Volume Ii Part 9 (2/2)
On the 11th of April, we left Carichana at two in the afternoon, and found the course of the river more and more enc.u.mbered by blocks of granite rocks. We pa.s.sed on the west the Cano Orupe, and then the great rock known by the name of Piedra del Tigre. The river is there so deep, that no bottom can be found with a line of twenty-two fathoms. Towards evening the weather became cloudy and gloomy. The proximity of the storm was marked by squalls alternating with dead calms. The rain was violent, and the roof of foliage, under which we lay, afforded but little shelter. Happily these showers drove away the mosquitos, at least for some time. We found ourselves before the cataract of Cariven, and the impulse of the waters was so strong, that we had great difficulty in gaining the land. We were continually driven back to the middle of the current. At length two Salive Indians, excellent swimmers, leaped into the water, and having drawn the boat to sh.o.r.e by means of a rope, made it fast to the Piedra de Carichana Vieja, a shelf of bare rock, on which we pa.s.sed the night.
The thunder continued to roll during a part of the night; the swell of the river became considerable; and we were several times afraid that our frail bark would be driven from the sh.o.r.e by the impetuosity of the waves.
The granitic rock on which we lay is one of those, where travellers on the Orinoco have heard from time to time, towards sunrise, subterraneous sounds, resembling those of the organ. The missionaries call these stones laxas de musica. ”It is witchcraft (cosa de bruxas),” said our young Indian pilot, who could speak Spanish. We never ourselves heard these mysterious sounds, either at Carichana Vieja, or in the Upper Orinoco; but from information given us by witnesses worthy of belief, the existence of a phenomenon that seems to depend on a certain state of the atmosphere, cannot be denied. The shelves of rock are full of very narrow and deep crevices. They are heated during the day to 48 or 50 degrees. I several times found their temperature at the surface, during the night, at 39 degrees, the surrounding atmosphere being at 28 degrees. It may easily be conceived, that the difference of temperature between the subterranean and the external air attains its maximum about sunrise, or at that moment which is at the same time farthest from the period of the maximum of the heat of the preceding day. May not these organ-like sounds, which are heard when a person lays his ear in contact with the stone, be the effect of a current of air that issues out through the crevices? Does not the impulse of the air against the elastic spangles of mica that intercept the crevices, contribute to modify the sounds?
May we not admit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in pa.s.sing incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same observation on some rock of the Thebaid; and that the music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of the priests in the statue of Memnon? Perhaps, when, ”the rosy-fingered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon, vocal,”* (* These are the words of an inscription, which attests that sounds were heard on the 13th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year of the reign of Antoninus. See Monuments de l'Egypte Ancienne.) the voice was that of a man hidden beneath the pedestal of the statue; but the observation of the natives of the Orinoco, which we relate, seems to explain in a natural manner what gave rise to the Egyptian belief of a stone that poured forth sounds at sunrise.
Almost at the same period at which I communicated these conjectures to some of the learned of Europe, three French travellers, MM. Jomard, Jollois, and Devilliers, were led to a.n.a.logous ideas. They heard, at sunrise, in a monument of granite, at the centre of the spot on which stands the palace of Karnak, a noise resembling that of a string breaking. Now this comparison is precisely that which the ancients employed in speaking of the voice of Memnon. The French travellers thought, like me, that the pa.s.sage of rarefied air through the fissures of a sonorous stone might have suggested to the Egyptian priests the invention of the juggleries of the Memnomium.
We left the rock at four in the morning. The missionary had told us that we should have great difficulty in pa.s.sing the rapids and the mouth of the Meta. The Indians rowed twelve hours and a half without intermission, and during all that time, they took no other nourishment than ca.s.sava and plantains. When we consider the difficulty of overcoming the force of the current, and of pa.s.sing the cataracts; when we reflect on the constant employment of the muscular powers during a navigation of two months; we are equally surprised at the const.i.tutional vigour and the abstinence of the Indians of the Orinoco and the Amazon. Amylaceous and saccharine substances, sometimes fish and the fat of turtles' eggs, supply the place of food drawn from the first two cla.s.ses of the animal kingdom, those of quadrupeds and birds.
We found the bed of the river, to the length of six hundred toises, full of granite rocks. Here is what is called the Raudal de Cariven.
We pa.s.sed through channels that were not five feet broad. Our canoe was sometimes jammed between two blocks of granite. We sought to avoid these pa.s.sages, into which the waters rushed with a fearful noise; but there is really little danger, in a canoe steered by a good Indian pilot. When the current is too violent to be resisted the rowers leap into the water, and fasten a rope to the point of a rock, to warp the boat along. This manoeuvre is very tedious; and we sometimes availed ourselves of it, to climb the rocks among which we were entangled.
They are of all dimensions, rounded, very black, glossy like lead, and dest.i.tute of vegetation. It is an extraordinary phenomenon to see the waters of one of the largest rivers on the globe in some sort disappear. We perceived, even far from the sh.o.r.e, those immense blocks of granite, rising from the ground, and leaning one against another.
The intervening channels in the rapids are more than twenty-five fathoms deep; and are the more difficult to be observed, as the rocks are often narrow toward their bases, and form vaults suspended over the surface of the river. We perceived no crocodiles in the raudal; these animals seem to shun the noise of cataracts.
From Cabruta to the mouth of the Rio Sinaruco, a distance of nearly two degrees of lat.i.tude, the left bank of the Orinoco is entirely uninhabited; but to the west of the Raudal de Cariven an enterprising man, Don Felix Relinchon, had a.s.sembled some Jaruro and Ottomac Indians in a small village. It is an attempt at civilization, on which the monks have had no direct influence. It is superfluous to add, that Don Felix lives at open war with the missionaries on the right bank of the Orinoco.
Proceeding up the river we arrived, at nine in the morning, before the mouth of the Meta, opposite the spot where the Mission of Santa Teresa, founded by the Jesuits, was heretofore situated.
Next to the Guaviare, the Meta is the most considerable river that flows into the Orinoco. It may be compared to the Danube, not for the length of its course, but for the volume of its waters. Its mean depth is thirty-six feet, and it sometimes reaches eighty-four. The union of these two rivers presents a very impressive spectacle. Lonely rocks rise on the eastern bank. Blocks of granite, piled upon one another, appear from afar like castles in ruins. Vast sandy sh.o.r.es keep the skirting of the forest at a distance from the river; but we discover amid them, in the horizon, solitary palm-trees, backed by the sky, and crowning the tops of the mountains. We pa.s.sed two hours on a large rock, standing in the middle of the Orinoco, and called the Piedra de la Paciencia, or the Stone of Patience, because the canoes, in going up, are sometimes detained there two days, to extricate themselves from the whirlpool caused by this rock.
The Rio Meta, which traverses the vast plains of Casanare, and which is navigable as far as the foot of the Andes of New Grenada, will one day be of great political importance to the inhabitants of Guiana and Venezuela. From the Golfo Triste and the Boca del Drago a small fleet may go up the Orinoco and the Meta to within fifteen or twenty leagues of Santa Fe de Bogota. The flour of New Grenada may be conveyed the same way. The Meta is like a ca.n.a.l of communication between countries placed in the same lat.i.tude, but differing in their productions as much as France and Senegal. The Meta has its source in the union of two rivers which descend from the paramos of Chingasa and Suma Paz.
The first is the Rio Negro, which, lower down, receives the Pachaquiaro; the second is the Rio de Aguas Blancas, or Umadea. The junction takes place near the port of Marayal. It is only eight or ten leagues from the Pa.s.so de la Cabulla, where you quit the Rio Negro, to the capital of Santa Fe. From the villages of Xiramena and Cabullaro to those of Guanapalo and Santa Rosalia de Cabapuna, a distance of sixty leagues, the banks of the Meta are more inhabited than those of the Orinoco. We find in this s.p.a.ce fourteen Christian settlements, in part very populous; but from the mouths of the rivers Pauto and Casanare, for a s.p.a.ce of more than fifty leagues, the Meta is infested by the Guahibos, a race of savages.* (* I find the word written Guajibos, Guahivos, and Guagivos. They call themselves Gua-iva.)
The navigation of this river was much more active in the time of the Jesuits, and particularly during the expedition of Iturriaga, in 1756, than it is at present. Missionaries of the same order then governed the banks of the Meta and of the Orinoco. The villages of Macuco, Zurimena, and Casimena, were founded by the Jesuits, as well as those of Uruana, Encaramada, and Carichana.
These Fathers had conceived the project of forming a series of Missions from the junction of the Casanare with the Meta to that of the Meta with the Orinoco. A narrow zone of cultivated land would have crossed the vast steppes that separate the forests of Guiana from the Andes of New Grenada.
At the period of the harvest of turtles' eggs, not only the flour of Santa Fe descended the river, but the salt of Chita,* (* East of Labranza Grande, and the north-west of Pore, now the capital of the province of Casanare.) the cotton cloth of San Gil, and the printed counterpanes of Socorro. To give some security to the little traders who devoted themselves to this inland commerce, attacks were made from time to time from the castillo or fort of Carichana, on the Guahibos.
To keep these Guahibos in awe, the Capuchin missionaries, who succeeded the Jesuits in the government of the Missions of the Orinoco, formed the project of founding a city at the mouth of the Meta, under the name of the Villa de San Carlos. Indolence, and the dread of tertian fevers, have prevented the execution of this project; and all that has ever existed of the city of San Carlos, is a coat of arms painted on fine parchment, with an enormous cross erected on the bank of the Meta. The Guahibos, who, it is said, are some thousands in number, have become so insolent, that, at the time of our pa.s.sage by Carichana, they sent word to the missionary that they would come on rafts, and burn his village. These rafts (valzas), which we had an opportunity of seeing, are scarcely three feet broad, and twelve feet long. They carry only two or three Indians; but fifteen or sixteen of these rafts are fastened to each other with the stems of the paullinia, the dolichos, and other creeping plants. It is difficult to conceive how these small craft remain tied together in pa.s.sing the rapids. Many fugitives from the villages of the Casanare and the Apure have joined the Guahibos, and taught them the practice of eating beef, and preparing hides. The farms of San Vicente, Rubio, and San Antonio, have lost great numbers of their horned cattle by the incursions of the Indians, who also prevent travellers, as far as the junction of the Casanare, from sleeping on the sh.o.r.e in going up the Meta. It often happens, while the waters are low, that the traders of New Grenada, some of whom still visit the encampment of Pararuma, are killed by the poisoned arrows of the Guahibos.
From the mouth of the Meta, the Orinoco appeared to us to be freer of shoals and rocks. We navigated in a channel five hundred toises broad.
The Indians remained rowing in the boat, without towing or pus.h.i.+ng it forward with their arms, and wearying us with their wild cries. We pa.s.sed the Canos of Uita and Endava on the west. It was night when we reached the Raudal de Tabaje. The Indians would not hazard pa.s.sing the cataract; and we slept on a very incommodious spot, on the shelf of a rock, with a slope of more than eighteen degrees, and of which the crevices sheltered a swarm of bats. We heard the cries of the jaguar very near us during the whole night. They were answered by our great dog in lengthened howlings. I waited the appearance of the stars in vain: the sky was exceedingly black; and the hoa.r.s.e sounds of the cascades of the Orinoco mingled with the rolling of the distant thunder.
Early in the morning of the 13th April we pa.s.sed the rapids of Tabaje, and again disembarked. Father Zea, who accompanied us, desired to perform ma.s.s in the new Mission of San Borja, established two years before. We there found six houses inhabited by uncatechised Guahibos.
They differ in nothing from the wild Indians. Their eyes, which are large and black, have more vivacity than those of the Indians who inhabit the ancient missions. We in vain offered them brandy; they would not even taste it. The faces of all the young girls were marked with round black spots; like the patches by which the ladies of Europe formerly imagined they set off the whiteness of their skins. The bodies of the Guahibos were not painted. Several of them had beards, of which they seemed proud; and, taking us by the chin, showed us by signs, that they were made like us. Their shape was in general slender. I was again struck, as I had been among the Salives and the Macos, with the little uniformity of features to be found among the Indians of the Orinoco. Their look is sad and gloomy; but neither stern nor ferocious. Without having any notion of the practices of the Christian religion, they behaved with the utmost decency at church.
The Indians love to exhibit themselves; and will submit temporarily to any restraint or subjection, provided they are sure of drawing attention. At the moment of the consecration, they made signs to one another, to indicate beforehand that the priest was going to raise the chalice to his lips. With the exception of this gesture, they remained motionless and in imperturbable apathy.
The interest with which we examined these poor savages became perhaps the cause of the destruction of the mission. Some among them, who preferred a wandering life to the labours of agriculture, persuaded the rest to return to the plains of the Meta. They told them, that the white men would come back to San Borja, to take them away in the boats, and sell them as poitos, or slaves, at Angostura. The Guahibos awaited the news of our return from the Rio Negro by the Ca.s.siquiare; and when they heard that we were arrived at the first great cataract, that of Atures, they all deserted, and fled to the savannahs that border the Orinoco on the west. The Jesuit Fathers had already formed a mission on this spot, and bearing the same name. No tribe is more difficult to fix to the soil than the Guahibos. They would rather feed on stale fish, scolopendras, and worms, than cultivate a little spot of ground. The other Indians say, that a Guahibo eats everything that exists, both on and under the ground.
In ascending the Orinoco more to the south, the heat, far from increasing, became more bearable. The air in the day was at 26 or 27.5 degrees; and at night, at 23.7. The water of the Orinoco retained its habitual temperature of 27.7 degrees. The torment of the mosquitos augmented severely, notwithstanding the decrease of heat. We never suffered so much from them as at San Borja. We could neither speak nor uncover our faces without having our mouths and noses filled with insects. We were surprised not to find the thermometer at 35 or 36 degrees; the extreme irritation of the skin made us believe that the air was scorching. We pa.s.sed the night on the beach of Guaripo. The fear of the little caribe fish prevented us from bathing. The crocodiles we had met with this day were all of an extraordinary size, from twenty-two to twenty-four feet.
Our sufferings from the zancudos made us depart at five o'clock on the morning of the 14th. There are fewer insects in the strata of air lying immediately on the river, than near the edge of the forests. We stopped to breakfast at the island of Guachaco, or Vachaco, where the granite is immediately covered by a formation of sandstone, or conglomerate. This sandstone contains fragments of quartz, and even of feldspar, cemented by indurated clay. It exhibits little veins of brown iron-ore, which separate in laminae, or plates, of one line in thickness. We had already found these plates on the sh.o.r.es between Encaramada and Baraguan, where the missionaries had sometimes taken them for an ore of gold, and sometimes for tin. It is probable, that this secondary formation occupied formerly a larger s.p.a.ce. Having pa.s.sed the mouth of the Rio Parueni, beyond which the Maco Indians dwell, we spent the night on the island of Panumana. I could with difficulty take the alt.i.tudes of Canopus, in order to fix the longitude of the point, near which the river suddenly turns towards the west. The island of Panumana is rich in plants. We there again found those shelves of bare rock, those tufts of melastomas, those thickets of small shrubs, the blended scenery of which had charmed us in the plains of Carichana. The mountains of the Great Cataracts bounded the horizon towards the south-east. In proportion as we advanced, the sh.o.r.es of the Orinoco exhibited a more imposing and picturesque aspect.
CHAPTER 2.20.
THE MOUTH OF THE RIO ANAVENI.
PEAK OF UNIANA.
<script>