Part 5 (1/2)
The armadilla also inhabits this country, and is considered very palatable food. The guana, resembles the common lizard in shape and color, and is from two to four feet in length, in this country its flesh is considered delicious meat.
The cattle are much larger than those of the United States. They seldom milk the cows, which run in herds, and are not domesticated. Each inhabitant marks his calves when young; and when he wants to kill a beef he shoots one of his own mark. They domesticate but few horses, having scarcely any roads, the country being cut up with lakes, rivers, and creeks, without bridges. The princ.i.p.al travel is performed in canoes.
The horses are well formed, but a kind of tick eats the gristle out of their ears, which causes them to fall down on their head, giving them the appearance of lopped eared hogs.
They have abundance of hogs and poultry, which are cheaply fed on cocoa-nuts that grow wild along the sea-coast, and are gathered in large quant.i.ties. The first work of the morning, performed by the Indian women, is breaking cocoa-nuts for the hogs, and cracking some for the dogs, then cutting up fine for the poultry. They grate up a large quant.i.ty with tin graters, put it in pots and extract the oil, which makes good lard for frying fish; and when it turns rancid becomes very fair lamp oil. Forty cocoa-nuts will produce one gallon of it.
The forests abound with wild hogs of two different species, called Warry and Pecara, having a small t.i.t or navel on their backs. When they are shot the Indians immediately cut out the t.i.t to prevent its scenting the meat. I have ate the flesh of it often, and found it equal to other meat of the pork kind.
Plantain is the princ.i.p.al bread food of the country, and easily cultivated. It also produces yams, ca.s.sauder, sweet potatoes or eddies, and many other vegetables; but the natives are too indolent to cultivate them. I lived seven months among them without tasting a mouthful of bread, or even craving it.
I will now give a small extract of Musquitto laws, viz: If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, and it comes to the knowledge of her husband, he takes his gun and goes to the forest where he finds a herd of cattle belonging to the neighborhood; he shoots a good fat bullock and calls on the neighbors to a.s.sist him to dress it and convey it home, where he makes a great feast, inviting the man who committed the offence, and all the neighbors to partake with him, when the offender, who is bound by law, pays for the bullock and all is amicably settled.
If a man prevails on another man's wife to leave her husband and live with him, the law compels him to pay a fine of four backs of tortoise-sh.e.l.l, worth six dollars each, amounting to twenty-four dollars, and a receipt in full is verbally acknowledged, without any hard feelings between the parties.
I once witnessed a settlement between two men in a cause of this kind, both parties appeared well satisfied, and parted on the most friendly terms.
They have a singular law for the collection of debts. If I trust an Indian goods, he belonging to another town or settlement, and he neglects to pay me, and I find another Indian belonging to the same town, having tortoise-sh.e.l.l or other produce in his canoe, I can take it away from him for the debt, and he must look to the man who was indebted to me, for remuneration.
Marriage contracts are made by parents while the children are infants.
Two families living in one neighborhood, one of them having a son and the other a daughter, enter into a contract that they shall be considered man and wife. When they are of a proper age to be joined together, all the inhabitants of the place a.s.semble together, build them a house, help them to a hammock to sleep in, and a dinner-pot for cooking, and they commence as house keepers. After living together for some years as man and wife, the husband receives a present of a female child from _its_ parents, which he carries home, and calls it his _young wife_, the first wife taking the same care of it she would of her own children until it becomes of proper age, when the husband builds a new house for the first wife to live in, and takes the young wife for a house-keeper. I have often been invited into Indian houses and introduced to the family in this manner: ”This is my old wife,” pointing to an elderly woman, and ”This is my young wife,” pointing to a girl from six to ten years old. The old wife would smooth her hair and appear to feel a great deal of pride in being presented to me.
On the day a woman is delivered of a child she goes to the sea-side, wades into the water knee depth, washes herself and infant, and the next day slings the child on her back, gets into a canoe and paddles two or three miles to visit her friends.
I here take my leave of Musquitto laws and customs for the present.
As the plan of cutting a ca.n.a.l from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, by the way of the River St. Johns, which leads from the Atlantic into the Lakes Nicaragua and Leon, has so much engaged the attention of the public latterly, my thoughts have been carried back to a conversation I had with an old Musquitto Indian about thirty-five years since.
He said, ”The Indians frequently paddled their canoes up the St. John's River, through Nicaragua Lake into Lake Leon, where they found a small river, and proceeded to the head of it, which brought them so near the head of another river which led into the Pacific, that they hauled their canoes over by land from the head of one river to the other, and then pa.s.sed through into the Pacific Ocean.”
CHAPTER X.
The bite of many of the snakes of this country is so poisonous as to cause death in a few hours. During my residence at the Lagoon I was visited by an Indian admiral, named Drummer, who resided at Sandy Bay, some forty miles north of the Lagoon; he related the following story, which happened a few weeks before. ”He sent an Indian slave to his plantain walk, distant two or three miles, to cut some bread-stuffs; not returning that night, he the next morning sent his son-in-law to look after the slave. He not returning, the following morning a number of the inhabitants proceeded to the plantain walk, where they found the dead bodies of the two men, and the snake which had caused their death lying near them.”
Some hurricanes occasionally visit this coast, which destroy their crops of bread-stuffs, and cause temporary famine in certain districts.
While cruising along the coast some months after the occurrence of one of these tornadoes, I landed within a few miles of the residence of Admiral Hammer, in company with a man named Benjamin Downs, who was well acquainted with the admiral. We proceeded to his house and asked for something to eat, when he told us his bread-stuffs had all been destroyed by a gale of wind, and addressed Downs as follows: ”Ben Downs, don't you think the Almighty little bit too bad this time?” ”Why, and what do you mean?” asked Downs. The admiral replied, ”He send too much strong breeze and broke all the plantain walk.”
The country is infested with numerous insects, &c. such as mosquittoes, sand-flies, fire-ants, chigoes, centipedes, scorpions, c.o.c.k-roaches, and an immense number of alligators. The ground in many places is overrun with large ants, called the travelling army, which destroy whole fields of vegetation. It is also infested by insects called dog-fleas, which are a great annoyance at night; and the sea-coast abounds with sharks of a very large size.
To give the reader a short description of the country and inhabitants I shall quote from a late writer. ”The Musquittoes are a small nation of Indians, never conquered by the Spaniards, the country being so situated as to render any attempts against them impracticable; for they are surrounded on all sides by land, by mora.s.ses or impa.s.sable mountains, and by sea with shoals and rocks; besides, they have such an implacable hatred to the Spaniards, for inhumanity and cruelty in destroying many millions of their neighbors, that they would never have any correspondence with them; for whenever they sent any missionaries or other agents amongst them, they _hid them_, that is, put them to death.
The king has little more than the t.i.tle, unless the nation is at war; having no revenues, and few prerogatives; being obliged in time of peace to fish and fowl for the support of himself and family. He hath indeed some distinction shown him, and now and then presents made him by the governor of Jamaica, and the English traders, who frequently touch and trade there.”
I occupied my time in selling goods and purchasing sh.e.l.l, skins, gums, &c. and during my leisure hours partook of the sports of the Indians, that I might pa.s.s away the time as agreeably as my situation would admit of, not knowing how I could get away from the country, as the English traders [the only people who visited the Musquittoes] had agreed never to carry me to Jamaica, or take any letters that would a.s.sist me to get to my family, fearing I should become a rival in the trade, and be the means of introducing others into it.
About the first of November a Captain Humphreys, one of the Jamaica traders, arrived in the harbor, and came on sh.o.r.e and took supper with me. The Indian ladies got up a ball on the occasion. After dancing was over, Captain H. and myself took a walk together. During which he said to me, ”Dunham, your case is a hard one, the old English traders on this coast, myself among them, have agreed never to carry you to Jamaica, or to a.s.sist you to get away from here, or take any letters from you to Jamaica or elsewhere, notwithstanding we consider you a very clever fellow; but if we a.s.sist you to get home, you will lead down twenty Yankee traders and destroy our business with the Indians.” Captain H.