220

VOYAGE DOWN THE RIO NEGRO.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Voyage down the Rio Negro-Christian settlements-Ants-The Cassiquiare-Esmeralda-The Curare-They arrive again at San Fernando de Atabapo-Cavern of Ataruipe-Earth-eating Indians-They reach Angostura, and set out for Cumana.

DESCENDING the Rio Negro on the 6th and 7th of May, our travellers reached the mouth of the Cassiquiare; but instead of ascending it directly, they passed down the Rio Negro nine or ten miles further, in order to visit the military station of San Carlos del Rio Negro, on the borders of Brazil. After a stay of three days they retraced their course to the mouth of the Cassiquiare, and proceeded to ascend its stream, which was to conduct them once more into the Orinoco. They found its banks thickly covered with trees of the largest dimensions: the air was stagnant, hot, and humid, and the torment of the mosquetoes augmented as they increased their distance from the black waters of the Rio Negro. During the twelve days which they passed on the Cassiquiare, they scarcely saw the sun or a star, so dense a fog hung over the forests on its borders.

The state of the Christian settlements on this river was deplorable; on the whole extent of its course, about fifty leagues, not 200 inhabitants existed. At Mandavaca they found a missionary, who had spent "twenty years of moschetoes in the forests of the Cassiquiare ;” his legs were so spotted with the stings of insects, that the original whiteness of the skin could scarcely be perceived. He complained of his dreary solitude, and the sad necessity of witnessing the atrocious crimes of his flock, without being able to prevent or punish them among other enormities he related that an In

dian alcayde, or overseer, had a few years before eaten one of his wives, after having fattened her for the purpose. "You cannot imagine," he said, "all the perversity of this Indian family. You receive men of a new tribe into the village; they appear to be good, mild, and industrious; but suffer them to take part in an incursion to bring in the natives, and you can scarcely prevent them from murdering all they meet, and hiding some portion of the dead bodies."

The soil on the banks of the Cassiquiare is fertile; but innumerable swarms of ants and other insects destroy all that comes in their way. If a missionary wish to cultivate salad or any of the culinary plants of Europe, he sows the seeds in an old boat filled with mould, and suspends it between two trees, or places it on a scaffold. The ravages of the ants are counteracted in some degree by the voracious appetite of an animalthe ant-eater-peculiarly adapted by nature to lick them up by thousands, as his ordinary food. These animals are pretty generally distributed over all the warmer parts of South America. The low and swampy grounds, by the sides of streams and pools, or in the forests, are his favourite haunts.

Towards the Orinoco the vegetation was found to be exceedingly luxuriant. The river no longer had any beach; thick palisades of tufted trees lined the banks, so that it appeared like a vast canal nearly 1300 feet in width, flowing between two enormous walls clothed with lianas and foliage. No openings could be discovered in these fences; and at night, the Indians had to clear with their hatchets a small spot for a resting-place. No human creature appeared in these forests. "Not five boats,” says Humboldt, “pass annually by the Cassiquiare; and since we left Maypures, that is, for a whole month, we had not met one living soul on the rivers which we followed, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the missions."

On the 21st of May our travellers re-entered the Orinoco, three leagues below the mission of Esmeralda, the most solitary and remote Christian settlement on the Upper Orinoco. The site of the little hamlet is highly picturesque; the country around is lovely and fertile; and behind it rises, in the form of an amphitheatre, a group of granite mountains. The principal of them bears the name of Duida; it is 8500 feet high, and bare and stony on the summit: perpendicular on two sides, and on the others clothed with vast forests, it forms a magnificent object. Esmeralda had no resident missionary, being visited five or six times a year by a monk, living at the distance of fifty leagues. Not a cow

or a horse was to be seen; the inhabitants cultivated only a little cassava and a few plantains, and their indolence often reduced them to the necessity of eating smoked monkey-hams, and pounded bones of fish as flour.

Esmeralda is celebrated, however, on the Orinoco, for its manufacture of the curare, a very active poison,

THE CURARE-POISON.

223

employed by the Indians in war and in the chase. It is prepared from the bark of a liana or creeper, called bejuco de mavacure, and is a common infusion, concentrated by evaporation and thickened by the addition of a glutinous substance. Our travellers saw the process performed by an old Indian, who extolled the properties of the poison, observing that it was better than the black powder used by the white people; that, he said, makes a noise, the curare "kills silently." Like some other vegetable poisons, however, it is fatal only when introduced directly into the blood; it may be tasted without danger, and, taken internally, it is considered by the natives to be an excellent stomachic. They always use it in hunting, the tips of their arrows being covered with it; and they maintain that the flesh of animals is always best when they have been killed by a poisoned arrow. The common mode of killing domestic fowls is by scratching the skin with one of these weapons; and the missionary who accompanied our travellers, used to have a live fowl and an arrow brought to his hammock every morning, not choosing to confide to any other person the important task of pricking it in the right place. A large bird pricked in the thigh died in two or three minutes; to kill a pig or a pecari sometimes took ten or twelve.

On the 23rd of May the travellers left the mission of Esmeralda, suffering from languor and weakness, caused by bad and scanty food, the torment of insects, and the inconveniences of a long voyage in a narrow and damp boat. They descended the Orinoco with the current; and as they passed between its deserted banks, they felt that "there was something melancholy and painful in a river, on which not even a fisherman's canoe was seen." On the 27th they reached San Fernando de Atabapo,

224

CAVERN OF ATARUIPE.

where a month before they had quitted the main stream of the Orinoco, to ascend its tributaries and make their way to the Rio Negro. From this point they retraced their former course, passed the great cataract of Maypures, and on the 31st, before sunset, they landed at the Puerto de la Expedicion, on the eastern bank of the river, for the purpose of visiting the cavern of Ataruipe, which is the sepulchre of a whole nation now extinct. Humboldt's account of this visit is extremely interesting. "We climbed," he says, "with difficulty, and not without some danger, a steep rock of granite, entirely bare. It would have been almost impossible to fix the foot on its smooth and sloping surface, if large crystals of feldspar, resisting decomposition, did not stand out from the rock, and furnish points of support. Scarcely had we attained the summit of the mountain, when we beheld with astonishment the singular aspect of the surrounding country. The foaming bed of the water is filled with an archipelago of islands, covered with palm-trees. Towards the west, on the left bank of the Orinoco, stretch the savannahs of the Meta and the Casanare. They resembled a sea of verdure, the misty horizon of which was illumined by the rays of the setting sun. Its orb, resembling a globe of fire suspended over the plain, and the solitary Peak of Uniana, which appeared more lofty from being wrapped in vapours that softened its outline, all contributed to augment the majesty of the scene. Near us, the eye looked down into a deep valley, enclosed on every side. Birds of prey and goat-suckers winged their lonely flight in this inaccessible circus. We found a pleasure in following with the eye their fleeting shadows, as they glided slowly over the flanks of the rock.

"A narrow ridge led us to a neighbouring mountain,