great nuts of the palm, called the juvia tree (bertholletia excelsa), which contain the triangular nuts known in England by the name of Para nuts, is mentioned by Humboldt as very dangerous to those who walk in the forests.

A granitic pass known by the name of Piedra del Tigre. “This solitary rock is only sixty fect high, yet it enjoys great celebrity in these countries. A little to the south of the mountains of Sipapu, we reach the southern extremity of the chain of cataracts, which I proposed to call the Chain of Parima. The whole of the land extending from the mountains of Parima toward the river of Amazons, which is traversed by the Atabapo, the Cassiquiare, and the Rio Negro, is an immense plain, partly covered with forests and partly with grasses. Small rocks rise here and there like castles.”— Humb. v. 227.

“After having passed the rapids of Guarinuma, the Indians showed us, in the middle of the forest, on our right, the ruins of the mission of Mendaxari which has been long abandoned. On the East bank, near the little rock of Kemaruma, in the midst of Indian plantations, a gigantic Bombax Ceiba attracted our attention. This enormous effort of vegetation surprised us the more, as we had till then seen on the banks of the Atabapo only small trees with slender trunks.” — Ib. v. 228.

“It was night when we arrived at the mission of San Balthasar. A Catalan missionary had planted a fine garden where the fig-tree of Europe was found in company with the persea, and the lemon tree with the mammee. The village was built with that regularity which in the North of Germany, and in protestant America, we find in the hamlets of the Moravian brethren.”— Ib. v. 230.

“The ground from the mouth of the Guaviare constantly displays the same geological constitution. It is a vast granitic plain, in which from league to league the rock pierces the soil and forms not hillocks, but small masses that resemble pillars or rained buildings.”— Ib. v. 242.

“The river Atabapo displays every where a peculiar aspect. You see nothing of its real banks formed by flat lands, eight or ten feet high: they are concealed by a row of palms and small trees with slender trunks, the roots of which are bathed by the waters. There are many crocodiles from the point where you quit the Oroonoko to the mission of San Fernando, and their presence indicates, as we have said above, that this part of the river belongs to the Rio Guaviare and not to the Atabapo. In the real bed of the river above the mission of San Fernando there are no longer any crocodiles: we find some bavas, a great many fresh water dolphins, but no manatees. We also seek in vain on those banks the thick-nosed tapir, the araguates or great howling monkeys, the Zamuro or vultur aura, and the crested pheasant. Enormous water-snakes, in shape resembling the boa, are unfortunately too common, and are dangerous to the Indians who bathe. We saw them almost from the first day, swimming by the side of our canoe: they were at the most twelve or fourteen feet long.”— Humb. P. N. v. 225.

“Unaccustomed to those forests which are less inhabited by animals than those of the Oroonoko, we were almost surprised no longer to hear the howlings of the monkeys. The dolphins or toninas sported by the side of our boat.” — Ib. v. p 227.

“Above the mouth of the Guasucavi we entered the Rio Temi.”— Humb. v. p. 238.

“We remained in the bed of the river till day, afraid of losing ourselves amongst the trees. At sun-rise we again entered the inundated forests, to avoid the force of the current. Arrived at the junction of the Temi with another river, the Tuamini, the waters of which are equally black, we followed the latter toward the south west. This direction led us to the mission of Javita, which is founded on the banks of the Tuamini.”— Ib. vol. v. p. 243.

“After a few minutes repose, you feel yourself stung by Zancudoes, another species of gnat with very long legs. The Zancudo, the proboscis of which contains a sharp-pointed sucker, causes the most acute pain and a swelling that remains many weeks.”— Humb. P. N. p. 94.

“At fixed and invariable hours, in the same season and the same latitude, the air is peopled with new inhabitants; and in a zone where the barometer becomes a clock, where every thing proceeds with such admirable regularity, we might guess blindfold the hour of the day or night by the hum of the insects, and by their stings, the pain of which differs according to the nature of the poison that each insect deposits in the wound.”— Humb. P. N. p. 96.

“The Indians of the Upper Oroonoko, the Atabapo, and Inirida, have no other worship than that of the powers of nature. They call the good principle Cachimana; it is the Manitou, or Great Spirit, that regulates the seasons and favours the harvests. There is an evil principle, Iolokiamo, less powerful, but more artful, and in particular more active. The Indians of the forest, when they visit occasionally the missions, conceive with difficulty the idea of a temple or an image.—‘These good people,’ said the missionary, ‘like only processions in the open air. When I last celebrated the patron-festival of my village, that of Antonio, the Indians of Inirida were present at the mass. ‘Your God,’ said they to me, ‘keeps himself shut up in a house as if he were old and infirm; ours is in the forest, in the fields, and on the mountains of Sipapo, whence the rains come.’”— Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 272.

The Cabres, or Caveres, celebrated for their long wars with the Caribs, are much addicted to anthropophagy. Humb. P. N. vol. v. p. 13.

“There are but a small number of these sacred trumpets. The most anciently celebrated is that upon a hill near the confluence of the Tomo and the Guainia. It is pretended that it is heard at once on the banks of the Tuamini and at the mission of San Miguel de Davipe, a distance of ten leagues.”

—“Women are not permitted to see this marvellous instrument, and are excluded from all ceremonies of this worship. If a woman have the misfortune to see this trumpet, she is put to death without mercy.”— Humb. P. N. p. 274.

“The trumpets are made of baked earth, and called Botutos.”— Ib. p. 232.