Page images
PDF
EPUB

mode of conveying intelligence. When I interfered with the column or abstracted an individual from it, news of the disturbance was very quickly communicated to a distance of several yards toward the rear, and the column at that point commenced retreating. All the small-headed workers carried m their jaws a little cluster of white maggets, which I thought at the time might be young larvæ of their own colony, but afterward found reason to conclude were the grubs of some other species whose nests they had been plundering, the procession being most likely not a migration, but a column on a marauding expedition.

The position of the large-headed individuals in the marching column was rather curious. There was one of these extraordinary fellows to about a score of the smaller class; none of them carried anything in their mouths, but all trotted along empty-handed and outside of the column, at pretty regular intervals from each other, like subaltern officers in a marching regiment of soldiers. It was easy to be tolerably exact in this observation, for their shining white heads made them very conspicuous among the rest, bobbing up and down as the column passed over the inequalities of the road. I did not see them change their position or take any notice of their small-headed comrades marching in the column, and when I disturbed the line they did not prance forth or show fight so eagerly as the others. These large-headed members of the community have been considered by some authors as a soldier class, like the similarly-armed caste in Termites; but I found no proof of this, at least in the present species, as they always seemed to be rather less pugnacious than the workerminors, and their distorted jaws disabled them from fastening on a plane surface like the skin of an attacking animal. I am inclined, however, to think that they may act, in a less direct way, as protectors of the ccmmunity, namely, as indigestible morsels to the flocks of ant-thrushes which follow the marching columns of these Ecitons, and are the most formidable enemies of the species. It is possible that the hooked and twisted jaws of the large-headed class may be effec five weapons of annoyance when in the gizzards or stomachs of these birds, but I unfortunately omitted to ascertain whether this was really the fact.

The life of these Ecitons is not all work, for I frequently saw them very leisurely em ployed in a way that looked like recreation. When this happened, the place was always a sunny nook in the forest. The main colum of the army and the branch columns, at these times, were in their ordinary relative post tions; but instead of pressing forward eager ly, and plundering right and left, they seemed to have been all smitten with a sud den fit of laziness. Some were walking slowly about, others were brushing their antennæ with their fore feet; but the drollest sight was their cleaning one another. Here and there an ant was seen stretching forth first one leg and then another, to be brushed

and washed by one or more of its comrades, who performed the task by passing the limb between the jaws and the tongue, finishing by giving the antennæ a friendly wipe. It was a curious spectacle, and one well calculated to increase one's amazement at the similarity between the instinctive actions of ants and the acts of rational beings, a similarity which must have been brought about by two different processes of development of the primary qualities of mind. The actions of these ants looked like simple indulgence in idle amusement. Have these little creatures, then, an excess of energy beyond what is required for labors absolutely necessary to the welfare of their species, and do they thus expend it in mere sportiveness, like young lambs or kittens, or in idle whims like rational beings It is probable that these hours of relaxation and cleaning may be indispensable to the effective performance of their harder labors; but while looking at them, the conclusion that the ants were engaged merely in play was irresistible

Eciton prædator.-This is a small dark-reddish species, very similar to the common red stinging ant of England. It differs from all other Ecitons in its habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense phalanxes consisting of myriads of individuas, and was first met with at Ega, where it is very common. Nothing in insect movements is more striking than the rapid march of these large and compact bodies. Wherever they pass, all the rest of the animal world is thrown into a state of alarm. They stream along the ground and climb to the summits of all the lower trees, searching every leaf to its apex, and whenever they encounter a mass of decaying vegetable matter, where booty is plentiful, they concentrate, like other Ecitons, all their forces upon it, the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving bodies, as it spreads over the surface, looking like a flood of dark-red liquid. They soon penetrate every part of the confused heap, and then, gathering together again in marching order, onward they move. All soft-bodied and inactive insects fall an easy prey to them, and, like other Ecitons, they tear their victims in pieces for facility of carriage. A phalanx of this species, when passing over a tract of smooth ground, occupies a space of from four to six square yards; on examining the ants closely they are seen to move, not altogether in one straightforward direction, but in variously spreading contiguous columns, now separating a little from the general mass, now reuniting with it. The margins of the phalanx spread out at times like a cloud of skirmishers from the flanks of an army. I was never able to find the hive of this species.

Blind Ecitons.-I will now give a short account of the blind species of Eciton. None of the foregoing kinds have eyes of the facetted or compound structure, such as are usual in insects, and which ordinary ants (Formica) are furuished with, but all are provided with organs of vision composed each of a single lens. Connecting them with the utterly blind

species of the genus, is a very stout-limbed Eciton, the E. crassicornis, whose eyes are sunk in rather deep sockets. This ant goes on foraging expeditions, like the rest of its tribe, and attacks even the nests of other stinging species (Myrmica), but it avoids the light, always moving in concealment under leaves and fallen bianches. When its columns have to cross a cleared space, the ants construct a temporary covered way with granules of earth, arched over, and holding together mechanically; under this the procession passes in secret, the indefatigable creatures repairing their arcade as fast as breaches are made in it.

November 7th, 1856.-Embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, the Tabatinga, for an excursion to Tunantins, a small semi-Indian settlement, lying 240 miles beyond Ega. The Tabatinga is an iron boat of about 170 tons burden, built at Rio de Janeiro, and fitted with engines of fifty-horse power. The saloon, with berths on each side for twenty passengers, is above deck, and open at both ends to admit a free current of air. The captain or "commandante” was a licutenant in the Brazilian navy, a man of polished, sailor-like address, and a rigid disciplinarian; his name, Senhor Nunes Mello Cardozo. I was obliged, as usual, to take with Next in order comes the Eciton vastator, me a stock of all articles of food, except which has no eyes, although the collapsed meat and fish, for the time I intended to be sockets are plainly visible; and, lastly, the absent (three months); and the luggage, inEciton erratica, in which both sockets and cluding hammocks, cooking utensils, crockeyes have disappeared, leaving only a faint ery, and so forth, formed fifteen large packring to mark the place where they are usual- ages. One bundle consisted of a mosquitoly situated. The armies of E. vastator and tent, an article I had not yet had occasion to E. erratica move, as far as I could learn, use on the river, but which was indispensable wholly under covered roads, the ants con- in all excursions beyond Ega, every person, structing them gradually but rapidly as they man, woman, and child, requiring oue, as advance. The column of foragers pushes without it existence would be scarcely possiforward step by step under the protection of ble. My tent was about eight feet long and these covered passages, through the thickets, five feet broad, and was made of course calico and on reaching a rotting log or other prom- in an oblong shape, with sleeves at each end ising hunting-ground, pour into the crevices in search of booty. I have traced their arcades, occasionally, for a distance of one or two hundred yards; the grains of earth are taken from the soil over which the column is passing, and are fitted together without cement. It is this last-mentioned feature that distinguishes them from the similar covered roads made by Termites, who use their glutinous saliva to cement the grains together. The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose unce mented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of labor between the two classes of neuters in these blind species. The large-heade 1 class, although not possessing monstrously lengthened jaws, like the worker-majors in E. hamata and E. drepanophora, are rigidly defined in structure from the small-headed class, and act as soldiers, defending the working community (like soldier Termites) against all comers. Whenever I made a breach in one of their covered ways, all the ants underneath were set in commotion, but the worker-minors remained behind to repair the damage, while the large-heads issued forth in a most menacing manuer, rearing their heads and snapping their jaws with an expression of the fiercest rage and defiance.

CHAPTER XIII.

EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA.

Steamboat travelling on the Amazons-Passengers
Tunantins-Caishara Indians-The Jutahí The
Sap6-Marauá Indians-Foute Boa-Journey to St.
Paulo Tucúna Indians - Illness -Descent to
Pará-Changes at Pará-Departure for Fngland.

through which to pass the cords of a hummock. Under this shelter, which is fixed up every evening before sundown, one can read and write, or swing in one's hammock during the long hours which intervene before bedtime, and feel one's sense of comfort increased by having cheated the thirsty swarms of mosquitoes which fill the chamber.

The

We were four days on the road. pilot, a mameluco of Ega, whom I knew very well, exhibited a knowledge of the river and powers of endurance which were quite remarkable. He stood all this time at his post, with the exception of three or four hours in the middle of each day, when he was relieved by a young man who served as apprentice; and he knew the breadth and windings of the channel and the extent of all the yearly shifting shoals from the Riv Negro to Loreto, a distance of more than a thousand miles. There was no slackening of speed at night, except during the brief but violent storms which occasionally broke upon us, and then the engines were stopped by the command of Lieutenant Nunes, soinetimes against the wish of the pilot. The nights were often so dark that we passengers on the poop deck could not discern the hardy fellow on the bridge; but the steamer drove on at full speed, men being stationed on the lookout at the prow, to watch for floating logs, and one man placed to pass orders to the helmsman; the keel scraped agaiust a sand bank only once during the passage.

The passengers were chiefly Peruvians, mostly thin, anxious, Yankee-locking men, who were returning home to the cities of Moyobamba and Chachapoyas, on the Andes, after a trading trip to the Brazilian towns on the Atlantic sea-board, whither they had gone six months previously, with cargoes of

Panama hats to exchange for European wares. These hats were made of the young leaflets of a palm tree, by the Indians and half-caste people who inhabit the eastern parts of Peru. They form almost the only ticle of export from Peru by way of the Amazons, but the money value is very great compared with the bulk of the goods, as the hats are generally of very fine quality, and cost from twelve shillings to six pounds sterling each; some trades bring down two or three thousand pounds' worth, folded into small compass in their trunks. The return cargoes consist of hardware, crockery, glass, and other bulky or heavy gods, but not of cluth, which, being of light weight, can be carried across the Andes from the ports on the Pacific to the eastern parts of Peru. All kinds of European cloth can be obtained at a much cheaper rate by this route than by the more direct way of the Amazons, the import duties of Peru being, as I was told, lower than those of Brazil, and the difference not heing counterbalanced by increased expense of transit, on account of weight, over the passes of the Andes.

There was a great lack of amusement on board. The table was very well served, professed cooks being employed in these Amazonian steamers, and fresh meat insured by keeping on deck a supply of live bullocks and fowls, which are purchased whenever there is an opportunity on the road. The river scenery was similar to that already described as presented between the Rio Negro and Ega; long reaches of similar aspect, with two long, low lines of forest, varied sometimes with cliffs of red clay, appearing one after the other, a horizon of water and sky on some days limiting the view both up stream and down. We traveled, however, always near the bank, and, for my part, I was never weary of admiring the picturesque grouping and variety of trees, and the varied mantles of creeping plants which clothed the green wall of forest every step of the way. With the exception of a small village called Fonte Boa, retired from the main river, where we stopped to take in firewood, and of which I shall have to speak presently, we saw no human habitation the whole of the distance. The mornings were delightfully cool; coffee was served at sunrise, and a bountiful breakfast at ten o'clock; after that hour the heat rapidly increased until it be came almost unbearable: how the enginedrivers and firemen stood it without exhaustion 1 cannot tell; it diminished after four o'clock in the afternoon, about which time dinner-bell rang, and the evenings were always pleasant.

November 11th to 30th.-The Tunantins is a sluggish black-water stream, about sixty miles in length, and toward its mouth from 100 to 200 yards in breadth. The vegetation on its banks has a similar aspect to that of the Rio Negro, the trees having small foliage of a sombre hue, and the dark piles of greenery resting on the surface of the inky water. The village is situated on the left

bank, about a mile from the mouth of the river, and contains twenty habitations, nearly all of which are merely hovels, built of lathwork and mud. The short streets, after rain, are almost impassable, on account of the many puddles, and are choked up with weeds, leguminous shrubs, and scarlet-flowered asclepias. The atmosphere in such a place, hedged in as it is by the lofty forest, and surrounded by swamps, is always close, warm, and reeking; and the hum and chirp of insects and birds cause a continual din. The small patch of weedy ground around the village swarms with plovers, sandpipers, striped herons, and scissor-tailed fly-catchers and alligators are always seen floating lazily on the surface of the river in front of the houses.

On landing, I presented myself to Senhor Paulo Bitancourt, a good-natured half-caste, director of Indians of the neighboring river Issá, who quickly ordered a small house to be cleared for me. This exhilarating abode contained only one room, the walls of which were disfigured by large and ugly patches of mud, the work of white ants. The floor was the bare earth, dirty and damp; the wretched chamber was darkened by a sheet of calico being stretched over the windows, a plan adopted here to keep out the Piumflies, which float about in all shady places like thin clouds of smoke, rendering all repose impossible in the daytime whenever they ca. effect an entrance. My baggage was soon landed, and before the steamer departed I had taken gun, insect-net, and game bag, to make a preliminary exploration of my new locality.

[ocr errors]

I remained here nineteen days, and, considering the shortness of the time, made a very good collection of monkeys, birds, and insects. A considerable number of the spe cies (especially of insects) were different from those of the four other stations, which I examined on the south side of the Solimoens and as many of these were representative forms"* of others found on the opposite banks of the broad river, I concluded that there could have been no connection between the two shores during, at least, the recent geological period. This conclusion is confirmed by the case of the Uakarí monkeys, described in the last chapter. All these strongly modified local races of insects confined to one side of the Solimoens (like the Uakarís), are such as have not been able to cross a wide treeless space such as a river. The acquisition which pleased me most, in this place, was a new species of butterfly (a Catagramma), which has since been named C. excelsior, owing to its surpassing in size and beauty all the previously-known species of its singularly beautiful genus. The upper surface of the wings is of the richest blue, varying in shade with the play of light, and on each side is a broad curved stripe of an orange color. It is a bold flier, and is not

Species or races which take the place of other allied species or races.

confined, as I afterward found, to the northern side of the river, for once I saw a specimen amid a number of richly-colored butter. flies, flying about the deck of the steamer when we were anchored off Fonte Boa, 200 miles lower down the river.

With the exception of three mameluco families and a stray Portuguese trader, all the inhabitants of the village and neighborhood are semi-civilized Indians of the Shumána and Passé tribes. The forests of the Tuantins, however, are inhabited by a tribe of wild Indians called Caishánas, who resemble much, in their social conditions aud manners, the debused Múras of the Lower Amazous, and have like them, shown no aptitude for civilized life in any shape. Their huts commence at the distance of an hour's walk from the village, along gloomy and narrow forest paths. My first and only visit to a Caishaua dwelling was accidental. One day, having extended my walk further than usual, and followed one of the forest roads until it became a mere picada, or hunter's track, I caine suudenly upon a well-trodden pathway, bordered on each side with Lycopodia of the most elegant shapes, the tips of the fronds stretching almost like tendrils down the little earthy slopes which formed the edge of the path. The road, though smooth, was narrow and dark, and in many places blocked up by trunks of felled trees, which had been apparently thrown across by the timid Indians on purpose to obstruct the way to their habitations. Half a mile of this shady road brought me to a small open space on the banks of a brook or creek, on the skirts of which stood a conical hut with a very low doorway. There was also an open shed, with stages made of split palin stems, aud a number of large wooden troughs. Two or three dark-skinned children, with a man and woman, were in the shed; but, immediately on espying me, all of them ran to the hut, bolting through the little doorway like so many wild animals scared into their burrows. A few moments after, the man put his head out with a look of great distrust; but on my making the most friendly gestures I could think of, he came forth with the children. They were all smeared with black mud and paint; the only clothing of the elders was a kind of apron made of the innner bark of the sapucaya tree, and the savage aspect of the man was heightened by his hair hanging over his forehead to the eyes. I stayed about two hours in the neighborhood, the children gaining sufficient confidence to come and help me to search for insects. The only weapon used by the Caishánas is the blow-gun, and this is employed only in shooting animals for food. They are not a warlike people, like most of the neighboring tribes on the Japurá and Issá.

The whole tribe of Caishánas does not exceed in number 400 souls. None of them are baptized Indians, and they do not dwell in villages, like the more advanced sections of the Tupí stock; but each family has its own solitary hut. They are quite harmless, do

not practice tattooing, or perforate their ears and noses in any way. Their social condition is of a low type, very little removed, indeed, from that of the brutes living in the same forests. They do not appear to obey any common chief, and I could not make out that they had Pajés, or medicine men, those rudest beginnings of a priest class. Symbolical or masked dances, and ceremonies in honor of the Juruparí, or demon, customs which prevail among all the surrounding tribes, are unknown to the Caishanas. There is among them a trace of festival keeping: but the only ceremony used is the drinking of cashirí beer, and fermented liquors made of Indian corn, bananas, and so forth. These affairs, however, are conducted in a degenerate style, for they do not drink to intoxication, or sustain the orgies for several days and nights in succession, like the Jurís, Passés, and Tucúnas. The men play a musical instrument, made of pieces of stem of the arrow-grass cut in different lengths and arranged like Pan-pipes. With this they while away whole hours, lolling in ragged bast hammocks slung in their dark, smoky huts. The Tunantins people say that the Caishanas have persecuted the wild animals and birds to such an extent near their settlements that there is now quite a scarcity of animal food. If they kill a toucan, it is considered an important event, and the bird is made to serve as a meal for a score or more persons. They boil the meat in earthenware kettles filled with Tucupí sauce, and eat it with beiju, or mandioca cakes. The wonen are not allowed to taste of the meat, but are forced to content themselves with sopping pieces of cake in the liquor.

November 30th.-I left Tunantins in a trading schooner of eighty tons burden belonging to Senhor Batalha, a tradesman of Ega, which had been out all the summer collecting produce, and was commanded by a friend of mine, a young Paranese, named Francisco Raiol. We arrived on the 3d of December at the mouth of the Jutahí, a considerable stream about half a mile broad, and flowing with a very sluggish current. This is one of a series of six rivers, from 400 to 1000 miles in length, which flow from the south-west through unknown lands lying between Bolivia and the Upper Amazons, and enter this latter river between the Madeira and the Ucayali. We remained at anchor four days within the mouth of the Sapó, n small tributary of the Jutahí flowing from the south-east, Senhor Raiol having to send an igarité to the Cupatána, a large tributary some few miles farther up the river, to fetch a cargo of salt fish. During this time we made several excursions in the mortalia to various places in the neighborhood. longest trip was to some Indian houses, a distance of fifteen or eighteen miles up the Sapó, a journey made with one Indian paddler, and occupying a whole day. stream is not more than forty or fifty yards broad; its waters are darker in color than those of the Jutahí, and flow, as in all these

Our

The

small rivers, partly under shade between two lofty walls of forest. We passed, in ascending, seven habitations, most of them hidden in the luxuriast foliage of the banks; their sites being known only by small openings in the compact wall of forest, and the presence of a canoe or two tied up in little shady ports. The inhabitants are chiefly Indians of the Maraná tribe, whose original territory comprised all the small by-streams lying be tween the Jutahí and the Juruá, near the mouths of both these great tributaries. They live in separate families or small herdes; have no common chief, and are considered as a tribe little disposed to adopt civilized customs or be friendly with the whites. One of the houses belonged to a Jurí family, and we saw the owner, an erect, noble-looking old fellow, tattooed, as customary with his tribe, in a large patch over the middle of his face, fishing under the shade of a colossal tree in his port with hook and line. He saluted us in the usual grave and courteous manner of the better sort of Indians as we passed by.

We reached the last house, or rather two houses, about ten o'clock, and spent there several hours during the great heat of midday. The houses, which stood on a high clayey bank, were of quadrangular shape, partly open like sheds, and partly enclosed with rude mud-walls, forming one or more chambers. The inhabitants, a few families of Marauás, comprising about thirty persons, received us in a frank, smiling mauner, a reception which may have been due to Senhor Raiol being an old acquaintance and somewhat of a favorite. None of them were tattooed, but the men had great holes pierced in their ear-lobes, in which they insert plugs of wood, and their lips were drilled with smaller holes. One of the younger men, a fine strapping fellow nearly six feet high, with a large aquiline nose, who seemed to wish to be particularly friendly with me, showed me the use of these lip-holes, by fix ing a number of little white sticks in them, and then twisting his mouth about and going through a pantomime to represent defiance in the presence of an enemy. Nearly all the people were disfigured by dark blotches on the skin, the effect of a cutaneous disease very prevalent in this part of the country. The face of one old man was completely blackened, and looked as though it had been smeared with black-lead, the blotches having coalesced to from one large patch; others were simply mottled. The black spots were hard and rough, but not scaly, and were margined with rings of a color paler than the natural hue of the skin. I had seen many Indians and a few half-castes at Tunantins, and afterward saw others at Fonte Boa, blotched in the same way. The disease would seem to be contagious, for I was told that a Portuguese trader became disfigured with it after cohabiting some years with an Indian woman. It is curious that, although prevalent in many places on the Solimoens, ao resident of Ega exhibited signs of the dis

ease. The early explorers of the country, on noticing spotted skins to be very frequent in certain localities, thought they were peculiar to a few tribes of Indians. The younger children in these houses on the Sapó were free from spots; but two or three of them, about ten years of age, showed signs of their commencement in rounded yellowish patches on the skin, and these appeared languid and sickly, although the blotched adults seemed not to be affected in their general health. A middle-aged half-caste at Fonte Boa told mə he had cured himself of the disorder by strong doses of sarsaparilla; the black patches had caused the hair of his beard and eyebrows to fall off, but it had grown again since his cure.

We left these friendly people about four o'clock in the afternoon, and in descending the unbrageous river, stopped, about halfway down, at another house, built in one of the most charming situations I had yet seen in this country. A clean, narrow, sandy pathway led from the shady port to the house, through a tract of forest of indescribable luxuriance. The buildings stood on an eminence in the middle of a level, cleared space, the firm sandy soil, smooth as a floor, forming a broad terrace around them. The owner was a semi-civilized Indian, named Manoel, a dull, taciturn fellow, who, together with his wife and children, seemed by no means pleased at being intruded on in their solitude. The family must have been very industrious; for the plantations were very extensive, and included a little of almost all kinds of cultivated tropical productionsfruit trees, vegetables, and even flowers for ornament. The silent old man had surely & fine appreciation of the beauties of nature, for the site he had chosen commanded a view of surprising magnificence over the summits of the forest; and, to give finish to the prospect, he had planted a large quantity of banana trees in the foreground, thus concealing the charred and dead stumps which would otherwise have marred the effect of the rolling sea of greenery. The only information I could get out of Manoel was that large flocks of richly-colored birds came down in the fruit season and despoiled his trees. The sun set over the tree-tops before we left this little Eden, and the remainder of our journey was made slowly and pleasantly, under the checkered shades of the river banks, by the light of the moon.

December 7th.-Arrived at Fonte Boa, a wretched, muddy, and dilapidated village, situated two or three miles within the mouth of a narrow by-stream called the Cayhiarhy, which runs almost as straight as an artificial canal between the village and the main Amazons. The character of the vegetation and soil here was different from that of all other localities I had hitherto examined; I had planned, therefore, to devote six weeks to the place. Having written beforehand to one of the principal inhabitants, Senhor Venancio, a house was ready for me on land

« EelmineJätka »