Chapter 38

Afloat on the Napo.--Down the Rapids.--Santa Rosa and its mulish Alcalde.--Pratt on Discipline.--Forest Music.--Coca.--Our Craft and Crew.--Storm on the Napo.

We embarked November 20th on our voyage down the river. It is no easy matter to hire or cajole the Indians for any service. Out of feast-time they are out of town, and during the festival they are loth to leave, or are so full of chicha they do not know what they want. We first woke up the indolent alcalde by showing him the President's order, and then used him to entice or to compel (we know not his motive power) eight Indians, including the governor, to take us to Santa Rosa. We paid them about twenty-four yards of lienzo, the usual currency here. They furnished three canoes, two for baggage and one covered with a palm-leaf awning for ourselves. The canoes were of red cedar, and flat-bottomed; the paddles had oval blades, to which short, quick strokes were given perpendicularly to the water entering and leaving. But there was little need of paddling on this trip.

The Napo starts off in furious haste, for the fall between Napo village and Santa Rosa, a distance of eighty miles, is three hundred and fifty feet. We were about seven hours in the voyage down, and it takes seven days to pole back. The passage of the rapids is dangerous to all but an Indian. As Wallace says of a spot on the Rio Negro, you are bewildered by the conflicting motions of the water. Whirling and boiling eddies burst as if from some subaqueous explosion; down currents are on one side of the canoe, and an up current on the other; now a cross stream at the bows and a diagonal one at the stern, with a foaming Scylla on your right and a whirling Charybdis on the left. But our nervousness gave way to admiration as our popero, or pilot, the sedate governor, gave the canoe a sheer with the swoop of his long paddle, turning it gracefully around the corner of a rock against which it seemed we must be dashed, and we felt like joining in the wild scream of the Indians as our little craft shot like an arrow past the danger and down the rapids, and danced on the waters below.

In four hours we were abreast the little village of Aguano; on the opposite bank we could see the tambos of the gold washers. At 5 P.M. we reached the deserted site of Old Santa Rosa, the village having been removed a few years ago on account of its unhealthy location. It is now overgrown with sour orange and calabash trees, the latter bearing large fruit shells so useful to the Indians in making pilches or cups. In pitch darkness and in a drizzling rain we arrived at New Santa Rosa, and swung our hammocks in the Government House.

Santa Rosa, once the prosperous capital of the Provincia del Oriente, now contains about two hundred men, women, and children. The town is pleasantly situated on the left bank of the river, about fifteen feet above the water level. A little bamboo church, open only when the missionary from Archidona makes his annual visit, stood near our quarters. The Indians were keeping one of their seven feasts in a hut near by, and their drumming was the last thing we heard as we turned into our hammocks, and the first in the morning. The alcalde, Pablo Sandoval, is the only white inhabitant, and he is an Indian in every respect save speech and color. His habitation is one of the largest structures on the Napo; the posts are of chonta-palm, the sides and roof of the usual material--split bamboo and palm leaves. It is embowered in a magnificent grove of plantains and papayas. In the spacious vestibule is a bench, on which the Indian governor and his staff seat themselves every morning to confer with the alcalde. In one corner stands a table (the only one we remember seeing on the Napo); on the opposite side are heaped up jars, pots, kettles, hunting and fishing implements, paddles, bows and arrows. Between the posts swing two chambiri hammocks. From Santa Rosa to Pará the hammock answers for chair, sofa, _tête-à-tête_, and bed. When a stranger enters, he is invited to sit in a hammock; and at Santa Rosa we were always presented with a cup of guayusa; in Brazil with a cup of coffee. Sandoval wore nothing but shirt and pantaloons; the dignity of the barefooted functionary was confined to his Spanish blood. He had lived long among the Zaparos; and from him, his daughter, and a Zaparo servant, we obtained much valuable information respecting that wild and little-known tribe.

At Santa Rosa we procured Indians and canoes for the Marañon. This was not easily done. The Indians seemed reluctant to quit their feasts and go on such a long voyage, and the alcalde was unwilling they should go, and manufactured a host of lies and excuses. He declared there was but one large canoe in town, and that we must send to Suno for another, and for men to man it. There were indeed few Indians in Santa Rosa, for while we were disputing a largo number went off with shoutings down the river, to spend weeks in the forest hunting monkeys.[124] It was a stirring sight to see these untamed red men in the depths of the Napo wilderness starting on a monkey crusade; but it was still more stirring to think of paddling our own canoe down to Brazil. After some time lost in word-fighting, we tried the virtues of authority. We presented the president's order, which commanded all civil and military powers on the Napo to aid, and not to hinder, the expedition; then we put into his hand an official letter from the alcalde of Napo (to whom Pablo was subordinate), which, with a flourish of dignified Spanish, threatened Santa Rosa with the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah if any impediment was placed in our way.

[Footnote 124: Monkeys form an article of food throughout tropical America. The meat is tough, but keeps longer than any other in that climate. The Indians told Gibbon that "the tail is the most delicate part when the hair is properly singed."]

To all this Edwards, who had kindly accompanied us down the river thus far, added, with frightful gestures, that he purposed to report him to the Quito government. After this bombardment Sandoval was another man, and the two canoes and four Indians we wanted were forthcoming. We had to wait, however, two days for the Indians to prepare their chicha for the journey and to cover the canoes with palm awnings. The price of a canoe for the Marañon is twenty-five varas of lienzo, and the same for each Indian. Unfortunately we had only fifty varas left; but, through the influence of the now good-natured alcalde, we induced the Indians to take the balance in coin. After many delays, we put our baggage into one canoe, and ourselves into the other, and pushed off into the rapid current of the Napo. We had three styles of valediction on leaving. Our Indian quartet, after several last drinks of chicha, bade their friends farewell by clasping hands, one kissing the joined hands, and then the other. Sandoval muttered _adios_ in reply to ours, meaning, no doubt, good riddance, while we shouted a hearty good-bye to Edwards as he pushed his way up stream to continue his lonely but chosen Indian life on the banks of the Yusupino.

The Napo at Santa Rosa runs at least five miles an hour, and we were soon picking our way--now drifting, now paddling--through a labyrinth of islands and snags. The Indians, so accustomed to brutal violence from the hands of the whites, had begged of us, before our departure, that we would not beat them. But shortly after we left, one of them, who was literally filled with chicha, dropped his paddle and tumbled into a heap at the bottom of the canoe, dead drunk. Pratt, our gigantic Mississippi boatman, whom we had engaged at Quito as captain and cook down the river, and who was an awful Goliath in the eyes of the red-skins, seized the fellow and gave him a terrible shaking, the like of which was never seen or heard of in all Napo. At once the liquor left the muddled brain of the astonished culprit, and, taking his paddle, he became from that hour the best of the crew. This was the only case of discipline on the voyage. Always obsequious, they obeyed us with fear and trembling. None of them could speak Spanish, so we had provided ourselves with a vocabulary of Quichua. But some English words, like the imperative _paddle_! were more effective than the tongue of the Incas. Indeed, when we mixed up our Quichua with a little Anglo-Saxon, they evidently thought the latter was a terrible anathema, for they sprang to their places without delay.

In seven hours we arrived at Suno, a collection of half a dozen palm booths, five feet high, the miserable owners of which do a little fishing and gold-washing. They gave us possession of their largest hut, in which they had been roasting a sea-cow, and the stench was intolerable. Nevertheless, one of our number bravely threw down his blanket within, and went to sleep; two swung their hammocks between the trees, and the rest slept in the canoe. Here, for the first time since leaving Guayaquil, we were tormented by musquitoes. Bats were also quite numerous, but none of them were blood-thirsty; and we may add that nowhere in South America were we troubled by those diabolical imps of imaginative travelers, the leaf-nosed species. So far as our experience goes, we can say, with Bates, that the vampire, so common on the Amazon, is the most harmless of all bats. It has, however, a most hideous physiognomy. A full-grown specimen will measure twenty-eight inches in expanse of wing. Bates found two species on the Amazon--one black, the other of a ruddy line, and both fruit-eaters.

The nocturnal music of these forests is made by crickets and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the sun rises higher, one musician after another seeks the forest shade, and the morning concert ends at noon. In the heat of the day there is an all-pervading rustling sound, caused by the fluttering of myriad insects and the gliding of lizards and snakes. At sunset parrots and monkeys resume their chatter for a season, and then give way to the noiseless flight of innumerable bats chasing the hawk-moth and beetle. There is scarcely a sound in a tropical forest which is joyous and cheering. The birds are usually silent; those that have voices utter a plaintive song, or hoarse, shrill cry. Our door-yards are far more melodious on a May morning. The most common birds on the Napo are macaws, parrots, toucans, and ciganas. The parrots, like the majority in South America, are of the green type. The toucan, peculiar to the New World, and distinguished by its enormous bill, is a quarrelsome, imperious bird. It is clumsy in flight, but nimble in leaping from limb to limb. It hops on the ground like a robin, and makes a shrill yelping--_pia-po-o-co_. Ecuadorians call it the _predicador_, or preacher, because it wags its head like a priest, and seems to say, "God gave it you." The feathers of the breast are of most brilliant yellow, orange, and rose colors, and the robes of the royal dames of Europe in the sixteenth century were trimmed with them. The cigana or "gypsy" (in Peru called "chansu") resembles a pheasant. The flesh has a musky odor, and it is for this reason, perhaps, that they exist in such numbers throughout the country. The Indians never eat them. In no country as in the Amazonian Valley is there such a variety of insects; nowhere do we find species of larger size or greater beauty. It is the richest locality for butterflies; Bates found twelve hundred species in Brazil alone, or three times as many as in all Europe. The splendid metallic-blue, and the yellow and transparent-winged, are very abundant on the Napo; some rise high in the air; others, living in societies, look like fluttering clouds. Moths are comparatively rare. The most conspicuous beetle on the river is a magnificent green species (_Chrysophora chrysochlora_), always found arboreal, like the majority of tropical coleopters; they look like emerald gems clinging to the branches. There are two kinds of bees, the black and yellow, which the Napos name respectively _cushillo mishke_ (monkey honey) and _sara mishke_ (corn honey). It is singular these Indians have no term for bees, but call them honey, and distinguish them by their color. The black species is said to make the most honey, and the yellow the best. The quadrupeds of the Oriente are few and far between in the dry season. Not a sloth nor armadillo did we see. But when the rains descend the wilderness is a menagerie of tigers and tapirs, pumas and bears, while a host of reptiles, led by the gigantic boa, creep forth from their hiding-places. The most ferocious carnivores are found in the mountains, and the most venomous serpents haunt the lowlands. Darwin says that we ought not to expect any closer similarity between the organic beings on the opposite sides of the Andes than on the opposite shores of the ocean. We will remark that we obtained a peccari, a number of birds not accustomed to high flights, and five reptilian species, on the Pacific slope, identical with species found on the Napo.

Breakfasting on fried yucas, roasted plantains, fish, and guayusa, we set sail, arriving at Coca at 2 P.M. This little village, the last we shall see till we come within sight of the Amazon, is beautifully located on the right bank, twenty-five feet above the river, and opposite the confluence of the Rio Coca. Though founded twenty years ago, it contains only five or six bamboo huts, a government-house, church, alcalde's residence, and a _trapiche_ for the manufacture of aguardiente and sirup from the cane.[125] The alcalde was a worthless blanco, who spent most of his time swinging in a hammock slung between the posts of his veranda, and playing with a tame parrot when not drunk or asleep. This spot is memorable in history. Pizarro having reached it from Quito by way of Baeza and the Coca, halted and built a raft or canoe (Prescott says a brig), in which Orellana was sent down the river to reconnoitre, but who never returned. Up to this point the Napo has an easterly course; but after receiving the Coca, it turns to the southeast. We remained here two days to construct a more comfortable craft for our voyage to the Amazon, a distance of at least five hundred miles. The canoe is the only means of navigation known to the Indians. But the idea of spending fifteen days cooped, cribbed, and cramped in a narrow canoe, exposed to a tropical sun and furious rains, was intolerable.

[Footnote 125: The _trapiche_ or sugar-mill of the Andes is a rude affair. The cane is pressed between cogged wooden cylinders worked by bullocks, and the juice is received in troughs made of hollowed logs.]

Our Santa Rosa canoes were about thirty feet long. These were placed about five feet apart and parallel, and then firmly secured by bamboo joists. Over these we spread a flooring of split bamboo, and planted four stout chonta sticks to support a palm-thatched roof. A rudder (a novel idea to our red-skinned companions), and a box of sand in the stern of one of the boats for a fire-place, completed our rig. The alcalde, with a hiccough, declared we would be forever going down the river in such a huge craft, and the Indians smiled ominously. But when our gallant ship left Coca obediently to the helm, and at the rate of six miles an hour when paddles and current worked together, they shouted "_bueno_!" Our trunks and provision-cans were arranged along the two sides of the platform, so that we had abundance of from for exercise by day and for sleeping under musquito-tents at night. A little canoe, which we bought of the alcalde, floated alongside for a tender, and was very serviceable in hunting, gathering fuel, etc. In the "forecastle"--the bows of the large canoes which projected beyond our cabin--sat three Indians to paddle. The fourth, who was the governor of Santa Rosa, we honored with the post of steersman; and he was always to be seen on the poop behind the kitchen, standing bolt upright, on the alert and on the lookout. On approaching any human habitation, the Indians blew horns to indicate that they came as friends. These horns must have come from Brazil, as there are no bovines on the Napo. Whenever they enter an unknown lagune they blow their horns also to charm the _yacu-mama_, or mother-of-waters, as they call the imaginary serpent.

At different points down the river they deposited pots of chicha for use on their return. The mass breeds worms so rapidly, however, as Edwards informed us, that after the lapse of a month or two it is a jumble of yuca scraps and writhing articulates. But the owner of the heap coolly separates the animal from the vegetable, adds a little water, and drinks his chicha without ceremony. During leisure hours the Indians busied themselves plaiting palm leaves into ornaments for their arms and heads. Not a note did they whistle or sing. Yet they were always in good humor, and during the whole voyage we did not see the slightest approach to a quarrel. At no time did we have the least fear of treachery or violence.

The Napos are not savages. Their goodness, however, as Bates says of the Cucáma tribe, consists more in the absence of active bad qualities than in the possession of good ones. Of an apathetic temperament and dull imagination, we could not stir them into admiration or enthusiasm by any scientific wonder; the utmost manifestation of surprise was a cluck with the tongue.[126] Upon presenting the governor with a vest, he immediately cut off the buttons, and, dividing the cloth into four parts, shared it with his fellows.[127] When it rained they invariably took off their ponchos, but in all our intercourse with these wild men we never noticed the slightest breach of modesty. They strictly maintained a decent arrangement of such apparel as they possessed. A canoe containing a young Indian, his bride, and our governor's wife and babe, accompanied us down to the Marañon. They were going after a load of salt for Sandoval. The girl was a graceful paddler, and had some well-founded pretensions to beauty. Her coarse, black hair was simply combed back, not braided into plaits as commonly done by the Andean women. All, both male and female, painted their faces with achote to keep off the sand-flies.

[Footnote 126: Bates says the Mundurucus express surprise by making a clicking sound with their teeth, and Darwin observes that the Fuegians have the habit of making a chuckling noise when pleased.]

[Footnote 127: The like perfect equality exists among the Fuegian tribes. "A piece of cloth given to one is torn into shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes richer than another."--_Darwin_.]

Pratt managed the helm (the governor could not work the Yankee notion) and the kitchen. At Santa Rosa we had added to our Quito stock of provisions some manati-lard (bottled up in a joint of a bamboo) and sirup, and at Coca we took in three fowls, a bag of rice, and a bunch of bananas. So we fared sumptuously every day. We left Coca on Thanksgiving Day, November 28th, and to imitate our distant friends, we sacrificed an extra meal--fricasseed chicken, jerked beef, boiled yucas, bananas, oranges, lemonade, and guayusa. Favored by a powerful current and the rhythmic paddling of our Santa Rosans, we made this day sixty miles; but our average daily run was fifty miles. The winds (doubtless the trades) were almost unchangeably from the east; but an occasional puff would come from the northwest, when we relieved our paddlers by hoisting a blanket for a sail. Six o'clock was our usual hour of departure, and ten or twelve hours our traveling time, always tying up at a plaia or island, of which there are hosts in the Napo, but never to the main land, for fear of unfriendly Indians and the still more unwelcome tiger. Our crew encamped at a respectful though hailing distance.

On the second day from Coca we were caught in a squall, and to save our roof we ran ashore. Nearly every afternoon we were treated to a shower, accompanied by a strong wind, but seldom by thunder and lightning, though at Coca we had a brilliant thunder-storm at night. They always came after a uniform fashion and at a regular hour, so that we learned when to expect them. About noon the eastern horizon would become suddenly black, and when this had spread to the zenith we heard the rush of a mighty wind sweeping through the forest, and the crash of falling trees, and then down fell the deluge. The Indians have a saying that "the path of the sun is the path of the storm." These storm-clouds moved rapidly, for in half an hour all was quiet on the Napo. At Quito, two hundred miles west, the usual afternoon shower occurs two hours later. To-day we enjoyed our last glimpse of the Andes. Far away across the great forest we had traversed we could see the beautiful cone of Cotopaxi and the flat top of Cayambi standing out in proud pre-eminence. Long will it be ere we forget this farewell view of the magnificent Cordillera.