Books: Equinoctial Regions of America V2

A >> Alexander von Humboldt >> Equinoctial Regions of America V2

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The account given by the missionary was entirely conformable to what
we afterwards learned at Angostura from the governor himself.
Fortuitous circumstances had given rise to the strangest suspicions.
In the caverns where the mummies and skeletons of the nation of the
Atures are found, even in the midst of the cataracts, and in the most
inaccessible islets, the Indians long ago discovered boxes bound with
iron, containing various European tools, remnants of clothes,
rosaries, and glass trinkets. These objects are thought to have
belonged to Portuguese traders of the Rio Negro and Grand Para, who,
before the establishment of the Jesuits on the banks of the Orinoco,
went up to Atures by the portages and interior communications of
rivers, to trade with the natives. It is supposed that these men sunk
beneath the epidemic maladies so common in the raudales, and that
their chests became the property of the Indians, the wealthiest of
whom were usually buried with all they possessed most valuable during
their lives. From these very uncertain traditions the tale of hidden
treasures has been fabricated. As in the Andes of Quito every ruined
building, not excepting the foundations of the pyramids erected by the
French savans for the measurement of the meridian, is regarded as Inga
pilca,* that is, the work of the Inca (* Pilca (properly in Quichua
pirca), wall of the Inca.); so on the Orinoco every hidden treasure
can belong only to the Jesuits, an order which, no doubt, governed the
missions better than the Capuchins and the monks of the Observance,
but whose riches and success in the civilization of the Indians have
been much exaggerated. When the Jesuits of Santa Fe were arrested,
those heaps of piastres, those emeralds of Muzo, those bars of gold of
Choco, which the enemies of the company supposed they possessed, were
not found in their dwellings. I can cite a respectable testimony,
which proves incontestibly, that the viceroy of New Granada had not
warned the Jesuits of Santa Fe of the danger with which they were
menaced. Don Vicente Orosco, an engineer officer in the Spanish army,
related to me that, being arrived at Angostura, with Don Manuel
Centurion, to arrest the missionaries of Carichana, he met an Indian
boat that was going down the Rio Meta. The boat being manned with
Indians who could speak none of the tongues of the country, gave rise
to suspicions. After useless researches, a bottle was at length
discovered, containing a letter, in which the Superior of the company
residing at Santa Fe informed the missionaries of the Orinoco of the
persecutions to which the Jesuits were exposed in New Grenada. This
letter recommended no measure of precaution; it was short, without
ambiguity, and respectful towards the government, whose orders were
executed with useless and unreasonable severity.

Eight Indians of Atures had conducted our boat through the raudales,
and seemed well satisfied with the slight recompence we gave them.
They gain little by this employment; and in order to give a just idea
of the poverty and want of commerce in the missions of the Orinoco, I
shall observe that during three years, with the exception of the boats
sent annually to Angostura by the commander of San Carlos de Rio
Negro, to fetch the pay of the soldiers, the missionary had seen but
five canoes of the Upper Orinoco pass the cataract, which were bound
for the harvest of turtles' eggs, and eight boats laden with
merchandize.

About eleven on the morning of the 17th of April we reached our boat.
Father Zea caused to be embarked, with our instruments, the small
store of provisions he had been able to procure for the voyage, on
which he was to accompany us; these provisions consisted of a few
bunches of plantains, some cassava, and fowls. Leaving the
embarcadero, we immediately passed the mouth of the Cataniapo, a small
river, the banks of which are inhabited by the Macos, or Piaroas, who
belong to the great family of the Salive nations.

Besides the Piaroas of Cataniapo, who pierce their ears, and wear as
ear-ornaments the teeth of caymans and peccaries, three other tribes
of Macos are known: one, on the Ventuari, above the Rio Mariata; the
second, on the Padamo, north of the mountains of Maraguaca; and the
third, near the Guaharibos, towards the sources of the Orinoco, above
the Rio Gehette. This last tribe bears the name of Macos-Macos. I
collected the following words from a young Maco of the banks of the
Cataniapo, whom we met near the embarcadero, and who wore in his ears,
instead of a tusk of the peccary, a large wooden cylinder.* (* This
custom is observed among the Cabres, the Maypures, and the Pevas of
the Amazon. These last, described by La Condamine, stretch their ears
by weights of a considerable size.)

Plantain, Paruru (in Tamanac also, paruru).
Cassava, Elente (in Maco, cahig).
Maize, Niarne.
The sun, Jama (in Salive, mume-seke-cocco).
The moon, Jama (in Salive, vexio).
Water, Ahia (in Salive, cagua).
One, Nianti.
Two, Tajus.
Three, Percotahuja.
Four, Imontegroa.

The young man could not reckon as far as five, which certainly is no
proof that the word five does not exist in the Maco tongue. I know not
whether this tongue be a dialect of the Salive, as is pretty generally
asserted; for idioms derived from one another, sometimes furnish words
utterly different for the most common and most important things.* (*
The great family of the Esthonian (or Tschoudi) languages, and of the
Samoiede languages, affords numerous examples of these differences.)
But in discussions on mother-tongues and derivative languages, it is
not the sounds, the roots only, that are decisive; but rather the
interior structure and grammatical forms. In the American idioms,
which are notwithstanding rich, the moon is commonly enough called the
sun of night or even the sun of sleep; but the moon and sun very
rarely bear the same name, as among the Macos. I know only a few
examples in the most northerly part of America, among the Woccons, the
Ojibbeways, the Muskogulges, and the Mohawks.* (* Nipia-kisathwa in
the Shawanese (the idiom of Canada), from nippi, to sleep, and
kisathwa, the sun.) Our missionary asserted that jama, in Maco,
indicated at the same time the Supreme Being, and the great orbs of
night and day; while many other American tongues, for instance the
Tamanac, and the Caribbee, have distinct words to denote God, the
Moon, and the Sun. We shall soon see how anxious the missionaries of
the Orinoco are not to employ, in their translations of the prayers of
the church, the native words which denote the Divinity, the Creator
(Amanene), the Great Spirit who animates all nature. They choose
rather to Indianize the Spanish word Dios, converting it, according to
the differences of pronunciation, and the genius of the different
dialects, into Dioso, Tiosu, or Piosu.

When we again embarked on the Orinoco, we found the river free from
shoals. After a few hours we passed the Raudal of Garcita, the rapids
of which are easy of ascent, when the waters are high. To the eastward
is seen a small chain of mountains called the chain of Cumadaminari,
consisting of gneiss, and not of stratified granite. We were struck
with a succession of great holes at more than one hundred and eighty
feet above the present level of the Orinoco, yet which,
notwithstanding, appear to be the effects of the erosion of the
waters. We shall see hereafter, that this phenomenon occurs again
nearly at the same height, both in the rocks that border the cataracts
of Maypures, and fifty leagues to the east, near the mouth of the Rio
Jao. We slept in the open air, on the left bank of the river, below
the island of Tomo. The night was beautiful and serene, but the
torment of the mosquitos was so great near the ground, that I could
not succeed in levelling the artificial horizon; consequently I lost
the opportunity of making an observation.

On the 18th we set out at three in the morning, to be more sure of
arriving before the close of the day at the cataract known by the name
of the Raudal de los Guahibos. We stopped at the mouth of the Rio
Tomo. The Indians went on shore, to prepare their food, and take some
repose. When we reached the foot of the raudal, it was near five in
the afternoon. It was extremely difficult to go up the current against
a mass of water, precipitated from a bank of gneiss several feet high.
An Indian threw himself into the water, to reach, by swimming, the
rock that divides the cataract into two parts. A rope was fastened to
the point of this rock, and when the canoe was hauled near enough, our
instruments, our dry plants, and the provision we had collected at
Atures, were landed in the raudal itself. We remarked with surprise,
that the natural damn over which the river is precipitated, presents a
dry space of considerable extent; where we stopped to see the boat go
up.

The rock of gneiss exhibits circular holes, the largest of which are
four feet deep, and eighteen inches wide. These funnels contain quartz
pebbles, and appear to have been formed by the friction of masses
rolled along by the impulse of the waters. Our situation, in the midst
of the cataract, was singular enough, but unattended by the smallest
danger. The missionary, who accompanied us, had his fever-fit on him.
In order to quench the thirst by which he was tormented, the idea
suggested itself to us of preparing a refreshing beverage for him in
one of the excavations of the rock. We had taken on board at Atures an
Indian basket called a mapire, filled with sugar, limes, and those
grenadillas, or fruits of the passion-flower, to which the Spaniards
give the name of parchas. As we were absolutely destitute of large
vessels for holding and mixing liquids, we poured the water of the
river, by means of a calabash, into one of the holes of the rock: to
this we added sugar and lime-juice. In a few minutes we had an
excellent beverage, which is almost a refinement of luxury, in that
wild spot; but our wants rendered us every day more and more
ingenious.

After an hour of expectation, we saw the boat arrive above the raudal,
and we were soon ready to depart. After quitting the rock, our passage
was not exempt from danger. The river is eight hundred toises broad,
and must be crossed obliquely, above the cataract, at the point where
the waters, impelled by the slope of their bed, rush with extreme
violence toward the ledge from which they are precipitated. We were
overtaken by a storm, accompanied happily by no wind, but the rain
fell in torrents. After rowing for twenty minutes, the pilot declared
that, far from gaining upon the current, we were again approaching the
raudal. These moments of uncertainty appeared to us very long: the
Indians spoke only in whispers, as they do always when they think
their situation perilous. They redoubled their efforts, and we arrived
at nightfall, without any accident, in the port of Maypures.

Storms within the tropics are as short as they are violent. The
lightning had fallen twice near our boat, and had no doubt struck the
surface of the water. I mention this phenomenon, because it is pretty
generally believed in those countries that the clouds, the surface of
which is charged with electricity, are at so great a height that the
lightning reaches the ground more rarely than in Europe. The night was
extremely dark, and we could not in less than two hours reach the
village of Maypures. We were wet to the skin. In proportion as the
rain ceased, the zancudos reappeared, with that voracity which
tipulary insects always display immediately after a storm. My
fellow-travellers were uncertain whether it would be best to stop in
the port or proceed on our way on foot, in spite of the darkness of
the night. Father Zea was determined to reach his home. He had given
directions for the construction of a large house of two stories, which
was to be begun by the Indians of the mission. "You will there find,"
said he gravely, "the same conveniences as in the open air; I have
neither a bench nor a table, but you will not suffer so much from the
flies, which are less troublesome in the mission than on the banks of
the river." We followed the counsel if the missionary, who caused
torches of copal to be lighted. These torches are tubes made of bark,
three inches in diameter, and filled with copal resin. We walked at
first over beds of rock, which were bare and slippery, and then we
entered a thick grove of palm trees. We were twice obliged to pass a
stream on trunks of trees hewn down. The torches had already ceased to
give light. Being formed on a strange principle, the woody substance
which resembles the wick surrounding the resin, they emit more smoke
than light, and are easily extinguished. The Indian pilot, who
expressed himself with some facility in Spanish, told us of snakes,
water-serpents, and tigers, by which we might be attacked. Such
conversations may be expected as matters of course, by persons who
travel at night with the natives. By intimidating the European
traveller, the Indians imagine they render themselves more necessary,
and gain the confidence of the stranger. The rudest inhabitant of the
missions fully understands the deceptions which everywhere arise from
the relations between men of unequal fortune and civilization. Under
the absolute and sometimes vexatious government of the monks, the
Indian seeks to ameliorate his condition by those little artifices
which are the weapons of physical and intellectual weakness.

Having arrived during the night at San Jose de Maypures we were
forcibly struck by the solitude of the place; the Indians were plunged
in profound sleep, and nothing was heard but the cries of nocturnal
birds, and the distant sound of the cataract. In the calm of the
night, amid the deep repose of nature, the monotonous sound of a fall
of water has in it something sad and solemn. We remained three days at
Maypures, a small village founded by Don Jose Solano at the time of
the expedition of the boundaries, the situation of which is more
picturesque, it might be said still more admirable, than that of
Atures.

The raudal of Maypures, called by the Indians Quituna, is formed, as
all cataracts are, by the resistance which the river encounters in its
way across a ridge of rocks, or a chain of mountains. The lofty
mountains of Cunavami and Calitamini, between the sources of the
rivers Cataniapo and Ventuari, stretch toward the west in a chain of
granitic hills. From this chain flow three small rivers, which embrace
in some sort the cataract of Maypures. There are, on the eastern bank,
the Sanariapo, and on the western, the Cameji and the Toparo. Opposite
the village of Maypures, the mountains fall back in an arch, and, like
a rocky coast, form a gulf open to the south-east. The irruption of
the river is effected between the mouths of the Toparo and the
Sanariapo, at the western extremity of this majestic amphitheatre.

The waters of the Orinoco now roll at the foot of the eastern chain of
the mountains, and have receded from the west, where, in a deep
valley, the ancient shore is easily recognized. A savannah, scarcely
raised thirty feet above the mean level of the river, extends from
this valley as far as the cataracts. There the small church of
Maypures has been constructed. It is built of trunks of palm-trees,
and is surrounded by seven or eight huts. The dry valley, which runs
in a straight line from south to north, from the Cameji to the Toparo,
is filled with granitic and solitary mounds, all resembling those
found in the shape of islands and shoals in the present bed of the
river. I was struck with this analogy of form, on comparing the rocks
of Keri and Oco, situated in the deserted bed of the river, west of
Maypures, with the islets of Ouivitari and Caminitamini, which rise
like old castles amid the cataracts to the east of the mission. The
geological aspect of these scenes, the insular form of the elevations
farthest from the present shore of the Orinoco, the cavities which the
waves appear to have hollowed in the rock Oco, and which are precisely
on the same level (twenty-five or thirty toises high) as the
excavations perceived opposite to them in the isle of Ouivitari; all
these appearances prove that the whole of this bay, now dry, was
formerly covered by water. Those waters probably formed a lake, the
northern dike preventing their running out: but, when this dike was
broken down, the savannah that surrounds the mission appeared at first
like a very low island, bounded by two arms of the same river. It may
be supposed that the Orinoco continued for some time to fill the
ravine, which we shall call the valley of Keri, because it contains
the rock of that name; and that the waters retired wholly toward the
eastern chain, leaving dry the western arm of the river, only as they
gradually diminished. Coloured stripes, which no doubt owe their black
tint to the oxides of iron and manganese, seem to justify this
conjecture. They are found on all the stones, far from the mission,
and indicate the former abode of the waters. In going up the river,
all merchandise is discharged at the confluence of the Rio Toparo and
the Orinoco. The boats are entrusted to the natives, who have so
perfect a knowledge of the raudal, that they have a particular name
for every step. They conduct the boats as far as the mouth of the
Cameji, where the danger is considered as past.

I will here describe the cataract of Quituna or Maypures as it
appeared at the two periods when I examined it, in going down and up
the river. It is formed, like that of Mapara or Atures, by an
archipelago of islands, which, to the length of three thousand toises,
fill the bed of the river, and by rocky dikes, which join the islands
together. The most remarkable of these dikes, or natural dams, are
Purimarimi, Manimi, and the Leap of the Sardine (Salto de la Sardina).
I name them in the order in which I saw them in succession from south
to north. The last of these three stages is near nine feet high, and
forms by its breadth a magnificent cascade. I must here repeat,
however, that the turbulent shock of the precipitated and broken
waters depends not so much on the absolute height of each step or
dike, as upon the multitude of counter-currents, the grouping of the
islands and shoals, that lie at the foot of the raudalitos or partial
cascades, and the contraction of the channels, which often do not
leave a free navigable passage of twenty or thirty feet. The eastern
part of the cataract of Maypures is much more dangerous than the
western; and therefore the Indian pilots prefer the left bank of the
river to conduct the boats down or up. Unfortunately, in the season of
low waters, this bank remains partly dry, and recourse must be had to
the process of portage; that is, the boats are obliged to be dragged
on cylinders, or round logs.

To command a comprehensive view of these stupendous scenes, the
spectator must be stationed on the little mountain of Manimi, a
granitic ridge, which rises from the savannah, north of the church of
the mission, and is itself only a continuation of the ridges of which
the raudalito of Manimi is composed. We often visited this mountain,
for we were never weary of gazing on this astonishing spectacle. From
the summit of the rock is descried a sheet of foam, extending the
length of a whole mile. Enormous masses of stone, black as iron, issue
from its bosom. Some are paps grouped in pairs, like basaltic hills;
others resemble towers, fortified castles, and ruined buildings. Their
gloomy tint contrasts with the silvery splendour of the foam. Every
rock, every islet is covered with vigorous trees, collected in
clusters. At the foot of those paps, far as the eye can reach, a thick
vapour is suspended over the river, and through this whitish fog the
tops of the lofty palm-trees shoot up. What name shall we give to
these majestic plants? I suppose them to be the vadgiai, a new species
of the genus Oreodoxa, the trunk of which is more than eighty feet
high. The feathery leaves of this palm-tree have a brilliant lustre,
and rise almost straight toward the sky. At every hour of the day the
sheet of foam displays different aspects. Sometimes the hilly islands
and the palm-trees project their broad shadows; sometimes the rays of
the setting sun are refracted in the cloud that hangs over the
cataract, and coloured arcs are formed which vanish and appear
alternately.

Such is the character of the landscape discovered from the top of the
mountain of Manimi, which no traveller has yet described. I do not
hesitate to repeat, that neither time, nor the view of the
Cordilleras, nor any abode in the temperate valleys of Mexico, has
effaced from my mind the powerful impression of the aspect of the
cataracts. When I read a description of those places in India that are
embellished by running waters and a vigorous vegetation, my
imagination retraces a sea of foam and palm-trees, the tops of which
rise above a stratum of vapour. The majestic scenes of nature, like
the sublime works of poetry and the arts, leave remembrances that are
incessantly awakening, and which, through the whole of life, mingle
with all our feelings of what is grand and beautiful.

The calm of the atmosphere, and the tumultuous movement of the waters,
produce a contrast peculiar to this zone. Here no breath of wind ever
agitates the foliage, no cloud veils the splendour of the azure vault
of heaven; a great mass of light is diffused in the air, on the earth
strewn with plants with glossy leaves, and on the bed of the river,
which extends as far as the eye can reach. This appearance surprises
the traveller born in the north of Europe. The idea of wild scenery,
of a torrent rushing from rock to rock, is linked in his imagination
with that of a climate where the noise of the tempest is mingled with
the sound of the cataract; and where, in a gloomy and misty day,
sweeping clouds seem to descend into the valley, and to rest upon the
tops of the pines. The landscape of the tropics in the low regions of
the continents has a peculiar physiognomy, something of greatness and
repose, which it preserves even where one of the elements is
struggling with invincible obstacles. Near the equator, hurricanes and
tempests belong to islands only, to deserts destitute of plants, and
to those spots where parts of the atmosphere repose upon surfaces from
which the radiation of heat is very unequal.

The mountain of Manimi forms the eastern limit of a plain which
furnishes for the history of vegetation, that is, for its progressive
development in bare and desert places, the same phenomena which we
have described above in speaking of the raudal of Atures. During the
rainy season, the waters heap vegetable earth upon the granitic rock,
the bare shelves of which extend horizontally. These islands of mould,
decorated with beautiful and odoriferous plants, resemble the blocks
of granite covered with flowers, which the inhabitants of the Alps
call gardens or courtils, and which pierce the glaciers of
Switzerland.

In a place where we had bathed the day before, at the foot of the rock
of Manimi, the Indians killed a serpent seven feet and a half long.
The Macos called it a camudu. Its back displayed, upon a yellow
ground, transverse bands, partly black, and partly inclining to a
brown green: under the belly the bands were blue, and united in
rhombic spots. This animal, which is not venomous, is said by the
natives to attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at
first, that the camudu was a boa; but I saw with surprise, that the
scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It was therefore a
viper (coluber); perhaps a python of the New Continent: I say perhaps,
for great naturalists appear to admit that all the pythons belong to
the Old, and all the boas to the New World. As the boa of Pliny was a
serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have been well
if the boas of America had been named pythons, and the pythons of
India been called boas. The first notions of an enormous reptile
capable of seizing man, and even the great quadrupeds, came to us from
India and the coast of Guinea. However indifferent names may be, we
can scarcely admit the idea, that the hemisphere in which Virgil
described the agonies of Laocoon (a fable which the Greeks of Asia
borrowed from much more southern nations) does not possess the
boa-constrictor. I will not augment the confusion of zoological
nomenclature by proposing new changes, and shall confine myself to
observing that at least the missionaries and the latinized Indians of
the missions, if not the planters of Guiana, clearly distinguish the
traga-venados (real boas, with simple anal plates) from the culebras
de agua, or water-snakes, like the camudu (pythons with double anal
scales). The traga-venados have no transverse bands on the back, but a
chain of rhombic or hexagonal spots. Some species prefer the driest
places; others love the water, as the pythons, or culebras de agua.