Chapter 3

Two days after leaving this you get to a rising ground on the western bank where stands a single hut, and about half a mile in the forest there are a few more: some of them square and some round, with spiral roofs.

Here the fish called pacou is very plentiful: it is perhaps the fattest and most delicious fish in Guiana. It does not take the hook, but the Indians decoy it to the surface of the water by means of the seeds of the crab-wood tree and then shoot it with an arrow.

You are now within the borders of Macoushia, inhabited by a different tribe of people called Macoushi Indians, uncommonly dexterous in the use of the blow-pipe and famous for their skill in preparing the deadly vegetable-poison commonly called wourali.

It is from this country that those beautiful paroquets named kessi-kessi are procured. Here the crystal mountains are found; and here the three different species of the ara are seen in great abundance. Here too grows the tree from which the gum-elastic is got: it is large and as tall as any in the forest. The wood has much the appearance of sycamore. The gum is contained in the bark: when that is cut through it oozes out very freely; it is quite white and looks as rich as cream; it hardens almost immediately as it issues from the tree, so that it is very easy to collect a ball by forming the juice into a globular shape as fast as it comes out. It becomes nearly black by being exposed to the air, and is real india-rubber without undergoing any other process.

The elegant crested bird called cock-of-the-rock, admirably described by Buffon, is a native of the woody mountains of Macoushia. In the daytime it retires amongst the darkest rocks, and only comes out to feed a little before sunrise and at sunset: he is of a gloomy disposition and, like the houtou, never associates with the other birds of the forest.

The Indians in the just-mentioned settlement seemed to depend more on the wourali poison for killing their game than upon anything else. They had only one gun, and it appeared rusty and neglected, but their poisoned weapons were in fine order. Their blow-pipes hung from the roof of the hut, carefully suspended by a silk-grass cord, and on taking a nearer view of them no dust seemed to have collected there, nor had the spider spun the smallest web on them, which showed that they were in constant use. The quivers were close by them, with the jaw-bone of the fish pirai tied by a string to their brim and a small wicker-basket of wild cotton, which hung down to the centre; they were nearly full of poisoned arrows. It was with difficulty these Indians could be persuaded to part with any of the wourali poison, though a good price was offered for it: they gave to understand that it was powder and shot to them, and very difficult to be procured.

On the second day after leaving this settlement, in passing along, the Indians show you a place where once a white man lived. His retiring so far from those of his own colour and acquaintance seemed to carry something extraordinary along with it, and raised a desire to know what could have induced him to do so. It seems he had been unsuccessful, and that his creditors had treated him with as little mercy as the strong generally show to the weak. Seeing his endeavours daily frustrated and his best intentions of no avail, and fearing that when they had taken all he had they would probably take his liberty too, he thought the world would not be hardhearted enough to condemn him for retiring from the evils which pressed so heavily on him, and which he had done all that an honest man could do to ward off. He left his creditors to talk of him as they thought fit, and, bidding adieu for ever to the place in which he had once seen better times, he penetrated thus far into these remote and gloomy wilds and ended his days here.

According to the new map of South America, Lake Parima, or the White Sea, ought to be within three or four days' walk from this place. On asking the Indians whether there was such a place or not, and describing that the water was fresh and good to drink, an old Indian, who appeared to be about sixty, said that there was such a place, and that he had been there. This information would have been satisfactory in some degree had not the Indians carried the point a little too far. It is very large, said another Indian, and ships come to it. Now these unfortunate ships were the very things which were not wanted: had he kept them out, it might have done, but his introducing them was sadly against the lake. Thus you must either suppose that the old savage and his companion had a confused idea of the thing, and that probably the Lake Parima they talked of was the Amazons, not far from the city of Para, or that it was their intention to deceive you. You ought to be cautious in giving credit to their stories, otherwise you will be apt to be led astray.

Many a ridiculous thing concerning the interior of Guiana has been propagated and received as true merely because six or seven Indians, questioned separately, have agreed in their narrative.

Ask those who live high up in the Demerara, and they will, every one of them, tell you that there is a nation of Indians with long tails; that they are very malicious, cruel and ill-natured; and that the Portuguese have been obliged to stop them off in a certain river to prevent their depredations. They have also dreadful stories concerning a horrible beast called the water-mamma which, when it happens to take a spite against a canoe, rises out of the river and in the most unrelenting manner possible carries both canoe and Indians down to the bottom with it, and there destroys them. Ludicrous extravagances! pleasing to those fond of the marvellous, and excellent matter for a distempered brain.

The misinformed and timid court of policy in Demerara was made the dupe of a savage who came down the Essequibo and gave himself out as king of a mighty tribe. This naked wild man of the woods seemed to hold the said court in tolerable contempt, and demanded immense supplies, all which he got; and moreover, some time after, an invitation to come down the ensuing year for more, which he took care not to forget.

This noisy chieftain boasted so much of his dynasty and domain that the Government was induced to send up an expedition into his territories to see if he had spoken the truth, and nothing but the truth. It appeared, however, that his palace was nothing but a hut, the monarch a needy savage, the heir-apparent nothing to inherit but his father's club and bow and arrows, and his officers of state wild and uncultivated as the forests through which they strayed.

There was nothing in the hut of this savage, saving the presents he had received from Government, but what was barely sufficient to support existence; nothing that indicated a power to collect a hostile force; nothing that showed the least progress towards civilisation. All was rude and barbarous in the extreme, expressive of the utmost poverty and a scanty population.

You may travel six or seven days without seeing a hut, and when you reach a settlement it seldom contains more than ten.

The farther you advance into the interior, the more you are convinced that it is thinly inhabited.

The day after passing the place where the white man lived you see a creek on the left-hand, and shortly after the path to the open country. Here you drag the canoe up into the forest, and leave it there. Your baggage must now be carried by the Indians. The creek you passed in the river intersects the path to the next settlement; a large mora has fallen across it and makes an excellent bridge. After walking an hour and a half you come to the edge of the forest, and a savanna unfolds itself to the view.

The finest park that England boasts falls far short of this delightful scene. There are about two thousand acres of grass, with here and there a clump of trees and a few bushes and single trees scattered up and down by the hand of Nature. The ground is neither hilly nor level, but diversified with moderate rises and falls, so gently running into one another that the eye cannot distinguish where they begin nor where they end; while the distant black rocks have the appearance of a herd at rest. Nearly in the middle there is an eminence which falls off gradually on every side, and on this the Indians have erected their huts.

To the northward of them the forest forms a circle, as though it had been done by art; to the eastward it hangs in festoons; and to the south and west it rushes in abruptly, disclosing a new scene behind it at every step as you advance along.

This beautiful park of Nature is quite surrounded by lofty hills, all arrayed in superbest garb of trees: some in the form of pyramids, others like sugar-loaves, towering one above the other, some rounded off, and others as though they had lost their apex. Here two hills rise up in spiral summits, and the wooded line of communication betwixt them sinks so gradually that it forms a crescent; and there the ridges of others resemble the waves of an agitated sea. Beyond these appear others, and others past them, and others still farther on, till they can scarcely be distinguished from the clouds.

There are no sand-flies nor bête-rouge nor mosquitos in this pretty spot. The fire-flies, during the night, vie in numbers and brightness with the stars in the firmament above; the air is pure, and the north-east breeze blows a refreshing gale throughout the day. Here the white-crested maroudi, which is never found in the Demerara, is pretty plentiful; and here grows the tree which produces the moran, sometimes called balsam-capivi.

Your route lies south from this place; and at the extremity of the savanna you enter the forest and journey along a winding path at the foot of a hill. There is no habitation within this day's walk. The traveller, as usual, must sleep in the forest; the path is not so good the following day. The hills over which it lies are rocky, steep and rugged; and the spaces betwixt them swampy and mostly knee-deep in water. After eight hours' walk you find two or three Indian huts, surrounded by the forest; and in little more than half an hour from these you come to ten or twelve others, where you pass the night. They are prettily situated at the entrance into a savanna. The eastern and western hills are still covered with wood; but on looking to the south-west quarter you perceive it begins to die away. In these forests you may find plenty of the trees which yield the sweet-smelling resin called accaiari, and which, when pounded and burnt on charcoal, gives a delightful fragrance.

From hence you proceed, in a south-west direction, through a long swampy savanna. Some of the hills which border on it have nothing but a thin coarse grass and huge stones on them: others quite wooded; others with their summits crowned and their base quite bare; and others again with their summits bare and their base in thickest wood.

Half of this day's march is in water nearly up to the knees. There are four creeks to pass: one of them has a fallen tree across it. You must make your own bridge across the other three. Probably, were the truth known, these apparently four creeks are only the meanders of one.

The jabiru, the largest bird in Guiana, feeds in the marshy savanna through which you have just passed. He is wary and shy, and will not allow you to get within gunshot of him.

You sleep this night in the forest, and reach an Indian settlement about three o'clock the next evening, after walking one-third of the way through wet and miry ground.

But bad as the walking is through it, it is easier than where you cross over the bare hills, where you have to tread on sharp stones, most of them lying edgewise.

The ground gone over these two last days seems condemned to perpetual solitude and silence. There was not one four-footed animal to be seen, nor even the marks of one. It would have been as silent as midnight, and all as still and unmoved as a monument, had not the jabiru in the marsh and a few vultures soaring over the mountain's top shown that it was not quite deserted by animated nature. There were no insects, except one kind of fly about one-fourth the size of the common house-fly. It bit cruelly, and was much more tormenting than the mosquito on the sea-coast.

This seems to be the native country of the arrowroot. Wherever you passed through a patch of wood in a low situation, there you found it growing luxuriantly.

The Indian place you are now at is not the proper place to have come to in order to reach the Portuguese frontiers. You have advanced too much to the westward. But there was no alternative. The ground betwixt you and another small settlement (which was the right place to have gone to) was overflowed; and thus, instead of proceeding southward, you were obliged to wind along the foot of the western hills, quite out of your way.

But the grand landscape this place affords makes you ample amends for the time you have spent in reaching it. It would require great descriptive powers to give a proper idea of the situation these people have chosen for their dwelling.

The hill they are on is steep and high, and full of immense rocks. The huts are not all in one place, but dispersed wherever they have found a place level enough for a lodgment. Before you ascend the hill you see at intervals an acre or two of wood, then an open space with a few huts on it; then wood again, and then an open space, and so on, till the intervening of the western hills, higher and steeper still, and crowded with trees of the loveliest shades, closes the enchanting scene.

At the base of this hill stretches an immense plain which appears to the eye, on this elevated spot, as level as a bowling-green. The mountains on the other side are piled one upon the other in romantic forms, and gradually retire, till they are undiscernible from the clouds in which they are involved. To the south-southwest this far-extending plain is lost in the horizon. The trees on it, which look like islands on the ocean, add greatly to the beauty of the landscape, while the rivulet's course is marked out by the æta-trees which follow its meanders.

Not being able to pursue the direct course from hence to the next Indian habitation, on account of the floods of water which fall at this time of the year, you take a circuit westerly along the mountain's foot.

At last a large and deep creek stops your progress: it is wide and rapid, and its banks very steep. There is neither curial nor canoe nor purple-heart tree in the neighbourhood to make a wood-skin to carry you over, so that you are obliged to swim across; and by the time you have formed a kind of raft composed of boughs of trees and coarse grass to ferry over your baggage, the day will be too far spent to think of proceeding. You must be very cautious before you venture to swim across this creek, for the alligators are numerous and near twenty feet long. On the present occasion the Indians took uncommon precautions lest they should be devoured by this cruel and voracious reptile. They cut long sticks and examined closely the side of the creek for half a mile above and below the place where it was to be crossed; and as soon as the boldest had swum over he did the same on the other side, and then all followed.

After passing the night on the opposite bank, which is well wooded, it is a brisk walk of nine hours before you reach four Indian huts, on a rising ground, a few hundred paces from a little brook whose banks are covered over with coucourite- and æta-trees.

This is the place you ought to have come to two days ago, had the water permitted you. In crossing the plain at the most advantageous place you are above ankle-deep in water for three hours; the remainder of the way is dry, the ground gently rising. As the lower parts of this spacious plain put on somewhat the appearance of a lake during the periodical rains, it is not improbable but that this is the place which hath given rise to the supposed existence of the famed Lake Parima, or El Dorado; but this is mere conjecture.

A few deer are feeding on the coarse, rough grass of this far-extending plain; they keep at a distance from you, and are continually on the look-out.

The spur-winged plover and a species of the curlew, black with a white bar across the wings, nearly as large again as the scarlet curlew on the sea-coast, frequently rise before you. Here too the muscovy duck is numerous, and large flocks of two other kinds wheel round you as you pass on, but keep out of gunshot. The milk-white egrets and jabirus are distinguished at a great distance, and in the æta- and coucourite-trees you may observe flocks of scarlet and blue aras feeding on the seeds.

It is to these trees that the largest sort of toucan resorts. He is remarkable by a large black spot on the point of his fine yellow bill. He is very scarce in Demerara, and never seen except near the sea-coast.

The ants' nests have a singular appearance on this plain; they are in vast abundance on those parts of it free from water, and are formed of an exceeding hard yellow clay. They rise eight or ten feet from the ground, in a spiral form, impenetrable to the rain and strong enough to defy the severest tornado.

The wourali poison procured in these last-mentioned huts seemed very good, and proved afterwards to be very strong.

There are now no more Indian settlements betwixt you and the Portuguese frontiers. If you wish to visit their fort, it would be advisable to send an Indian with a letter from hence and wait his return. On the present occasion a very fortunate circumstance occurred. The Portuguese commander had sent some Indians and soldiers to build a canoe not far from this settlement; they had just finished it, and those who did not stay with it had stopped here on their return.

The soldier who commanded the rest said he durst not, upon any account, convey a stranger to the fort: but he added, as there were two canoes, one of them might be despatched with a letter, and then we could proceed slowly on in the other.

About three hours from this settlement there is a river called Pirarara, and here the soldiers had left their canoes while they were making the new one. From the Pirarara you get into the River Maou, and then into the Tacatou; and just where the Tacatou falls into the Rio Branco there stands the Portuguese frontier-fort called Fort St. Joachim. From the time of embarking in the River Pirarara it takes you four days before you reach this fort.

There was nothing very remarkable in passing down these rivers. It is an open country, producing a coarse grass and interspersed with clumps of trees. The banks have some wood on them, but it appears stinted and crooked, like that on the bleak hills in England.

The tapir frequently plunged into the river; he was by no means shy, and it was easy to get a shot at him on land. The kessi-kessi paroquets were in great abundance, and the fine scarlet aras innumerable in the coucourite-trees at a distance from the river's bank. In the Tacatou was seen the troupiale. It was charming to hear the sweet and plaintive notes of this pretty songster of the wilds. The Portuguese call it the nightingale of Guiana.

Towards the close of the fourth evening the canoe which had been sent on with a letter met us with the commander's answer. During its absence the nights had been cold and stormy, the rain had fallen in torrents, the days cloudy, and there was no sun to dry the wet hammocks. Exposed thus, day and night, to the chilling blast and pelting shower, strength of constitution at last failed and a severe fever came on. The commander's answer was very polite. He remarked, he regretted much to say that he had received orders to allow no stranger to enter the frontier, and this being the case he hoped I would not consider him as uncivil: "however," continued he, "I have ordered the soldier to land you at a certain distance from the fort, where we can consult together."

We had now arrived at the place, and the canoe which brought the letter returned to the fort to tell the commander I had fallen sick.

The sun had not risen above an hour the morning after when the Portuguese officer came to the spot where we had landed the preceding evening. He was tall and spare, and appeared to be from fifty to fifty-five years old; and though thirty years of service under an equatorial sun had burnt and shrivelled up his face, still there was something in it so inexpressibly affable and kind that it set you immediately at your ease. He came close up to the hammock, and taking hold of my wrist to feel the pulse, "I am sorry, Sir," said he, "to see that the fever has taken such hold of you. You shall go directly with me," continued he, "to the fort; and though we have no doctor there, I trust," added he, "we shall soon bring you about again. The orders I have received forbidding the admission of strangers were never intended to be put in force against a sick English gentleman."

As the canoe was proceeding slowly down the river towards the fort, the commander asked with much more interest than a question in ordinary conversation is asked, where was I on the night of the first of May? On telling him that I was at an Indian settlement a little below the great fall in the Demerara, and that a strange and sudden noise had alarmed all the Indians, he said the same astonishing noise had roused every man in Fort St. Joachim, and that they remained under arms till morning. He observed that he had been quite at a loss to form any idea what could have caused the noise; but now learning that the same noise had been heard at the same time far away from the Rio Branco, it struck him there must have been an earthquake somewhere or other.

Good nourishment and rest, and the unwearied attention and kindness of the Portuguese commander, stopped the progress of the fever and enabled me to walk about in six days.

Fort St. Joachim was built about five and forty years ago under the apprehension, it is said, that the Spaniards were coming from the Rio Negro to settle there. It has been much neglected; the floods of water have carried away the gate and destroyed the wall on each side of it, but the present commander is putting it into thorough repair. When finished it will mount six nine- and six twelve-pounders.

In a straight line with the fort, and within a few yards of the river, stand the commander's house, the barracks, the chapel, the father-confessor's house and two others, all at little intervals from each other; and these are the only buildings at Fort St. Joachim. The neighbouring extensive plains afford good pasturage for a fine breed of cattle, and the Portuguese make enough of butter and cheese for their own consumption.

On asking the old officer if there were such a place as Lake Parima, or El Dorado, he replied he looked upon it as imaginary altogether. "I have been above forty years," added he, "in Portuguese Guiana, but have never yet met with anybody who has seen the lake."

So much for Lake Parima, or El Dorado, or the White Sea. Its existence at best seems doubtful: some affirm that there is such a place and others deny it.

Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est.

Having now reached the Portuguese inland frontier and collected a sufficient quantity of the wourali poison, nothing remains but to give a brief account of its composition, its effects, its uses and its supposed antidotes.

It has been already remarked that in the extensive wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, far away from any European settlement, there is a tribe of Indians who are known by the name of Macoushi.