Spanish America, Its Romance, Reality and Future, Vol. 2 (of 2)
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Title: Spanish America, Its Romance, Reality and Future, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Author: C. Reginald Enock
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* * * * *
SPANISH AMERICA
* * * * *
THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES
_Demy 8vo, cloth._
1. =CHILE.= By G. F. SCOTT ELLIOTT, F.R.G.S. With an Introduction by
Martin Hume, a Map, and 39 Illustrations. (4th Impression.)
2. =PERU.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an Introduction by
Martin Hume, a Map, and 72 Illustrations. (3rd Impression.)
3. =MEXICO.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an Introduction by
Martin Hume, a Map, and 64 Illustrations. (3rd Impression.)
4. =ARGENTINA.= By W. A. HIRST. With an Introduction by Martin Hume,
a Map, and 64 Illustrations. (4th Impression.)
5. =BRAZIL.= By PIERRE DENIS. With a Historical Chapter by Bernard
Miall, a Map, and 36 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
6. =URUGUAY.= By W. H. KOEBEL. With a Map and 55 Illustrations.
7. =GUIANA: British, French, and Dutch.= By JAMES RODWAY. With a Map
and 36 Illustrations.
8. =VENEZUELA.= By LEONARD V. DALTON, B.Sc. (Lond.), F.G.S., F.R.G.S.
With a Map and 36 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
9. =LATIN AMERICA: Its Rise and Progress.= By F. GARCIA CALDERON.
With a Preface by Raymond Poincaré, President of France, a Map, and
34 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
10. =COLOMBIA.= By PHANOR JAMES EDER, A.B., LL.B. With 2 Maps and 40
Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
11. =ECUADOR.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.
12. =BOLIVIA.= By PAUL WALLE. With 62 Illustrations and 4 Maps.
13. =PARAGUAY.= By W. H. KOEBEL.
14. =CENTRAL AMERICA.= By W. H. KOEBEL.
"The output of the books upon Latin America has in recent years been
very large, a proof doubtless of the increasing interest that is felt
in the subject. Of these the South American Series edited by Mr.
Martin Hume is the most noteworthy."--TIMES.
"Mr. Unwin is doing good service to commercial men and investors by
the production of his 'South American Series.'"--SATURDAY REVIEW.
"Those who wish to gain some idea of the march of progress in these
countries cannot do better than study the admirable 'South American
Series.'"--CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL.
* * * * *
[Illustration: BRONZE STATUE OF BOLÍVAR IN THE PLAZA, CARÁCAS,
VENEZUELA.
Vol. II. Frontispiece.]
SPANISH AMERICA
ITS ROMANCE, REALITY
AND FUTURE
BY
C. R. ENOCK, C.E., F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON," "PERU,"
"MEXICO," "ECUADOR," ETC.
WITH 26 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
VOL. II
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
* * * * *
_First published in 1920_
(_All rights reserved_)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
IX. THE LANDS OF THE SPANISH MAIN: COLOMBIA
AND VENEZUELA 11
X. THE LANDS OF THE SPANISH MAIN: VENEZUELA
AND GUIANA 32
XI. THE AMAZON VALLEY: IN COLOMBIA, VENEZUELA,
ECUADOR, BOLIVIA, PERU AND BRAZIL 74
XII. BRAZIL 111
XIII. THE RIVER PLATE AND THE PAMPAS: ARGENTINA,
URUGUAY AND PARAGUAY 158
XIV. THE RIVER PLATE AND THE PAMPAS: ARGENTINA,
URUGUAY AND PARAGUAY 202
XV. TRADE AND FINANCE 236
XVI. TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW 254
INDEX 303
ILLUSTRATIONS
BRONZE STATUE OF BOLÍVAR IN THE PLAZA, CARÁCAS,
VENEZUELA _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
A SEAPORT ON THE AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN, SANTA
MARTA, COLOMBIA 14
TRANSPORTING MACHINERY IN THE COLOMBIAN ANDES 22
THE MAINLAND FROM TRINIDAD, AND VIEW IN THE
DELTA OF THE ORINOCO 34
INDIANS AT HOME, GUIANA 52
GEORGETOWN, BRITISH GUIANA 64
IN THE PERUVIAN MONTAÑA 78
UNCIVILIZED FOREST INDIANS OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON 90
INDIANS OF THE NAPO, PERUVIAN-AMAZON REGION 96
THE BAY OF RIO DE JANEIRO 112
PALM AVENUE, RIO DE JANEIRO 128
A COLONY, RIO GRANDE 132
A VIEW IN SAO PAULO 140
COFFEE HARVEST, BRAZIL 150
BUENOS AYRES 160
MAR DEL PLATA 166
MONTEVIDEO: THE PLAZA 178
MONTEVIDEO: THE HARBOUR 178
THE PAMPAS, ARGENTINA 204
THE CITY OF CORDOBA, ARGENTINA 206
IGUAZU FALLS 210
A CHACO FLOOD 214
BRINGING HOME YERBA 220
PACKING YERBA 220
STREET IN MEXICO CITY. CATHEDRAL IN DISTANCE 264
CHAPEL OF THE ROSARIO, MEXICO 266
SPANISH AMERICA
CHAPTER IX
THE LANDS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
COLOMBIA AND VENEZUELA
A sea-wall of solid masonry, a rampart upon whose flat top we may walk
at will, presents itself to the winds and spray that blow in from the
Gulf of Darien upon the ancient city of Cartagena, and the booming of
the waves there, in times of storm, might be the echo of the guns of
Drake, for this rampart was raised along the shore in those days when
he and other famous sea rovers ranged the Spanish Main, over which
Cartagena still looks out.
Cartagena was a rich city in those days, the outlet for the gold and
silver and other seductive matters of New Granada, under the viceroys,
and the buccaneers knew it well, this tempting bait of a treasure
storehouse and haven of the Plate ships. This, then, was the reason for
the massive sea-wall, one of the strongest and oldest of the Spanish
fortifications of the New World, which Spain had monopolized and which
the sea rovers disputed.
There is a certain Mediterranean aspect about Cartagena, which was
named by its founder, the Spaniard, Pedro de Heredia, in 1533, after
the Spanish city of Carthage, founded by the Phœnicians of the famous
Carthage of Africa. The steamer on which we have journeyed has crossed
the American Mediterranean, as the Caribbean has been not altogether
fancifully termed, for there is a certain analogy with the original,
and passing the islands and entering the broad channel brings into
view the ancient and picturesque town, with the finest harbour on the
northern coast of the continent, a smooth, land-locked bay, with groups
of feathery palms upon its shores.
Backed by the verdure-clad hills--whereon the better-class residents
have their homes, thereby escaping the malarias of the littoral--the
walls and towers of the town arise, and, entering, we are impressed by
a certain old-world dignity and massiveness of the place, a one-time
home of the viceroy and of the Inquisition. There are many memories
of the past here of interest to the English traveller. Among these
stands out the attempt of Admiral Vernon, in 1741, who with a large
naval force and an army--under General Wentworth--arrived expecting an
outpost of the place, which Drake had so easily held to ransom, to fall
readily before him. The attempt was a failure, otherwise the British
Empire might have been established upon this coast.
Colombia, like Mexico, has been a land of what might be termed vanished
hopes and arrested development. But the old land of New Granada, as
Colombia was earlier termed, has not the weight of wasted opportunity
and outraged fortune which now envelops the land of New Spain, which
in our generation promised so much and fell from grace. Colombia, by a
slower path, may yet reach a greater height than Mexico as an exponent
of Spanish American culture.
But a century ago, at the time Colombia freed herself, in company
with her neighbours, from the rule of Spain, her statesmen as well
as her neighbours hailed her as a favoured land upon which fortune
was to shine, which was to lead in industrial achievement, to redress
the balance of the Old World, to offer liberty and opportunity
to the settler, riches to the trader, to be a centre of art and
thought. At that time, indeed, New Granada was the leading State in
all the newly born constellation of Spanish America, and during her
earlier republican period one of her orators, with that command of
grandiloquent phrase with which the Spanish American statesman is
endowed, spoke as follows:
"United, neither the empire of the Assyrians, the Medes or the
Persians, the Macedonian or the Roman Empire can ever be compared
with this colossal Republic!"
The speaker--Zea, the vice-president--was referring to the Republic of
_La Gran Colombia_, formed, under Bolivar, of Venezuela, Colombia and
Ecuador--a union which was soon disrupted and which neither geography
nor human politics could have done aught but tend to separate. The
union, like that of Central America, fell asunder amid strife and
bloodshed.
But let us take the road to Bogota, the beautiful and in many respects
highly cultured capital of Colombia.
We do not, however, take the road, but the river, starting either from
Cartagena by the short railway to Barranquilla, the seaport at the
mouth of the Magdalena River, or direct from that port, and thence by
the various interrupted stages of a journey that has become a synonym
of varied travel to a South American capital.
Barranquilla is an important place--the principal commercial centre of
the Republic. Here we embark upon a stern-wheel river steamer of the
Mississippi type, flat-bottomed, not drawing more than three to five
feet of water. The smaller boat, though less pretentious, may sometimes
be the better on the long voyage upstream, and may pass the bigger and
swifter craft if haply, as occurs at times, that craft be stranded on a
shoal. For the river falls greatly in the dry season.
[Illustration: A SEAPORT ON THE AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN, SANTA MARTA,
COLOMBIA.
Vol. II. To face p. 14.]
Journeying thus, we reach La Dorada, six hundred miles upstream, in
about nine days, for there are many obstacles against time on the
way, such as the current, the taking-in of fuel, the sand bars, which
prohibit progress by night, slow discharge of merchandise and so
forth. The heat may be stifling. A gauze mosquito bar or net is among
the equipment of the prudent traveller, as is a cot or hammock, and
rugs against the chill and damp of the nights. Also food, for the
commissariat on board often leaves much to be desired. In Colombia the
traveller requires clothing both light and heavy, as indeed in almost
all Spanish American countries. Quinine, moreover, must always be among
his equipment.
At Puerto Berrio, five hundred miles up the river, a railway runs to
the interesting city of Medellin, in the mountains, the second city in
importance in Colombia.
There are, from La Dorada, various changes to be made before Bogota
is reached. We must change to the railway that runs to--near--Honda,
circumventing the rapids, a line about twenty miles long. Here we have
a choice of routes and methods. We may proceed on mule-back through
magnificent scenery and the refreshing atmosphere of the Andes, with
tolerable inns, or we may take the steamer again to Giradot, on the
Upper Magdalena, and then a further trajectory of eighty miles by rail.
Seven changes are necessary in this journey from Cartagena to the
capital--ocean-steamer to train, thence to river-steamer, from that
to the train again, thence to river-steamer once more, thence to the
train, and again to another train--doubtless a record of varied travel.
The remote and famous city of Santa Fé de Bogota, founded by Quesada in
1538, the old viceregal capital of New Granada, the "Athens of South
America" as some of its admirers have termed it, stands pleasingly
upon its _Sabana_, or upland plain--one of the largest cultivated
mountain plateaux in the world--at an elevation of 8,600 feet above
sea-level, higher than the famous city of Mexico. It is in the heart
of the Tropics, but four degrees north of the Equator, and its equable
climate, a result of the offsetting of latitude by altitude, is in many
respects delightful.
Here the typical Spanish American character is stamped on the city
and reflected in the life of its people, where Parisian dress rubs
shoulders with the blanketed Indian. Here the aristocracy of Colombia,
implanted by Spain, centres. One street may be lined with the handsome
residences of the correct and elegant upper class, folk perhaps
educated in foreign universities, men of the world, passing by in silk
hat and frock-coat--attire beloved of the wealthy here--or in motor-car
or carriage, which whirls past the groups of half-starved, half-clothed
(and perhaps half-drunken) Indian or poor Mestizo folk, whose homes
are in the hovels of a neighbouring street and whose principal source
of entertainment is the _chicheria_, or drinking-den, such as exists
in profusion. And without desiring to institute undue comparisons--for
wealth and misery go side by side in London or New York, or any city of
Christendom--it may be pointed out that despite the claim of Bogota to
be a centre of literary thought and high culture, little more perhaps
than a tenth of the population of Colombia can read and write.
There are handsome plazas, with gardens and statuary, but few imposing
public buildings, although a certain simplicity is pleasing here. The
streets generally are narrow, and the houses low, as a precaution
against earthquake shocks. The _Capitiolio_, the building of the
Legislature, is spacious and handsome. Upon a marble tablet, upon its
façade, in letters of gold, is an inscription to the memory of the
British Legion, the English and Irish who lent their aid to Colombia
and Venezuela, under Bolivar, to secure independence from Spain a
century or more ago.
The story of the British soldiers in this liberation is an interesting
one.
"With insubordination and murmurings among his own generals,
decreased troops and depleted treasure, and without the encouragement
of decisive victories to make good these deficiencies, the outlook
for Bolivar and for the cause in which he was fighting might well
have disheartened him at this time. In March, however, Colonel Daniel
O'Leary had arrived with the troops raised by Colonel Wilson in
London, consisting largely of veterans of the Napoleonic wars. These
tried soldiers, afterwards known as the British Legion, were destined
to play an all-important part in the liberation of Venezuela, and
Bolivar soon recognized their value, spending the time till December
in distributing these new forces to the best advantage.
"Elections were arranged in the autumn, and on February 15, 1819,
Congress was installed in Angostura. Bolivar took the British
Constitution as his model, with the substitute of an elected
president for an hereditary king, and was himself proclaimed
provisional holder of the office. The hereditary form of the Senate
was, however, soon given up."[1]
Before the Conquest Bogota was the home of the Chibchas people--Tunja
was their northern capital--the cultured folk of Colombia, who,
although inferior to the Incas of Peru, had their well-built towns and
a flourishing agriculture and local trade, their temples of no mean
structure, with an advanced religion which venerated and adored the
powers of Providence as represented by Nature; who worked gold and
silver and ornaments of jewels beautifully and skilfully, such things
as Quesada's Spaniards coveted--a culture which knew how to direct the
Indian population, but which, alas! fell before the invaders as all
other early American cultures fell.
To-day, as then, the high mountains look down upon the Sabana, and the
rills of clear water descend therefrom. Still the beautiful Mesa de
Herveo, the extinct volcano, displays like a great tablecloth from a
giant table its gleaming mantle of perpetual snow, over 3,000 feet of
white drapery. Still the emerald mines of Muzo yield their emeralds,
and still the patient Indian cultivates the many foods and fruits which
Nature has so bountifully lavished upon his fatherland.
Colombia, like Peru or Mexico, or Ecuador or other of the sisterhood
of nations in our survey, is a land of great contrasts, whether of
Nature or man. The unhealthy lowlands of the coast give place to the
delightful valleys of higher elevations, which in their turn merge
into the bitter cold of the melancholy _paramos_, or upland passes,
and tablelands of the Andes. Or the cultivated lands pass to savage
forests, where roam tribes of natives who perhaps have never looked
upon the face of the white man.
Every product of Nature in these climates is at hand or possible,
and the precious minerals caused New Granada to be placed high on
the roll of gold-producing colonies of the Indies. The coffee of the
lowlands, the bananas, shipped so largely from the pretty port of Santa
Marta, the cotton, the sugar and the cocoa, grown so far mainly for
home consumption; the coconuts, the ivory-nuts--_tagua_, or coróza,
for foreign use in button-making largely--the rice, the tobacco, the
quinine, of which shipments have been considerable; the timber, such as
cedar and mahogany; the cattle and hides, the gold, silver, platinum,
copper, coal, emeralds, cinnabar, lead, the iron and petroleum--such
are the chief products of this favoured land.
Many of the mines and railways are under British control, but in
general trade German interests have been strong, and the German has
identified himself, after his custom, with the domestic life of the
Republic. A rich flora, including the beautiful orchids, is found here,
as in the neighbouring State of Venezuela.
Two-fifths of Colombia is mountainous territory, the plateaux and spurs
of the Andes, between which latter run the Magdalena and Cauca Rivers.
The roads are mule-trails, such as bring again and again before us as
we experience their discomforts the fact that Colombia, in common with
all the Andine Republics, is still in the Middle Ages as far as means
of rural transport are concerned. Yet the landscape is often of the
most delightful, and the traveller, in the intervals of expending his
breath in cursing the trails, will raise his eyes in admiration of the
work of Nature here.
Especially is this the case when, in the dry season, travel is less
onerous and when nothing can be more pleasing than the varying
scenery. Here "dipping down into a delightful little valley, formed
by a sparkling rivulet whose banks are edged with cane, bamboo and
tropical trees, inter-wreathed with twining vines; there, circling
a mountain-side and looking across at a vast amphitheatre where the
striking vegetation, in wild profusion, is the gigantic wax-palm,
that towers sometimes to a height of 100 feet; then, reaching the
level of the oak and other trees of the temperate zone, or still
higher at an altitude of 10,000 or 11,000 feet, the _paramos_, bare
of all vegetation save low shrubs, which might be desolate were it
not for the magnificent mountain scenery, with the occasional view of
the glorious snow-peaks of the Central Cordillera.
"At times the road is poor: now and then, cut into the solid rock of
the mountain-side, towering sheer hundreds of feet above you, while a
precipice yawns threateningly on the other side, it may narrow down
to a scant yard or two in width; it may, for a short distance, climb
at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, with the roughest cobble
paving for security against the mules slipping; or in a stretch of
alluvial soil, the ruts worn by the constant tread of the animals
in the same spot have worn deep narrow trenches, characteristic of
Andean roads, against the sides of which one's knees will knock
roughly if constant vigilance be not exercised; worse yet, these
trenches will not be continuous, but will be interrupted by mounds
over which the mules have continually stepped, sinking the road-bed
deeper and deeper by the iterated stamping of their hoofs in the same
hollow, till deep excavations are formed, which in the rainy season
are pools filled with the most appalling mud. Such is a fair picture
applicable to many a stretch of so-called road in Colombia.
"The 'hotel accommodations' on the way are poor, of course; one
stops at the usual shanty and takes such fare as one can get, a
_sancocho_ or _arepas_, eked out with the foods prudentially brought
along. It is in such passes as the Quindio, too, when one reaches
the _paramos_, thousands of feet in altitude, and far above the
clouds, that one experiences the rigorous _cold_ of the Tropics.
The temperature at night is nearly always below forty degrees;
occasionally it drops to freezing-point, and one feels it all the
more after a sojourn in the hot lowlands. No amount of clothing then
seems adequate. Travellers will remember the bitter cold nights they
have passed in the _paramos_."[2]
This bitter atmosphere is experienced, let us remember, on or near
the Equator. But we are led on to the beautiful Cauca Valley perhaps,
whence, if we wish, we may continue on through the pretty town of Cali,
and up over the tablelands of Popayan and Pasto, and, passing the
frontier, so ride on to Quito, the capital of Ecuador--a journey which
will leave us with sensations both painful and pleasurable.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING MACHINERY IN THE COLOMBIAN ANDES.
Vol. II. To face p. 22.]
"If you cannot withstand the petty discomforts of the trail for the
sake of the ever-shifting panorama of snow-peaks, rugged mountains,
cosy valleys, smiling woodlands, trim little valleys, then you are
not worthy to be exhilarated by the sun-kissed winds of the Andes, or
soothed by the languorous tropical moonlight of the lower lands, or
to partake of the open-handed hospitality which will greet you.
"Such is the fame of the Cauca Valley that it was long known
throughout Colombia simply as _the_ valley, and that is now its
legal name. It is the valley _par excellence_. The name is used to
designate especially that stretch, about 15 to 25 miles wide and
150 miles long, where the Cauca River has formed a gently sloping
plain, at an altitude of 3,000 to 3,500 feet above sea-level, between
the Central and the Western Cordilleras. A little north of Cartago
and a little south of La Bolsa, the two ranges hem it in. The Cauca
is one of the real garden spots of the world. No pen can describe the
beauty of the broad smiling valley, as seen from favourable points
on either range, with its broad green pastures, yellow fields of
sugar-cane, dark woodlands, its towns nestling at the foothills, the
Cauca River in the midst, silvered by the reflected sun, and looking
across the _lomas_ of the rapidly ascending foothills, with cameo-cut
country houses, topped by the dense forests of the upper reaches of
the mountains, rising to majestic heights. From some places in the
western range will be seen the snow-clad Huila in icy contrast to the
blazing sun shining on the luxuriant tropic vegetation beneath.
"The best developed parts of the hot and temperate zones of
Cundinamarca are along the Magdalena Valley and the routes of the
Girardot Railway, the road to Cambao and the Honda trail. In the
warmer zone there are good sugar plantations: in the temperate zone
is grown the coffee so favourably known in the markets of the world
under the name of Bogota: it attains its perfection at an altitude
of about 5,000 feet, and nowhere else in Colombia has such careful
attention been given to its cultivation. The Sabana itself, by
which name the plateau of Bogota is known, is all taken up with
farms and towns--there is scarcely a foot of undeveloped land. The
climate is admirably adapted to the European-blooded animals, and the
gentleman-farmer of Bogota takes great pride in his stock. The finest
cattle in Colombia, a great many of imported Durham and Hereford
stock, and excellent horses of English and Norman descent are bred
here. This is the only section in Colombia, too, where dairying on
any extensive scale is carried on, and where the general level of
agriculture has risen above the primitive. The lands not devoted to
pasture are utilized chiefly for wheat, barley and potatoes.
"To offset bad water, the food supply is excellent, and of wonderful
variety. That is one of the beauties of the climate of the Sabana.
One gets all northern fruits and flowers, blooming the year round,
and vegetables as well as quite a few of the tropical ones. It is an
interesting sight to see tropical palms growing side by side with
handsome northern trees, like oaks and firs. Some of the Sabana roads
are lined with blackberries, and one gets delicious little wild
strawberries; apples, pears and peaches are grown, though usually of
a poor quality, not properly cultivated. Even oranges can grow on
the Sabana, and from the nearby hot country they send up all manner
of tropical fruits and vegetables. Then there is no dearth of good
cooks: the epicure can enjoy private dinners and public banquets
equal to any in the world. The one lady who reads this book will
be interested to know that the servant problem is reduced to a
minimum in Bogota; good domestics are plentiful and cheap--five to
ten dollars a month is high pay. In the houses of the well-to-do
the servants are well treated and lead happy lives; they have ample
quarters of their own, centring around their own _patio_; and enough
of the old patriarchal regime survives to make them really a part of
the family."[3]
* * * * *
Descending from the mountainous part of the country, we reach, to the
east, that portion of Colombia situated upon the affluents of the
Orinoco, a region which we may more readily consider in our description
of that great river, lying mainly in the adjoining Republic of
Venezuela. Here stretch the _llanos_, or plains, and the forests which
are the home of the wilder tribes, for Colombia has various grades of
civilization among her folk, of which the last are these aboriginals,
and the middle the patient Christianized Indians, who constitute the
bulk of the working classes. These last have the characteristics, with
small differences, of the Indian of the Cordillera in general, of whom
I have elsewhere ventured upon some study.
In Colombia, although in some respects the Republic is pervaded by
a truly democratic spirit as between class and class, power and
privilege, land and education are in the hands of a small upper class.
This condition does not make for social progress, and in the future
may seriously jeopardize the position of that class. Wisdom here, as
elsewhere in Spanish America, would advise a broader outlook. Political
misrule in the past has been rampant, although revolutions of late
years have been infrequent.
There are innumerable matters in Colombia which the observant traveller
will find of the utmost interest, but upon which we cannot dwell here.
Our way lies back to the Spanish Main, whence we take steamer along the
coast to the seaports of Venezuela.
Colombia is in a unique geographical position upon the South American
Continent, in that it is the only State with an Atlantic and Pacific
coast; added to which is the hydrographic condition which gives the
country an outlet also to the fluvial system of the Amazon, by means of
the great affluents the Yapura and the Negro, as also the Putumayo--if
that stream is to be regarded in Colombian territory, for the region is
on the debatable ground claimed by three countries, Colombia, Ecuador
and Peru.
Indeed, this portion of South America, one of the wildest parts of the
earth's surface, is of great hydrographic interest, and looking at the
map, we see how these navigable streams bend north, east and south,
with the peculiar link of the Casiquiare "Canal" or river, uniting
the fluvial systems of the Orinoco and the Amazon. (It is--but on a
vaster scale--as if a natural waterway existed between the Thames and
the Severn, or the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence.) This "Canal"
lies but 150 miles from the Equator, a few miles from the border of
Colombia, in Venezuela. Beyond, to the north-east, is Guiana, the land
of Raleigh's El Dorado. Doubtless this region, in the future--far-off
it may be--will become of much importance, and what is now savage
woodland and danger-haunted waterways may some day be teeming with life
and activity.
The conditions as regards navigability are, of course, relative in many
instances here. Again, the region is not necessarily altogether an
uninhabited one, for the rubber-stations have been increasing rapidly
of late years.
A somewhat forbidding coast presents itself as our steamer, casting
anchor, comes to rest in the waters of La Guayra, the principal seaport
of Venezuela.
Here a bold rocky wall, apparently arising sheer from the sea, a
granite escarpment more than a mile high, cuts off all view of the
interior, and, reflecting the heat of the tropic sun, makes of the
small and somewhat unprepossessing town at its base one of the hottest
seaports on the face of the globe, as it was formerly one of the most
dangerous from the exposure of its roadstead.
But, as if in some natural compensation, there lies beyond this rocky,
maritime wall one of the most beautiful capital cities of South
America--Caracas, reached by yonder railway, strung along the face of
the precipice, and affording from the train a magnificent panorama of
the seaport and the blue Caribbean.
La Guayra, ranged like an amphitheatre around the indentations in the
precipice in which it lies, with its tiers of ill-paved streets, has
nevertheless some good business houses, and the Republic expended a
million pounds sterling upon its harbour works, executed and controlled
by a British company.
Looking seaward from its quay walls, we may recall the doings of the
old buccaneers of the Spanish Main, and of other filibusters, who from
time to time have sacked the place since its founding in the sixteenth
century. Upon these quays are filled bags of cocoa and coffee, and
mountains of hides, brought down from the interior, and other products
from plain and field and forest of the hinterland, for La Guayra
monopolizes, for State reasons, much of the trade that might more
naturally find outlet through other seaports.
The little railway which bears us up and beyond to Caracas winds, to
gain elevation and passage, for twenty-four miles, in order to cover
a distance in an air-line between the port and the capital of about
six. We find ourselves set down in what enthusiastic descriptions of
this particular zone love to term a region of perpetual spring; and
indeed, at its elevation of 3,000 feet, the city is alike free from
the sweltering heat of the coast and from the cold of the higher
mountainous districts beyond.
A handsome plaza confronts us, with an equestrian statue of Bolivar.
The plaza is mosaic-paved, electrically lighted, shaded by trees
and, in the evening and on Sunday, the military bands entertain the
people after the customary Spanish American method. Some showy public
buildings, and a museum with some famous paintings are here; there are
pleasing suburbs, luxurious gardens and well laid-out streets, and this
high capital takes not unjustifiable pride to itself for its beauty and
artistic environment and atmosphere--conditions which deserve a wider
fame.
When we leave the Venezuelan capital and travel over the wide territory
of the Republic, we find it is one of the most sparsely populated
of the Spanish American nations. Conditions in internal development
and social life are very much like those of Colombia, with highlands
and lowlands, river and forest, cultivated plain and smiling valley,
malarial districts and dreary uplands. We find the rudest Indian
villages and the most pleasing towns: the most ignorant and backward
Indian folk, the more docile and industrious Christianized labouring
class, and the highly educated, sensitive and oligarchical upper class.
Again, we find the same variety of climate, products and the gifts of
Nature in general. We see great plantations of coffee, especially in
that fertile region of Maracaibo, which Colombia in part enjoys, and
which gives its name to the superior berry there produced for export.
We see broad estates, in their thousands, devoted to the production
of the _cacao_, or chocolate, and similar areas over which waves the
succulent and vivid green sugar-cane, whereon sugar is produced often
by old-fashioned methods. These products yield returns so excellent
that the growing of cotton, on the vast lands suitable thereto, are
in large degree neglected, and must be regarded as an asset for the
future, whenever local labour may become better organized or more
plentiful.
Agriculture in this varied Republic, as in its neighbour, Colombia, has
been kept backward by the same lack of labour, largely a punishment for
the decimation of the labouring folk in the civil and other wars that
have so often laid waste both man and land.
Maracaibo, lake and district, of which we have made mention, is in some
respects a curious region. Let us look at the map. We remark a great
indent on the coast of the Spanish Main. It is the Gulf of Venezuela,
continuing far inland to what is termed Lake Maracaibo. The gulf is
partly closed by the curious Goajira Peninsula.
From the appearance of the dwellings of the Indian on this lake-shore,
the name of Venezuela, or "Little Venice," was given to the mainland
here; the lake-dwellings are built on piles driven into the water.
When the first Spaniards visited the coast, under Alonzo de Ojeada--on
board with him was Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine who gave his name
to America--they were struck by the curious appearance of the Indian
settlements, and from so accidental a circumstance was the region
baptized. The same type of dwelling still characterizes the lake, and
were it not for the busy and important town of Maracaibo, the traveller
might almost fancy himself back in the sixteenth century, coasting with
the early explorers.
Indeed, as far as the Indians of the peninsula are concerned, we
might still be in these early times, for these sturdy descendants
of the Caribs, whom the Spaniards came to dread, have maintained
their independence to this day, and although they trade with the
white folk, resist all attempts at governmental control. This is a
curious circumstance upon the coast, which was the first part of South
America to be discovered, although it might be conceivable in the far
interior--especially in view of the proximity of the busy and populous
city on the lake, a port of greater importance than La Guayra in some
respects, full of modern life and trade. Maracaibo was at one time one
of the principal educational centres of South America. Unfortunately
the bar at the mouth of the harbour unfits the place for the entry of
large vessels.
In this district lie the important petroleum fields, which have been
made the seat of recent enterprise for the production of that coveted
oil of commerce.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Venezuela_, Dalton, South American Series.
[2] _Colombia_, Eder, South American Series.
[3] _Colombia_, op. cit.
CHAPTER X
THE LANDS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
VENEZUELA AND GUIANA
If, as we have said, the approach to the Republic of Venezuela at La
Guayra seems forbidding and inaccessible, it must not be inferred that
this is an inevitable characteristic of the coast. The Caribbean Hills
are splendid in their aspect from the sea. They are forbidding in their
grandeur. The mighty ramparts rise almost sheer from the ocean for
thousands of feet, with cloud-veils flung across them at times, and if,
from the steamer's deck, we may wonder how access to the hinterland can
be gained, we shall find that Nature has furnished her passes, and some
of the early English adventurers of the Spanish Main scaled these, as
we may read in the stirring pages of Hakluyt.[4] Personally, I retain
strong impressions of these cool-appearing, towering ramparts of Nature
seen whilst sweltering in the tropic heat on shipboard.
Moreover, the great spurs of the Andes die out into the sea as we go
east, and so Nature has broken down the rampart, giving vent to her
marvellous hydrographic forces, which here triumph over the orographic,
in the Gulf of Paria and the delta of the Orinoco, clothed with the
densest of tropical vegetation, the home of wild beast and wild man, as
shortly we shall observe.
There are further memories of British activity in regard to Venezuelan
seaports, more modern, less picturesque than those we have already
remarked. For, in the year 1903, the loans and arrears upon interest,
the defaulted payments and disputed interpretations of contracts, in
railway construction and other matters, and alleged arbitrary behaviour
on the part of Venezuelan Government officials, came to a head, with
the result that Great Britain, Germany and Italy sent a combined fleet
to blockade the seaports, and an enforced settlement of the creditors'
claims was brought about.
However, these unfortunate incidents are of the past. Venezuela has
shown a desire for more cordial relations with the outside world.
Lately she sent a representative to London with the purpose of
inaugurating closer commercial relations with Britain.[5]
We have now to explore the great river of Venezuela, the famous Orinoco.
The Orinoco, which pours its huge volume of water into the Atlantic
on the northern shore of the continent, through a vast delta of over
thirty mouths, a volume derived from over four hundred tributaries
which descend from the spurs of the Andes or from the wild and
mysterious forests of Guiana, flows through what might be one of the
richest valleys of the earth's surface, and doubtless in the future
may so become. But, like the valley of the Amazon, its resources are
comparatively little utilized at present. Devastating floods, malarious
forests, ferocious crocodiles are some of the elements the traveller
encounters on the higher waters of this great stream, notwithstanding
that Columbus wrote to his Spanish sovereign that he had "found one of
the rivers flowing from the Earthly Paradise."
Unfortunately it may be said that the Spaniard and his descendants have
wrought destruction rather than benefit here, and the population of the
valley is less now than it was four centuries ago.
We may ascend the Orinoco, in the stern-wheel steamers which ply
thereon, for about four hundred miles to Ciudad Bolivar, which town
forms the chief and indeed almost the only trade centre, and in the
rainy season, when the river is high, which is generally from June
to November, by smaller craft up the lengthy affluents. Such are the
Apure, the Meta, the Arauca and the Guaviare, many hundreds of miles
in length, rising far away to the west amid the Cordillera, the cold
eastern slopes of whose lofty summits condense and pour down torrents
of water into an extraordinary network of rivers which flow across
the plains of Colombia and Venezuela, flooding enormous areas of
land in their passage to the main stream. Boats and barges may reach
the Andes, whose beautiful landscape forms the water-parting of this
remarkable fluvial system.
[Illustration: THE MAINLAND FROM TRINIDAD, AND VIEW IN THE DELTA OF THE
ORINOCO.
Vol. II. To face p. 34.]
In the dry season snags and sandbanks render navigation almost
impossible on many of these tributaries, and in some cases in the
remote districts the hordes of savages who dwell on the banks add to
the dangers of the voyager. There are miles of rapids on certain of the
waterways, and great cataracts, whilst the forest comes down to the
water's edge, forming an impenetrable screen of tropical vegetation,
in which the traveller who strays from his way is lost. This jungle is
flooded in the rainy season, the waters driving back all animal life to
the higher ground.
From the east comes the great Ventuari affluent, with its unexplored
head-waters in Guiana.
The Orinoco River is of much interest, whether to the traveller or
the hydrographer, and doubtless some day its potentialities will be
more greatly utilized. In some respects this fluvial system would lend
itself to the improvements of the engineer, and might perform for the
region which it waters services such as the Nile renders for Egypt,
instead of being, as it is, largely a destructive agent. The general
slope of the river is comparatively slight, and thus canalization and
consequent improvement in navigation might be carried out. Nearly
a thousand miles from the mouth the waters of one of the principal
affluents are little above sea-level, but the rise and fall of the
flood is sometimes as much as fifty feet, and confluences two miles
wide in the dry season are increased three or four times during the
rains.
One of the most interesting features of these rivers, as already
remarked, is found in the singular natural canal connecting the Orinoco
with the Amazon--the waterway of the Casiquiare Canal,[6] which cuts
across the water-parting of the two hydrographic systems. Here the
adventurous canoe voyager may descend from the Orinoco and reach the
Rio Negro, falling into the Amazon near Manaos.
The endless waterways of the upper reaches of the Orinoco share often
that silent, deserted character which we shall remark upon the Amazon
tributaries, and which indeed, is common to tropical streams often.
Bird and animal life seems all to have concealed itself. Even the
loathly alligator is not to be seen, nor the turtle, nor other creature
of the waters. Occasionally, however, a scarlet ibis appears to break
the monotony, or an eagle or heron. For mile upon mile, league upon
league, there may be no opening in the green wall of the dismal forest,
until, suddenly, as we pass, the wall gives way, a small clearing
is seen, with perhaps a Carib Indian hut, dilapidated and solitary,
whose miserable occupant, hastily entering his canoe, shoots out from
the bank with some meagre objects of sale or barter in the form of
provisions or other.
Such, however, is not always the nature of these rivers. The scene
changes: there are sandy shores and bayous, beautiful forest flowers
and gorgeous insect life, the chatter of the monkeys and the forms of
the characteristic tropical fauna. Rippling streams flow from inviting
woodland glades untrodden by man, and high cascades send their showers
of sparkling drops amid the foliage and over the fortress-like rocks
around. Wafted along by sail or paddle, guided by the expert Indian
boatmen, the craft weathers all dangers, and the passenger sees pass
before him a panorama of the wilds whose impression will always remain
upon his mind. Thus the charm of exploration never fails, and, borne
upon the bosom of some half-unknown stream, the traveller's cup of
adventure may on the Orinoco be filled to the brim.
For many hundreds of miles these western tributaries of the Orinoco
flow through the _llanos_, as the plains of this part of South
America--in Colombia and Venezuela--are termed, whose characteristic
flatness we shall remark from the deck of the vessel. A sea of grass
stretches away to the horizon on every side, giving place in some
districts to forest.
The level plains, lying generally about four hundred feet above the
sea, were once the home of enormous herds of cattle and horses and of
a hardy, intrepid race of folk known as the _llaneros_, men who kept
and tended the cattle and were expert in horsemanship and woodcraft.
These folk flourished best in the Colonial period. They formed some of
the best fighting material in South America, and made their mark in the
War of Independence, when, under Bolivar, the Spanish yoke was thrown
off. Again, civil war, revolution and hardships and losses consequent
thereon seriously reduced their numbers, and to-day both they and their
herds have almost disappeared.
The great plains which were the scene of these former activities might,
under better auspices, become an important source of food supply,
both for home and foreign needs. They could again support vast herds
of cattle on their grassy _campos_, irrigated by the overflow of the
Orinoco. This overflow, it is true, causes extensive lagoons to form,
known locally as _esteros_ or _cienagas_, but these dry up in great
part after the floods, which have meantime refreshed the soil and
herbage.
"The great green or brown plain of the Llanos is often beautified by
small golden, white and pink flowers, and sedges and irises make up
much of the small vegetation. Here and there the beautiful 'royal'
palm, with its banded stem and graceful crown, the _moriche_, or one
of the other kinds, forms clumps to break the monotony, and along the
small streams are patches of _chaparro_ bushes, cashew-nuts, locusts
and so forth. The banks of the rivers often support denser groves of
ceibas, crotons, guamos, etc.; the last-named bears a pod covered
with short, velvety hair, within which, around the beans (about the
size of our broad beans), is a cool, juicy, very refreshing pulp, not
unlike that of the young cocoa-pod. Along the banks of the streams
in front of the trees are masses of reeds and semi-aquatic grasses,
which effectually conceal the higher vegetation from a traveller in a
canoe at water-level."[7]
Much stress has been laid upon the possible economic value of the
_llanos_ by some writers, whilst others regard these possibilities as
exaggerated.[8] Their area is calculated at 100,000 square miles. They
are neither prairies nor desert. During a large part of the year they
are subject to heavy rainfall and become swamped, followed by a drought
so intense that the streams dry up and the parched grass affords no
pasture for stock. There is a total lack of roads, and the rivers are
unbridged, and the region is far from the ocean. The trade wind blows
fiercely across them.
The view over these vast plains as the traveller's eyes suddenly rest
upon them as he descends the Andes is very striking, and has been
described by various observers, among them Humboldt.
In the wet season, when the river overflows, the cattle are driven back
to higher ground. When the waters retire alligators and water snakes
bury themselves in the mud to pass the dry season.
In this connexion stories are told of travellers and others who,
having camped for the night in some hut or chosen spot, are suddenly
awakened by the upheaval of the ground beneath them and the emergence
of some dreadful monster therefrom. A certain traveller's experience in
the night was that of being awakened by the barking of his dogs, the
noise of which had roused a huge alligator, which heaved up the floor
of the hut, attacked the dogs and then made off.[9]
As for the old type _llanero_, half Spanish, half Indian, the wild,
brave, restless, devil-may-care cowboy, a Cossack of the Colombian
Steppes and a boastful Tartarin full of poetic fire rolled into one,
is rapidly disappearing. Vanished is the poetry and romance of his
life, if it ever really existed outside of his remarkable _cantos_,
wherein heroic exploits as soldier, as hunter and as gallant lover
are recounted with a superb hyperbole. He seems to have tamed down
completely, in spite of the solitary, open-air life, and in spite of
the continuance of a certain element of danger, battling with the
elements. Encounters with jaguars, reptiles, savage Indians are,
however, the rarest of episodes in the life of even the most daring and
exposed _llanero_.[10]
A "picturesque" character of original _llanero_ stamp was the notorious
President Castro of Venezuela, who defied the whole world at one time,
and almost succeeded in bringing about a conflict between England and
the United States over the Guiana-Venezuela boundary.
The wild tribes of Venezuela, and part of British Guiana, are typified
in those inhabiting the delta of the Orinoco. They have preserved their
racial character in marked degree here, and have been regarded as an
offshoot of the Caribs.
"They are dark copper in colour, well set up, and strong, though not
as a rule tall, and with low foreheads, long and fine black hair, and
the usual high cheek-bones and wide nostrils of the South American
'Indians.' Where they have not come into contact with civilization
they are particularly shy and reticent, but they soon lose this
character, and some are said to show considerable aptitude as workmen.
"Living as they do mainly in the delta, their houses are of necessity
near water, and are raised from the ground as a protection against
floods, being sometimes, it is said, even placed on platforms in
trees. The roof is supported in the middle by two vertical posts
and a ridge pole, and is composed of palm-leaves, supported at the
corners by stakes. The sides of this simple hut consist of light
palm-leaf curtains, and the floor is of palm-planks. The hammocks are
slung on the ridge pole, and the bows and arrows of the occupants
fixed in the roof, while their household furniture, consisting of
home-made earthenware pots, calabashes of various sizes, etc., lie
promiscuously about the floor. Some of the Warraus are nomadic, and
live in canoes, but the majority are grouped in villages of these
huts, with captains responsible to the Venezuelan local government
authorities.
"The staple diet of these people is manioc and sago, with _chicha_
(a mixture of manioc meal and water). For clothing they dispense
with everything in their homes, except the _buja_ or _guayuco_, a
tiny apron of palm-fibre or ordinary cloth, held in position by a
belt of palm-fibre or hair. That worn by women is triangular, and
often ornamented with feathers or pearls. Among the whites the men
always wear a long strip of blue cloth, one end of which passes round
the waist, the other over the shoulder, hanging down in front; the
women have a kind of long sleeveless gown. For ornament they wear
necklaces of pearls, or more frequently of red, blue and white beads,
and tight bracelets and bangles of hair or _curagua_ (palm-fibre);
some pierce ears, nose and lower lips for the insertion of pieces
of reed, feathers or berries on fête days. The characteristic dull
red paint on their bodies is intended to act as a preventive against
mosquitoes, and it is made by boiling the powdered bark and wood of
a creeper in turtle or alligator fat. All hair is removed from the
body by the simple but painful process of pulling each one out with a
split reed.
"Marriage, as is usual among savage races, takes place at a very
early age, the husband being often only fourteen, the wife ten or
twelve years of age. Polygamy is common, but not universal; where a
chief or rich man has several wives, the first, or the earliest to
become a mother, takes charge of the establishment during the absence
of the owner on his hunting or fishing expeditions. The girls are
sometimes betrothed at the age of five or six years, living in the
house of the future husband from that time on.
"At birth the mother is left in a separate house alone, where
all food that she may need is placed for her, though she remains
unvisited by any of her companions throughout the day; meanwhile the
father remains in his hammock for several days, apparently owing to
a belief that some evil may befall the child; there he receives the
congratulations of the villagers, who bring him presents of the best
game caught on their expeditions. This male child-bed, or _couvade_,
is common to many of the Indian tribes.
"The dead are mourned with elaborate ceremony--shouting, weeping and
slow, monotonous music; the nearest relatives of the defunct cut
their hair. The body is placed in leaves and tied up in the hammock
used by the owner during life, and then placed in a hollow tree-trunk
or in his canoe. This rude coffin is then generally placed on a small
support, consisting of bamboo trestles, and so left in the deserted
house of the dead man."[11]
The wild animal life of this part of South America has always been
of interest, whether to the scientist or the general reader. It is
varied, as it is in Mexico and elsewhere in Spanish America, by the
natural topographical and climatic divisions of _tierra caliente_,
_tierra templada_ and _tierra fria_, or hot, temperate and cold lands
respectively.
The various kinds of monkeys include the spider-monkeys, the
squirrel-monkeys, the marmosets, the vampires, the jaguar and puma--the
former of which has been credited with living in the high branches of
the trees in flood-times, to the perturbation of the monkeys, upon
whose home it intrudes, chasing them to the tree-tops. In the Andes
the peculiar "Speckled bear" has its abode. The manati is a native of
the Orinoco, and the sloth of its forests, as also the "Ant-bear" and
armadillo.
These creatures may not always be readily seen by the passing
traveller, but the birds are more present, although, as elsewhere in
the Tropics, their plumage is more noteworthy than their song.
"Beautifully coloured jays, the peculiar cassiques, with their
hanging nests, starlings, and the many violet, scarlet and other
tanagers, with some very pretty members of the finch tribe, are
all fairly abundant in Venezuela. Greenlets, some of the allied
waxwings, and thrushes of various kinds, with the equally familiar
wrens, are particularly abundant, nor does the cosmopolitan swallow
absent himself from this part of the world. The numerous family of
the American flycatchers has fifty representatives in Venezuela,
and the allied ant-birds constitute one of the exceptions to the
rule, in possessing a pleasant warbling note. The chatterers
include some of the most notable birds of Venezuela, and we may
specially notice the strange-looking umbrella-bird which extends
into the Amazon territory, known from its note as the fife-bird;
the variegated bell-bird, which makes a noise like the ringing of
a bell; the gay manikins, whose colours include blue, crimson,
orange and yellow, mingled with sober blacks, browns and greens; the
nearly allied cock-of-the-rock is one of the most beautiful birds of
Guayana, orange-red being the principal colour in its plumage, while
its helmet-like crest adds to its grandeur; the hen is a uniform
reddish-brown. The wood-hewers are more of interest from their habits
than the beauty of their plumage.
"The beautiful green jacamars, the puff-birds, and the
bright-coloured woodpeckers are found all over Venezuela in the
forests, but their relatives the toucans are among the most peculiar
of the feathered tribe. With their enormous beaks and gaudy plumage
they are easily recognized when seen, and can make a terrible din if
a number of them collected together are disturbed, the individual
cry being short and unmelodious. Several cuckoos are found in
Venezuela, some having more or less dull plumage and being rare,
while others with brighter feathers are gregarious. With the trogons,
however, we come to the near relatives of the beautiful quezal,
all medium-sized birds, with the characteristic metallic blue or
green back and yellow or red breasts. The tiny, though equally
beautiful, humming-birds are common sights in the forest, but a
sharp eye is needed to detect them in their rapid flight through
the dim light; some of the Venezuelan forms are large, however,
notably the king humming-bird of Guayana; and the crested coquettes,
though smaller, are still large enough to make their golden-green
plumage conspicuous. The birds which perhaps most force themselves,
not by sight but by sound, upon the notice of travellers are the
night-jars; the 'who are you?' is as well known in Trinidad as in
Venezuela. The great wood night-jar of Guayana has a very peculiar
mournful cry, particularly uncanny when heard in the moonlight. The
king-fisher-like motmots have one representative in Venezuela, but
the other member of the group, which includes all the preceding
birds, constitute a family by itself. This is the oil-bird, or
_guacharo_, famous from Humboldt's description of the cave of Caripe
in which they were first found. The young birds are covered with
thick masses of yellow fat, for which they are killed in large
numbers by the local peasantry. They live in caves wherever they are
found, and only come out to feed at dusk.
"Other birds which are sure to be observed even by the least
ornithological traveller are the parrots and macaws, which fly in
flocks from tree to tree of the forest, uttering their discordant
cries. The macaws have blue and red or yellow plumage, but the
parrots and parraquets are all wholly or mainly of a green hue.
The several owls are naturally seldom seen, and, in the author's
experience, rarely heard.
"There are no less than thirty-two species of falcons or eagles
known from Venezuela, and of these many are particularly handsome,
such as the swallow-tailed kite and the harpy eagle of Guayana.
Their loathsome carrion-eating cousins, the vultures, have four
representatives.
"In the rivers and caños of the lowlands there are abundant
water-birds, and the identified species include a darter, two
pelicans, several herons or _garzas_, the indiscriminate slaughter
of which in the breeding season for egret plumes has been one of the
disgraces of Venezuela, as well as storks and ibises. Among the most
beautiful birds of these districts are the rosy, white or scarlet
flamingoes, huge flocks of which are sometimes seen rising from the
water's edge at the approach of a boat or canoe. There are also seven
Venezuelan species of duck.
"The various pigeons and doves possess no very notable
characteristics, and one or two of the American quails are found in
the Andes. Other game-birds include the fine-crested curassows of
Guayana, the nearly allied guans and the pheasant-like hoatzin. There
are several rails, and the finfeet are represented. The sun bittern
is very common on the Orinoco. There are members of the following
groups: the trumpeters (tamed in Brazil to protect poultry), plovers,
terns, petrels, grebes, and, lastly, seven species of the flightless
tinamous.
"Descending lower in the scale, we come to the animals which are, or
used to be, most often associated in the mind with the forests of
South America. The snakes are very numerous, but only a minority are
poisonous. Of the latter, the beautiful but deadly coral-snake is not
very common, but a rattlesnake and the formidable 'bushmaster' are
often seen. Of the non-poisonous variety the water-loving boas and
_tigres_ or anacondas are mainly confined to the delta and the banks
of the Guayana rivers. The _cazadora_ (one of the colubers) and the
Brazilian wood-snake or _sipo_, with its beautiful coloration, are
common; the blind or velvet snake is often found in the enclosures of
dwellings.
"One of the lizards, the amphisbæna, is known in the country as the
double-headed snake, and is popularly supposed to be poisonous,
but there are many species of the pretty and more typical forms,
especially in the dry regions, while the edible iguana is common
in the forests. There are eleven species of crocodiles, of which
the _caiman_ infests all the larger rivers and caños. The Chelonidæ
include only two land tortoises, but there are several turtles in the
seas and rivers, and representatives of this family from the Gulf of
Paria often figure on the menus of City companies.
"There are some six genera of frogs and toads to represent the
Amphibians, and the evening croaking of the various species of the
former on the Llanos is very characteristic of those regions; one,
in particular, emits a sound like a human shout, and a number of them
give the impression of a crowd at a football match.
"Fish abound in rivers, lakes and seas, but, considering their
number, remarkably little is known about them. Some are regarded as
poisonous, and others are certainly dangerous, such as the small but
ferocious _caribe_ of the Llano rivers, which is particularly feared
by bathers, as an attack from a shoal results in numbers of severe,
often fatal, wounds. The _temblador_, or electric eel, is very
abundant in the western Llanos, and is as dangerous in its way as the
_caribe_.
"The insects are too numerous for more than casual reference, but it
may be noted that the _mosquito_ of the Spaniards is a small and very
annoying sandfly; the mosquito, as we know it, is, and always has
been, called _zancudo de noche_ by the Spanish-speaking inhabitants
of Venezuela. The gorgeous butterflies and the emerald lights of
the fireflies are in a measure a compensation for the discomforts
caused by their relatives, but of the less attractive forms, the
most interesting are the hunting ants, which swarm through houses at
times devouring all refuse, and the parasol ants, which make with the
leaves they carry hot-beds, as it were, for the fungus upon which
they feed.
"One of the most unpleasant of the lower forms of life in the
forests is the _araña mono_, or big spider of Guayana, which
sometimes measures more than six inches across; it is found in the
remote parts of the forest, and its bites cause severe fever. The
better-known tarantula, though less dangerous, can inflict severe
bites. The extremely poisonous scorpions, and the _garrapatas_, or
ticks, must be seen or felt to be appreciated.
"We may leave the lower forms of life to more technical works, but
the amusing 'calling-crab' deserves special mention. With his one
enormous paw of pincers the male, if disturbed, will sit upon the mud
or sand and apparently challenge all the world to 'come on' in a most
amusing fashion."[12]
The wild people and the wild life of northern South America remind
us again that the first discovered part of the continent is in some
respects still the least known and most backward. The "streams flowing
from the Earthly Paradise" of Columbus still traverse an Elysium for
the adventurous traveller.
The coast of the Spanish Main trends now eastwards to the possession of
Britain, in the Guayanas, and the beautiful Island of Trinidad, which
we shall now enter upon.
Columbus, on his voyage in 1496, approaching South America, beheld
three peaks rising from a beautiful island clothed with verdure.
Uniting the pious custom of his time with his impression of the
topography of the new land, he called the island "Trinidad," or the
Trinity. Spain held it. Sir Walter Raleigh burned its capital, and
finally it fell to Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
To-day, this land off this wild coast, under the flag of Britain,
is a revelation to the traveller, who--British or other--may have
forgotten its existence. Its capital, Port of Spain, is one of the most
pleasing towns in the West Indies, with two cathedrals, shaded streets,
tramways, government institutions and public buildings, libraries,
shops, a beautiful botanical garden and other evidences of a very
modern civilization and activity. The soil is rich, the climate good,
the hurricanes that from time to time devastate the West Indies do not
visit it. It lies almost in the mouth of the river Orinoco. Venezuela
claims it as hers. I well recollect the aspect of this foothold of
Britain after the wilds of South America. But its modernity does
not detract from the interest of the more ancient Spanish American
communities.
British Guiana, whose coast we soon approach, and its neighbours, Dutch
and French Guiana, are ranged in sequence along the Atlantic front for
seven hundred miles, and present topographical conditions curiously
alike.
Guiana, as a geographical term, is that district lying between the
water-parting of the Orinoco and the Amazon and the coast; and is
almost a topographical entity, embodying part of Venezuela. It is, in
a sense, an island, by reason of the union of the Orinoco and Amazon
fluvial systems by the Casiquiare.
Students of Anglo-American relations will recollect that the
controversy over the boundary line between British and Venezuelan
territory here became the subject of contention--and almost of
war--between Great Britain and the United States in 1895, by reason of
the work of the wild President Castro and the unwarranted behaviour of
President Cleveland of the United States--behaviour which was greatly
resented by English people in South America and which has not yet been
forgotten. Happily arbitration was entered upon--Britain practically
being awarded what she had justly claimed.
British Guiana is one of the neglected outposts of the British Empire,
the only foothold of England on the mainland of South America, a place
of considerable interest, beauty and utility, but about which the good
folk of Great Britain know and perhaps care little.
The British public cannot be expected to be well acquainted with all
the outlying parts of the immense empire which fortune or providence
has delivered over to them, but, through their statesmen, they could,
if they were so minded, bring about a much more constructive and
energetic policy than that which the inaccessible and old-fashioned
Colonial Office and Crown Colony officials consider does duty for
government and development.
The population of this land is a handful of folk of about the size of
a second-rate English town, notwithstanding that the extent of the
country is equal to the whole of Great Britain. Its rich littoral is
watered by large rivers, rising in a little-known interior. Sugar is
produced, but might be produced in quantities to satisfy the British
house-wife did British folk know anything about the subject. There are
enormous timber resources and valuable minerals.
[Illustration: INDIANS AT HOME, GUIANA.
Vol. II. To face p. 52.]
But in such development comes the cry for "labour." It is the first cry
of all tropical possessions. Where is labour to come from? The remedy
generally proposed is that of bringing in coloured labour from other
parts of the empire, coolies and others. This policy has some fatal
defects. Among these the practice of bringing in hordes of coloured
men without their women or families is one of the most unwise. It is
unnatural to condemn these folk to live without their female partners,
and if persisted in will, sooner or later, bring serious evils upon
the community that practises it. The existing labour should be more
carefully fostered, and if labour be imported it should be as far
as possible in the form of permanent settlers, with their wives and
families, the condition of whose life and surroundings should be
intelligently mapped out beforehand.[13]
Guiana brings back sad memories of Sir Walter Raleigh, he who by reason
of his antagonism to Spain was a popular hero, and around whose figure
much romance has centred.
Partly with the object of recouping his fortune, Raleigh sailed, in
1595, to Guiana, a voyage of exploration and conquest, with the main
object of finding that El Dorado which was so strong an obsession of
Elizabethan times, imagined to be hidden somewhere amid the Cordillera
or forests of Spanish America. His book, recounting the incidents of
this voyage, _The Discoverie of Guiana_, which he published upon his
return home, is one of the most thrilling adventurous narratives of
the period, although it has been said that it contains much that was
romance rather than fact: and incredulity marked its reception. On his
second expedition, after Elizabeth's death--an expedition which was
perhaps one of the saddest of forlorn hopes, whereby Raleigh hoped,
trusting perhaps to a chapter of accidents, to escape from the dreadful
position of disfavour and threatened execution into which he had fallen
in the reign of James I--he reached Trinidad and sailed up the Orinoco,
fell sick of a fever and suffered many disasters in the endeavour to
carry out his undertaking to find a vast gold mine upon territory not
belonging to Spain. Should he fail, or trespass upon Spanish territory,
he was to be executed as a pirate, a fate which practically befell him,
though he was executed under his old sentence of conspiracy.
The illustrious Raleigh--whose name some writers love to
belittle--"took a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to the
scaffold," for the habit of smoking tobacco--that beautiful gift of the
Spanish American Indian to the Old World--had become rooted among the
Elizabethan courtiers.
But to return to Guiana. The topography of this part of South America
is full of interest and variety, as are the history and customs of
its people, aboriginal and other, although much of the past is marked
by dreadful happenings. Wars, the deeds of buccaneers, rebellions of
negroes, massacre of the whites, deaths from fevers and so forth stand
out from its pages.
It is a magnificent country, with grand rivers, cascades and the most
wonderful mountains and scenery, which it is difficult to surpass in
any part of South America. And here the traveller and the naturalist
may revel in the works of Nature.
Guiana was the first part of the New World to be explored by
adventurers other than the Spaniard and the Portuguese, and to this day
it stands out as foreign to the rest of Spanish America. The English,
the French, the Dutch fought between themselves for its territory and
its colonizing and trading stations. The English sought an El Dorado,
the Dutchman thought of its tobacco--which the Spaniards would not
permit him to obtain from their colonies--the Frenchman took part
possibly out of national pride, thinking he ought not to be left out
in the partition, but his work seems to have been of a disastrous
nature ever since he set foot there. The Pilgrim Fathers, before they
"moored their bark on a wild New England coast," had dreams of settling
here, where the warm climate and tropic possibilities seemed to hold
out greater allurements than the cold coasts of the more northern
continent. When Surinam, or Dutch Guiana, was exchanged for the New
Netherlands and New Amsterdam--to-day New York--few Dutchmen dissented,
and some English protested.
"Like the valley of the Amazon, to which system it may be considered
an offshoot, it is a land of forest and stream. The coast is
generally an alluvial flat, often below high-water mark, fringed
with courida (_Avicennia nitida_) on the seashore, and mangrove
(_Rhizophora manglier_) on the banks of the tidal rivers. Where it is
not empoldered it is subject to the wash of the sea in front and the
rising of the swamp water behind. In fact, it is a flooded country,
as the name, from _wina_ or _Guina_ (water) seems to imply.
"The lowest land is the delta of the Orinoco, where the rising of
the river often covers the whole. Coming to the north-west of British
Guiana, we have a number of channels (_itabos_) forming natural
waterways through swamps, navigable for canoes and small vessels. A
similar series of natural canals is found in Dutch Guiana. From the
Orinoco to Cayenne this alluvium is rarely above high-water mark,
and is subject to great changes from currents, the only protection
being the natural palisade of courida, with its fascine-like roots.
On the coast of Cayenne, however, the land rises, and there are rocky
islands; here the swamps come at some distance behind the shore, and
between ridges and banks of sand.
"Behind this low land comes the old beach of some former age--reefs
of white quartz sand, the stunted vegetation of which can only exist
because the rainfall is heavy and almost continuous. This is the
fringe of the great forest region which extends over the greater part
of the country. Here the land rises and becomes hilly, and the rivers
are obstructed by a more or less continuous series of rocks, which
form rapids and prevent them running dry when the floods recede.
Behind these, to the south, the hills gradually rise to mountains
of 5,000 feet, and in the case of a peculiar group of sandstone
castellated rocks, of which Roraima is the highest, to 8,000 feet.
"The numerous rivers bring down vegetable matter in solution, clay
and fine sand suspended and great masses of floating trees and
grasses. These form islands in the larger estuaries and bars at the
mouths of most of the rivers; they also tinge the ocean for about
fifty miles beyond the coast from green to a dirty yellow. Wind and
wave break down the shore in one place and extend it in another,
giving a great deal of trouble to the plantations by tearing away
the dams which protect their cultivation. Every large river has its
islands, which begin with sand-banks, and by means of the courida
and mangrove become ultimately habitable. In the Essequebo there
are several of a large extent, on which formerly were many sugar
plantations, one of which remains in Wakenaam. The Corentyne and
Marowyne have also fair-sized islands, but none of these has ever
been settled. Off the coast of Cayenne the rocky Iles du Salut and
Connetable are quite exceptional, for the coast is elsewhere a low
mud-flat, sloping very gradually, and quite shallow.
"The longest river is the Essequebo, which rises in the extreme
south, and like most of the larger streams, flows almost due north.
It is about 600 miles in length; the Corentyne is nearly as long, and
the Marowyne and Oyapok are probably about the same length. Other
rivers that would be considered of great importance in Europe are
seen at intervals of a few miles all along the coast. The Demerara,
on which the capital of British Guiana is situated, is about the
size of the Thames, and 250 miles long, and the Surinam, on the
left bank of which is Paramaribo, 300. All are blocked by rapids at
various distances from 50 to about 100 miles inland, up to which
they are navigable for small vessels, but beyond, only for properly
constructed boats that can be drawn through the falls or over
portages.
"The smaller rivers, called creeks, whether they fall into the sea
or into the larger streams, are very numerous; over a thousand have
Indian names. Many of them are of a fair size, and the majority have
dark water of the colour of weak coffee, whence the name Rio Negro
has been given to several South American rivers. These take their
rise in the pegass swamps, so common everywhere, and are tinged by
the dead leaves of the dense growth of sedges, which prevent these
bodies of water from appearing like lakes. There are, however, a
few deeper swamps, where a lake-like expanse is seen in the centre,
but no real lakes appear to exist anywhere. The creeks are often
connected with each other by channels, called _itabos_, or, by the
Venezuelans, _canos_, through which it is possible to pass for long
distances without going out to sea. During the rainy season these
channels are easily passable, and light canoes can be pushed through
from the head of one creek to that of another, the result being that
large tracts of country are easily passed. In this way the Rio Negro
and Amazon can be reached from the Essequebo in one direction and the
Orinoco in another, the watersheds being ill-defined from there being
no long mountain ranges.
"The higher hills and mountains are not grouped in any order. The
group called the Pakaraima are the most important from their
position on the boundary between British Guiana, Venezuela and
Brazil, and also from the neighbourhood of Roraima giving rise to
streams which feed the Orinoco, Amazon and Essequebo. This peculiar
clump of red sandstone rocks forms the most interesting natural
object in Guiana. Roraima is the principal, but there are others,
named Kukenaam, Iwaikarima, Waiakapiapu, etc., almost equally curious
and striking. All have the appearance of great stone castles,
standing high above the slopes, which are covered with rare and
beautiful plants, some of which are unknown elsewhere. The main
characteristics of this group are due to weathering, the result being
grotesque forms that stand boldly forth, together with fairy dells,
waterfalls decorated with most delicate ferns and mosses and grand
clumps of orchids and other flowering plants."[14]
It is not to be supposed that British Guiana has been neglected by
its modern administration. A great deal has been done in draining, in
reconstructing the villages, in fostering agriculture, in organizing
the natives, in providing against malaria and disease by scientific
methods, such as at Panama had been found so beneficial. The treatment
of immigrant labour is almost paternal in some respects. Surinam is
also progressing, stimulated by the example of Demerara. Cayenne, the
French possession, suffers still from being a penal settlement.
The life of the coloured folk, who so largely predominate among the
population, offers many problems, whose solutions will doubtless work
themselves out. The people of Guiana are possibly more varied than
those of any other community in the world, with representations of
every race--the European and Indo-European, the African negro, the
Chinese, folk from Java and Annam, together with its own native races,
and the white American, with many mixed breeds.
In the views of the writer already quoted--
"Among the other points of interest there is the impress of the
three nationalities upon the negro, which are very conspicuous in
the women. The French negress is unlike her sister in Surinam, and
she differs also from the English type in Demerara. Again, they all
stand apart from the real African and the bush negro, illustrating
the possibility of the perpetuation of acquired characters and the
manner in which tribal differences have been developed. 'The French,'
said an old writer, 'are a civil, quick and active sort of people,
given to talking, especially those of the female sex'; the Dutch have
a more heavy look and wear their clothes loose and baggy, cleanliness
being more conspicuous than a good fit; the English (including
specially the Barbardian) are decidedly careless and slovenly,
and inclined to ape the latest fashion. A Frenchman speaks of the
Demerara negress as dressing up in her mistress's old gowns and
wanting a style of her own; we have seen a cook going to market in
an old silk dress once trimmed with lace, now smudged with soot and
reeking with grease. They all have a love for finery but no taste in
colour; here and there, however, a girl with a pure white dress and
embroidered head-kerchief pleases the eye and proves that dress is of
some importance in our estimate of these people.
"The negro man has no peculiarity in his clothes; he simply follows
the European. His working dress is generally the dirty and ragged
remains of what we may call his Sunday suit. He may be clean
otherwise, but his covering gives us the contrary impression. There
is a character about the Demerara creole, but he is not so English as
the Barbadian, who is 'neither Carib nor creole, but true Barbadian
born.' Loyalty to the Mother Country as well as to his own island is
very conspicuous; he has followed the white man in this as well as in
his language, which retains some of the obsolete words and phrases of
the Stuart period, including the asseveration 'deed en fait' for 'in
deed and in faith.' These national characteristics go to prove that
the negro has been changed somewhat by environment, and this can be
easily seen when he is compared with the African, who is represented
here and there by a few of the old people who were rescued from
slavers.
"The bush negro of Surinam, who ranges also through Cayenne and into
Brazilian territory, is a distinct type. Made up of a number of
African tribes, and probably dominated by the Coromantee, the most
independent of these, he has not been much affected by his short
service under the Dutch. From a physical standpoint he is a fine
fellow, muscular and brawny; a good boatman and warrior, he has held
his own for two centuries. Having first gained his freedom by his
strong arm, he fought to retain it; the result is a man that must be
respected. Possibly he learnt something from the native Indian, but
he has never been very friendly, for the aborigines do not like the
negro. In Demerara, and to a less extent in Surinam, Indians were
formerly employed to hunt runaway slaves, and this accounts for the
ill-feeling.
"We may consider the bush negro as an African savage, very slightly
altered by the change from the forests of the Congo to the wilds of
Guiana. Like African tribes, the communities have no bond of union,
but are each under its own granman, or chief. This segregation has
been the cause of much trouble in the past, for a treaty might be
made with one chief which was by no means binding on the others.
Their huts are low and confined, lacking any conveniences and without
order. Their few arts are of African types, and their tribal marks
coarse scars. Small clearings are made near their dwellings in which
ground provisions enough to support their families are raised, and
sometimes a little rice to sell. They also cut timber and bring it
to Paramaribo for sale, with the proceeds of which they buy finery.
Latterly they have been found useful to carry gold-diggers and
balata-bleeders into the interior, for they are well accustomed to
navigate the rapids. In Surinam the latest estimate of their number
is 8,000; a few years ago they were put down as about 25,000 in
all Guiana. They do not appear to increase to any extent; in fact,
judging by the number of runaways who have taken to the bush in two
centuries, the decrease from war and other causes must have been
enormous. Their sexual relations, which are very loose, as among
negroes generally, do not consist with an increase, but at the same
time there is no doubt that we have here a survival of the strongest.
Whether these people will ever mingle with other negroes is doubtful;
at present the bush negro despises the fellow with a master or
employer, and the black man of the settled portion of the colony
treats him as a savage.
"In British Guiana the runaways were hunted by Indians; it followed,
therefore, that no such communities of wild men were possible. The
river people are largely of mixed African and Indian blood, more
often perhaps with more or less of the European. They carry on the
timber trade and are prominent as boat hands. Formerly, every family
had its bateau or corial, but since steamers have been plying up the
rivers a craft is less needed.
[Illustration: GEORGETOWN, BRITISH GUIANA.
Vol. II. To face p. 64.]
"The coloured people are of all shades. The offspring of black and
white is the mulatto, who generally partakes equally of the character
of both races, but with variations. The man is coarser-looking
than the woman, but as a rule he is strong and healthy; if, however,
he marries a woman of his own colour the offspring are in many cases
weaker than the parents. A cob is a reversion towards the negro, the
child of one black parent with a mulatto, three-quarters black and
hardly distinguishable. The mustee or quadroon, who is three-fourths
white, and the costee or octoroon may be considered as practically
white and in many cases can only be distinguished as coloured by
those who know their parentage. In Guiana colour prejudice is most
conspicuous among these lighter people, for they want to marry a
'higher' colour than themselves, and are considered as degrading the
family when demeaning it by coming down towards the negro. A black
woman will think more of her illegitimate mulatto children than of
those she has borne to her negro husband. The ideal of the pure negro
is the bucra--the well-to-do European; poor whites or coloured people
are in his opinion unworthy of respect. He rarely gets on well as
servant to one of his own colour; quarrels and fights are common
among workmen where they are under men of their own class. The negro
also despises the Chinaman and East Indian, who in turn prefer to
have few dealings with them. The general result is that there are not
many sexual unions between the races. Now and again a respectable
black man, doctor or lawyer, marries a white woman, but such unions
generally bring trouble. The tendency now is for the darker coloured
people to merge themselves in the black and the lighter in the
white; the probable result will ultimately be to increase the
distinction and reduce the present variations.
"There will almost certainly, however, always remain a coloured
class, the future of whom has often been considered by travellers
and anthropologists. Some have gone so far as to say that they will
ultimately be the rulers of the West Indies, but there is little
foundation for such an opinion. No doubt the lighter-coloured people
will in time take the place of the pure whites from their greater
suitability to the climate; their number will, however, probably
never be great enough to make much impression. The coloured man is
not so aggressive as the educated negro, who has come to the front in
late years as a political agitator, and who speaks of 'the people' as
being those of his own race, notwithstanding the fact that in British
Guiana they are exceeded in number by the East Indians.
"The negro is prominent in the Legislature and the learned
professions; he is the schoolmaster, the dispenser or sick nurse,
and the lower grade clerk, but he does not succeed as a shopkeeper.
The gold and diamond diggers and balata-bleeders are also black men
under white superintendence. He undoubtedly fills a place which, in
his absence, could only be occupied by inferior workmen of other
races, and is gradually becoming a useful member of the community.
As a plantation labourer he fails, mainly because he expects higher
pay than estates can afford. He is capable of doing more hard work
than any other tropical labourer, but he prefers a job of a few hours
rather than steady, continuous work. His passions are easily roused,
and when the fit is on it is useless to reason with him. After giving
his employer volleys of abuse he sometimes asks a favour as if he had
done nothing. Some will boast that they bear no malice, that they are
open-minded, much better than some other people who will not forget
an offence. Morality is largely a matter of law. 'You can't do me
nothing' is a common reply when he is told that something he was
doing was wrong. Many of them are well versed in the law, for crowds
assemble round the magistrates' courts every day. Sometimes one will
say that if he had ten dollars to pay the fine he would do something
illegal; in fact, it is notorious that people who complain loudly of
poverty can often pay fines of what is to them very large amounts.
One day a poor woman will be begging a penny and the next paying two
to five pounds in the court. Yet they have rarely anything saved, but
the fines can be raised by loans and gifts from their relations and
friends.
"The East Indian will certainly be the man of the future in Guiana if
the immigration system is continued. Already he is ahead in British
Guiana, and forms more than a third of the population of Surinam, if
we include the Javanese. Though not so strong as the negro, he is
more reliable, and without him there would be no Demerara or Surinam
sugar. He enjoys better health in the Tropics than other races, as
is easily seen by the census returns of India and the death-rates
on the plantations. A great increase of population may generally be
predicted where people are kind to their children, and in this the
East Indian is pre-eminent. We shall say something further about
him in another place, and will only here deal with his clothes.
He is probably the only real tropical man who dresses to suit the
climate, and he is always well dressed. With a few yards of cotton
cloth he drapes himself in a manner that could only be emulated by a
great artist. Any one who knows what tight-fitting European clothing
means in the Tropics can appreciate the loose folds of the East
Indian. Through the ages he has learnt how to dress in a graceful
and picturesque manner, which, however, is practically inimitable
by others. The women wear most gaudy colours, but their taste is
so perfect that there is rarely anything discordant. And yet these
people are hardly ever of a higher class than that of the field
labourer. This natural taste in drapery and colour must have been
the result of experience during long ages; that light clothing is
a success is proved by the natural increase, notwithstanding war,
famine and pestilence.
"The Chinese were imported as agricultural labourers, but may be
considered as failures in that line, although in other respects very
useful colonists. They have been condemned in other countries as
undesirable, and even in British Guiana they were once stigmatized
as sly rogues and thieves. Now the stigma is undeserved, for they
form a trading class of considerable importance. A few have worked
at the gold-diggings as well as in the forest as wood-cutters and
charcoal-burners; there is also a small agricultural settlement on
the Demerara River which is a picture of clean economic cultivation.
They are, however, more conspicuous for their success in carrying
on small country shops, where the profits are hardly sufficient to
support people who are not content with a very bare living.
"The only white men ever imported as labourers were the Madeira
Portuguese. Madeira was almost ruined by the vine pest about the
time of the slave emancipation, and thousands of poor people came
to British Guiana. For want of care during the year of seasoning
many died, and the remainder were found quite unfit for field work.
They were, however, useful colonists, and are now traders and in
many cases well-to-do property owners. They came as paupers, but by
thrift and industry went ahead, until practically every spirit-shop
and corner grocery was in their hands. Only the Chinaman can compete
with them, and he only does so in the villages. The Madeiran is
a law-abiding citizen, but he cringes too much to the negro. The
general result of the competition of the small shops is that the
poorer classes get their provisions very cheap. Unfortunately, by
giving way to the demands of their customers, a condition of things
has arisen that no independent shopkeeper could possibly endure.
However, the Madeiran has learnt to bear and forbear, and he hardly
ever resents the insults and bullyings which the negress with her
penny is always ready to launch upon him. He is generally looked
upon as mean, and willing to stint himself to save, but this is
a character which is generally wanted in the Tropics, where the
tendency to thrift is always sadly lacking.
"The native Indian can hardly be reckoned as a member of the
community; he is, however, useful to the traveller, the gold-digger
and balata-bleeder. As a boatman, wood-cutter or huntsman, he is in
his place, but his sturdy independence prevents him from becoming a
reliable servant. Make him your friend and he will do anything in his
power for you, but he takes orders from no one. This refers to the
man of the forest whose wants are few, and when satisfied, there is
no further necessity for his working. For a gun, powder or shot you
may induce him to help you; when he gets these he naturally wants to
be free to use them. There is, however, a class of half-civilized
Indians growing up who are fairly reliable, but they do not remain
in town longer than is necessary for transacting their business as
carriers of timber, charcoal and cord-wood. No Indian man can endure
the trammels of civilization; sometimes a buckeen, as the women are
called, will take a place as house-servant, but even these are not
common. Unfortunately, the men are given to rum-drinking, and laws
are made for the country districts to prevent the sale to them of
spirits.
"The real wild Indian is disappearing from his old haunts. Forty
years ago he could be found in many of the creeks of the Demerara
River where now only a few of his degenerated descendants exist. As
a huntsman he must have a sort of game preserve, which is impossible
where gangs of wood-cutters and balata-bleeders carry on their work.
He still exists, however, in the far interior, living in much the
same way as he did when America was discovered, except that he does
not fight. The men are still expert hunters and fishermen, and the
women as proficient in cultivating and preparing the staff of life,
cassava-bread. Their old weapons, the bow and blow-pipe, are largely
replaced by the gun, but the large fishes about the rapids are still
shot in the old way."[15]
The things of the natural world which meet the eye of the observant
traveller are of extreme variety and interest here.
"Nowhere in the world, perhaps, are such beautiful adaptations to
natural conditions and such perfect interdependence. The trees bear
nuts and fruits to feed monkeys, rodents, birds, bats and fishes,
and because these are present in such numbers the cat family is also
well represented. Again, every tree has flowers that require insect
fertilization, consequently myriads of insects are here; these, in
turn, are kept within bounds by ant-eaters, birds, monkeys, lizards,
and those classes of insects which feed on them, such as mantids,
wasps and robber flies. In the water the smaller fishes feed on
fallen fruit; they provide sustenance to the larger species, which in
turn become the prey of alligators and otters. On the ground, in the
water, and up in the trees the struggle goes on by which the balance
of life is kept even. Notwithstanding this universal war on every
side, species hold their own and develop great capabilities according
to their needs. Beautiful contrivances have been gained to suit
the conditions under which they live, among them being protective
coloration and the careful adjustment of means to the end, whether
to catch and hold or to get away. The jaguar stalks the acourie so
that not a twig is snapped or a leaf rustled, but the sharp rodent
is always on the alert, ready to leave its feed of nuts the moment
it recognizes the nearness of its foe. Under this pitch-dark canopy,
through which no glimmer of moon and stars can penetrate, many a
painful tragedy goes on every night. But the acourie still lives, in
spite of its enemies, for, like its relation, the guinea-pig, it is
very prolific. The Indian says that every animal has its tiger; he
himself is one of these, and must move as silently or be content to
go without meat."[16]
Guiana is within comparatively easy reach of Europe and the United
States. It cannot be doubted that, in the future, it will more and more
become a resort of travel, and possibly of much greater settlement
and development. Its bad name will be lost: its virtues brought to the
front.
* * * * *
South of the Guiana region and of the Orinoco lies the great region of
the Amazon Valley, which we shall now traverse.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Readers of Kingsley's grand _Westward Ho!_ will remember the
description of La Guayra and the coast here too.
[5] The emissary was instructed to suggest the interesting trade policy
of a "goods for goods" exchange: a policy which in Latin America and
elsewhere might have an important future.
[6] This natural canal has been well described in _The Flowing Road_,
by Caspar Whitney.
[7] _Venezuela_, op. cit.
[8] Cf. _Colombia_, op. cit. Also _Venezuela_.
[9] _Venezuela_, op. cit.
[10] _Colombia_, op. cit.
[11] _Venezuela_, op. cit.
[12] _Venezuela_, op. cit.
[13] There is an indication that British Guiana is itself awakening
to the need for exerting itself, in order to bring itself before the
notice of a somnolent Mother Country. A deputation arrived in England
from the colony in the middle of 1919 charged with the purpose of
interviewing the Secretaries for the Colonies and Indian Government,
and they went through a course of dinners, meetings and lectures,
in which the customary excellent speeches were made. Certain of the
speakers made the asservations that British Guiana "could supply all
the meat, except mutton, consumed in the Mother Country," and sugar and
minerals received equal notice, whilst gold, diamonds and bauxite--an
ore of aluminium--were also dangled, metaphorically speaking, before
the Imperial-minded diners.
To produce these excellent matters, five thousand settlers per annum
are required, the word settler being employed as a well-meaning term
for coloured labour. There must be a flow of British capital too. But
British capital has not very readily been forthcoming. It can be spared
for enterprises anywhere in Spanish America, even "wild-cat" schemes,
but not for Guiana, apparently.
[14] _Guiana, British, Dutch and French_, Rodway, South American
Series, a most interesting and valuable work.
[15] _Guiana_, op. cit.
[16] _Guiana_, op. cit.
CHAPTER XI
THE AMAZON VALLEY
IN COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, VENEZUELA, BOLIVIA, PERU, BRAZIL
The River Amazon, whilst it has not the classic interest of the
Nile, nevertheless appeals to the imagination in a way that that now
well-mapped and travelled waterway may not--in its still mysterious and
gloomy solitudes, traversing the largest areas of virgin forests on the
face of the globe, spreading its vast and numberless arms over an area
unexceeded in size by any other river.
The Amazon is born amid the high ranges and the snowy peaks of the
Andes--the greatest mountain range in the world being a fit parent of
the earth's greatest river. These high streams watered the territories
where dwelt a civilization or native culture, moreover, as ancient
perhaps as that of Egypt, the Andine people, and their successors the
Incas of Peru, the remains of whose temples and habitations are still
to be encountered on headland and plateau in those high regions of the
great Cordillera, as we have already had occasion to see.
Except for a few towns upon its main stream, which were brought into
being by reason principally of one natural product--the rubber of the
forests--the presence of civilized mankind upon its waters or its
shores is almost a negligible quantity.
The first echo of the white man's voice in the woods and across the
waters of the Amazon was in the year 1540, when a party of intrepid
Spaniards, after the Conquest of Peru, trusted their fortunes to its
mighty bosom and floated eastwards into a world of which they had no
knowledge, and, borne down by the current across an entire continent
for nearly three thousand miles, were carried into the Atlantic Ocean.
The voyage is one of the most remarkable in the history of fluvial, or
indeed of any navigation. Let us briefly recall it.
One day early in the above-mentioned year there was movement in the
city of Quito, the ancient capital of the Shiris, in the northern
kingdom of the conquered Incas, when a body of Spaniards, captained by
Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of the famous Conquistador of Peru, Hernando,
set forth to reach a fabled land of gold, an unknown El Dorado, which
Indians, imaginative or deceptive, told their white masters lay far
within the forest fastnesses beyond the Andes, a land of "Oriental
spices," an empire in some beautiful and languorous region which might
far surpass in riches and enjoyment anything which even Peru had
yielded.
A clever guerilla captain, esteemed the best lance and master of horse
in Peru, Gonzalo Pizarro, fired by the idea of this fresh conquest,
called together over three hundred Spaniards, part of the retinue
of the Government of Quito to which his brother had appointed him.
Half the company were mounted, all were well equipped: a mountain of
provisions was borne by a band of four thousand Indian servants; a
great herd of swine was driven in the rear, further to furnish food
for the party; and a thousand dogs, some of a ferocious breed, to hunt
down Indians should such be necessary, completed the outfit. Quito lies
in a broad recess of the Andes, leaving which the expedition climbed
the forbidding and snow-crowned slopes which lay between them and the
forests beyond, and disappeared.
Little did the members of this eager band, or the folk of Quito, know
of what lay in store, or how the forces of Nature should overwhelm even
so well-prepared an expedition.
The many tributaries of the River Amazon that have their rise in this
portion of the Andes cut their way through extremely rugged territory,
profound gorges, buried in tangled forests, where passage even for a
few travellers must often be cut out through the jungle, and which
to a large body of horsemen offered almost impenetrable obstacles.
The intense cold and rarefied air of the mountain solitudes caused
considerable suffering to the explorers, and the traveller to-day,
whilst impressed with the grandeur of the scenery of the high Andes of
Ecuador, crowned by the magnificent avenue of snow-capped volcanoes of
which Chimborazo and Cotopaxi are the chief, gladly escapes from the
inclement altitudes to the warmer climate of lower elevations. Then,
as now, the land was frequently shaken and devastated by terrific
earthquakes and discharges from the volcanoes, and it would appear that
such a state of unrest was abroad at the moment when Gonzalo and his
party appeared, as if Nature resented their intrusion.
However, at length a land known as that of Canelas, or perhaps so named
by the Spaniards from the profusion of beautiful cinnamon-bearing
trees, the name being Castilian for that spice, was reached. This was
as far as the leader had expected to come, and finding their hopes
unrealized, it would indeed have been well had the band returned to
Quito, reading from the dreadful forest its true lesson. But, lured
onwards by the tales of the Indians, who persisted that a few days'
march beyond there lay a land teeming with gold, and inhabited by
civilized and docile peoples, they pressed onward. Broad plains opened
to the view, those vast savannas of the _Montaña_ of the Amazon plain,
and trees of stupendous growth, such as perhaps only the equinoctial
regions of America produces, interspersed with beautiful flowering
shrubs.
But it is a peculiarity of these regions that Nature herein provides
practically nothing for the sustenance of man. Of extreme fertility
under cultivation, there is little of fruits or game such as would
support life, and the traveller to-day caught in these vast solitudes
without an ample supply of provisions may wander about miserably, far
from human aid, until he perishes. Moreover, the incessant deluges of
rain which descend upon this part of America, and which are indeed
the sources of the mighty flood of the Amazon, cause provisions to
deteriorate and clothing to decay, and add infinitely to the burdens
of the traveller. So it befel the band of Spaniards. Their provisions,
after several months of travel, had become exhausted, and their
clothing was reduced to rags. Part of the herd of swine had escaped,
and now they were obliged to subsist on the lean bodies of the dogs
and of their horses, together with such roots--often unknown and
poisonous--which they dug up in the forest.
In this condition Gonzalo and his companions reached the borders of
the considerable river which, known later as the Napo, is one of the
principal Ecuadorian tributaries of the Amazon, and which to them,
accustomed to the comparatively small rivers of Europe, seemed an
enormous stream, for so far they had not gazed upon the Amazon itself.
Some encouragement was derived from this river; its waters were at
least a living thing; its current might be a highway leading to the
desired land.
[Illustration: IN THE PERUVIAN MONTAÑA.
Vol. II. To face p. 78.]
At a point where the Napo--after the manner of many of these Andine
rivers--rushes through a narrow chasm cut like an artificial canal
through the last range of the mountains to escape to the plain the band
crossed, constructing a frail bridge by the method of felling a huge
tree across it, over which men and horses painfully made their way,
losing, however, one of their number, an unfortunate Spaniard, who,
missing his footing, seized with vertigo, plunged downwards several
hundred feet into the boiling torrent which thundered along the rocky
gorge.
Little was gained here. There was still no prospect of the promised
land. They were spent with toil and hunger; their provisions and their
powers were alike exhausted. Tribes of savage Indians were occasionally
met, who fought from behind rock or thicket with deadly poisoned
arrows; tribes such as still exist to-day in parts of this wild region
of the Amazon basin, and which still receive the traveller in similar
fashion. To go on or to return--that was the question which now pressed
itself on Gonzalo and his companions. But still the insidious tales of
gold and plenty lured them on.
At a point where the walls of the Amazon forest closed in impenetrably
upon the river verge, as is the natural character of these waterways,
monotonous by reason of their enclosure of the trees and creepers, and
affording no pathway along their banks, Pizarro called a halt. It was
decided that the present mode of progression was impossible. They must
take to the stream. A vessel of some sort must be constructed.
Necessity aiding their efforts, the Spaniards, after two months' work,
built a "brigantine," a vessel rudely constructed from the timber of
the forest joined together with nails from the horses' hoofs, rendered
watertight with the tattered clothes of the travellers used in lieu
of oakum, soaked in natural gums which abound in the trees, in the
place of pitch. This craft was capable of carrying only part of the
Spaniards: the remainder must continue to force their way along the
shore.
And now we hear of Orellana, destined to navigate the Amazon, in this,
the first European vessel--born of the forest, however, and not of
any foreign seaport--to float upon its waters, the first white man to
do so. For although the mouth of the Amazon had been visited by the
Spanish navigator, Pinzon, some time before, in 1500, the river had
only been ascended for some fifty out of its several thousand miles
of navigable waterway. Orellana, the lieutenant of Gonzalo, was given
command of the brigantine, which aided in transporting the weaker
members of the party; and thus, floating and journeying, the expedition
proceeded onwards.
But food, with the exception of "toads, serpents and a few wild
fruits," now gave out entirely. The last horse had been eaten. Famine
and death stared the expedition in the face. They could not go on on
foot. It was necessary that the vessel should be dispatched to obtain
succour from that fruitful land which it was still believed lay but a
few days distant, at a point where, according to information obtained
from wandering natives, the River Napo united its waters with those of
the main stream of the Amazon. Orellana, with fifty of the band, was
instructed therefore to descend the river and return with all speed
with the much-needed assistance. He embarked, and the brigantine and
its company disappeared from view round a bend of the river.
This was the last that Gonzalo and his remaining companions ever saw of
the vessel. They waited for weeks, supporting themselves heaven knows
how, day by day straining their eyes, hoping to see the form of the
returning bark upon the waters, but all was in vain.
Meantime, Orellana and his crew, borne down by the swift current,
reached in three days the point of confluence of the Napo and Amazon, a
mighty flood of waters, but there was no sign of the land of promise,
and instead of being able to load up with provisions and return, he
could barely obtain sustenance for his ship's company; nor did it
seem possible to make his way back against the current. What should
he do? Were it not better to proceed on his way, descend the river
to its mouth, reach the Atlantic, proceed to Spain and the Court,
and cover himself with glory as the discoverer of the great Amazon
and all the vast territory it traversed might contain? Eagerly his
companions accepted the idea. As to those left behind they must succour
themselves, and turning their prow downstream again the brigantine
pursued its way, swept along for two thousand miles by the vast waters
of the river.
How they escaped the dangers of rocks, whirlpools and savage Indians;
how they found considerable settlements of natives, and at length
reached the mouth of the river, and taking ship arrived at the Court
of Spain needs not to be related here. Orellana received considerable
honour at the hand of the Spanish Sovereign, with command over the
territory he had discovered.
The unfortunate Gonzalo and his companions, thus left starving in
the Amazon forest, suffered many vicissitudes and many lost their
lives. They were forced to return to Quito without having reached any
El Dorado of their dreams. The backward journey was one of the most
terrible in the early history of America, and out of all that great
band which set forth with such high hopes only about eighty Spaniards
and half that number of Indians returned to tell the tale--little over
a hundred haggard adventurers, who, falling down on the floor of the
cathedral, rendered thanks to heaven for their own escape from the
terrors of the Amazon wilds.
Thus ended the first expedition to the Amazon.
It was Orellana who gave the river its name. On his dangerous journey
adown the current, his band fought with what they believed to be an
army of women-warriors, or _Amazonas_, who rushing from the depths of
the forest, attacked the white men, but who, in reality, were only wild
Indians in loose cotton chemises or shirts flying in the breeze. There
is no legend here of an empire of women.
That the Amazon could be navigated was again shown later by Pedro
de Texeira, who, with his companions, performed the great feat of
ascending from the mouth of the river up to Quito, and returning
thence--a marvellous voyage for that period.
The River Napo, by which the Spaniards first entered upon the main
stream of the Amazon (there was an earlier exploration of the mouth of
the river in Brazil), is but one of many great navigable tributaries
which traverse the territories of those nations--Ecuador, Colombia,
Peru, Bolivia and Brazil--which lies partly within the region. Many
thousands of miles of such navigable waterways intersect it, some of
them very little known or used.
We may gain an idea of the size of the region drained by the Amazon
by noting that it covers four-tenths of the entire area of South
America. Yet less than a hundred square miles of it is cultivated,
and its "population"--if the term may be used for the bands of
savage or semi-savage Indians that dwell there and the few white
settlements--number perhaps half of that of the city of London: a few
million souls, who are lost in this immensity of forest, jungle and
river.
The chief obstacles to travel and development in the valley are the
broken or flooded nature of the country, the impenetrable forests,
through which, except off the few trails, the traveller has to hack
his way by means of the _machete_, wielded by his Indians. The heavy
rains, the mosquitoes and the malaria, the unreliability of the
natives. Dangers from wild beasts have been exaggerated. The worst of
these is the mosquito! The forests are not teeming with beasts of prey,
although they are to be met with. Often the traveller may pursue his
way for vast distances without seeing any living creature, and he must
not depend upon game for any particular addition to his larder, for
there is little, in many regions. Food must be carried, and the matter
of transport is one of the most serious obstacles. Without adequate
supplies the traveller will starve, and leave his bones in the dismal
forest, as has befallen many an adventurer here.
Except by actual travel no adequate idea of the Amazon forests can
be obtained: of their alternating gloom and splendour, of their
superabundant vegetation, of the impenetrable ramparts of their dense
foliage and matted trunks. The forest is the largest area of virgin
woodlands on the face of the globe, extending back from the Atlantic
seaboard to the slopes of the Andes for more than 2,500 miles, and
ranging in breadth from 200 miles on the coast, at the mouth of the
river or in Brazil to 900 miles between Venezuela and Bolivia.
The marvellously rich flora is among the wonders of the world. The
principal characteristic is in the variety of genera and species.
A single acre of ground may contain hundreds of different species
of tree and shrub, including palms, acacias, myrtles, mimosas and
others. The forest is in this unlike the great coniferous or other
forests, and the condition is not favourable in a commercial sense
as regards the industry of timber-cutting, although industrial kinds
of its trees afford the basis of profit. The trees are not always of
great height here, the average being perhaps a hundred feet, with many
kinds reaching two hundred feet, the shorter varieties being upon the
flood-plains.
The remarkable tropical growth is shown in the myriad lianas, or
creepers, which often bind the mass together, overgrowing even the
tallest trees. The traveller who has had to cut his way through these
networks of vegetation can best understand their impenetrability.
Above his head may tower that monarch of the forest the "Cow-tree," or
Massaranduba. This remarkable tree takes its name from the milk, or
milky sap, it yields--a latex used in rubber-curing and for medicinal
purposes. The timber is valuable for shipbuilding, and is also esteemed
by railway-builders for sleepers, the wood being highly resistant,
whether in air or water. Here, too, the mighty cedar rises amid its
neighbours, growing to an immense height; its great trunk a hundred
feet to its first branch. The wood is light, strong, and susceptible of
a high polish and is valued for these qualities for many purposes.
Here is another tree we shall view with a special interest in these
forest fastnesses. We shall regard it with such interest not only for
its great height--for it is one of the loftiest on the Amazon--but by
reason of its familiar product, as it is that which produces the Brazil
nut. The tree, however, will not be crowded by its neighbours, loving
the open ground. It is slender relatively for its height, perhaps three
or four feet in trunk diameter. Of the two varieties one is known as
the Bertholetra, the other the Sapucaya.
The collector of Brazil nuts will have a care not to approach the
trees in a high wind, that is when the nuts are ripe. For the nuts,
enclosed in their capsule or covering, are as hard and heavy as a
small cannon-ball, and will certainly crack his crown if by mischance
one falls upon his head. Prudently he waits until the pod falls, or,
opening the lid with which Nature has furnished it, flings the enclosed
nuts abroad, where they may be gathered. Many nuts, however, are wasted
in this dispersal. The only capital required by the nut-gatherer is
that involved in the ownership of a boat.
In view of the appreciation of the Brazil nut in foreign lands, and its
high price, the industry of its gathering, it would be supposed, might
have been more extensive.
The monarch, in a commercial sense, of the Amazon forests is the
rubber, the beautiful _Hevea_ and others. These have their own special
habitat. They are not found anywhere, but are solitary in their nature.
For description of the animal life of the Amazon we must turn to those
works of naturalists and travellers who have made this field their
special study. There we may learn about the manati, or sea-cow, one of
the most remarkable of mammals, growing at times to a size of twenty
feet in length, having its home in the lower and larger reaches of
the river. The world of the monkeys embodies fifty species. We find
them up as high as the denser parts of the Peruvian Montaña, and a
colony of these creatures in conclave is always a remarkable sight,
with their semi-human attributes. We shall see the sloth, and hear and
see the jaguar as also the peccary. The alligator will be our constant
companion amid the backwaters, and a dangerous and voracious one at
times he proves. The turtles may furnish the traveller with its flesh
and eggs for food, as it has done for the Indians always. The traveller
on occasion need not despise, moreover, the flesh of the monkey,
however repugnant it may seem in life to contemplate the creature as a
constituent of the forest larder. The mighty boa-constrictor will be
seen by the fortunate. The brilliant plumage of the many-hued birds
is perhaps a compensation of Nature for the lack of song of the many
feathered tribes of the valley. As for the parasitic creatures, the
ticks, the dreadful ants and a host of others, the traveller here will
rarely fail to make their close acquaintance.
The western or upper edge of the Amazon Valley differs much from
the denser region such as that to which the foregoing description
regarding the forest applies, conditions obtaining more particularly
in the Brazilian portion of the territory. This upper edge--extending,
however, in some cases a long way to the east--is known in Peru as the
Montaña, and embodies a much more broken and diversified landscape,
more beautiful and more habitable. Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela also
partake in territory of this character, which is formed by the slopes
of the Andes.
As the traveller descends the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, whose
tablelands and ridges we have traversed in a previous chapter, and
leaves behind him the vast grass-covered uplands, with their towering
peaks, he enters upon the line of tree-life, which lies at an elevation
of perhaps 11,000 feet: enters indeed upon another world. The climate
becomes warmer, the mists lie heavier, thickets of flowering shrubs
spread their beauty, cascades of falling water are projected like giant
fountains over sheer precipices, and timber-clad ridge and profound
cañon, between whose walls the torrential rivers now hurry eastwards,
diversify the journey; transformation scenes which delight the eye and
give an added zest to the arduous march.
A very small portion of the Montaña is occupied or inhabited. The old
Inca civilization did not penetrate it, nor did the Spaniards of the
Colonial period, nor yet did the white folk of the Andine Republics
establish more than nominal sway over savage nature and savage man in
these remote regions. Beyond the few settlers who live isolated from
the world, the folk consist of more or less uncivilized tribes of
Indians.
Each of these tribes generally bears its distinctive name and has its
various customs--curious, useful or bestial. The Aguarunas of the
Marañon build fixed dwellings and cultivate the soil. They are of
middle stature, the women often well-featured, and both sexes wear
short garments, in distinction to other tribes which go naked and
unashamed. A warlike people, fighting with poisoned arrows, they have
on various occasions destroyed the white man's settlements. These
people signal their messages through the forest for long distances
by means of the _tunduy_--a hollow log tautly suspended from a cord
attached to a tree, and which reaches the ground, and struck hard
blows with a club it emits a far-carrying sound, which, under a
species of "morse" code, carries the message onward--a kind of native
"wireless-telegraphy."
The Campas Indians occupy an enormous territory on the great Urubamba
and Ucayali Rivers, and have assimilated some degree of civilization
and are friendly to the whites. The Nahumedes are those who attacked
Orellana and were taken for women-warriors. The Orejones are so called
from the practice of making their ears of enormous size, by inserting
weights in the lobes. The Huitoto Indians, in Peru and Colombia, were
those who suffered under the excesses of the Putumayo, the great stream
descending from the Colombian Andes.
It would be impossible here to enumerate the many tribes of the
Montaña. Some of them were influenced by the Incas, and in consequence
are of a higher calibre. The Incas, according to the legends, had a
God-given mission to civilize the rude folk of Western South America,
and marvellously they carried it out, in a way that puts the modern
white man to shame, with his ruthless negligence or with the studied
barbarity he has visited upon the poor aboriginal rubber-gatherers.
Many of these tribes cultivate the ground and subsist upon the fruits
of their toil. Many of them have a more or less hazy belief in a
Supreme Deity, evolved from their inner consciousness or inherited
from the Incas or from the childhood of the world. The tribes have no
particular cohesion, and are thus at the mercy of whoever may oppress
them. At the head of each tribe is generally a _curaca_, a chief chosen
by reason of his superior strength or ferocity. Often they dwell in
huge community-houses.
The "Conquest of the Montaña" is for the Peruvian people a matter of
considerable moment; the region, embodying what in the future may be
perhaps the most valuable part of the territory of the Republic, and
the Government is becoming more humanely alive to its potentialities.
It has been calculated that the aggregate length of navigable waterway
of the Amazon affluents in Peru exceeds 10,000 miles, for steamers
varying from a draught of twenty feet down to two or four feet;
that is during high-water period throughout a part of the year.
This navigability is reduced to about half the distance in the dry
season.[17] In addition, the smaller channels for vast distances may be
utilized for canoe-journeys.
The _Oriente_, or corresponding region in Ecuador, offers analogous
conditions for navigation, although more limited in extent.[18] In
Colombia, as described elsewhere, navigation is possible by small craft
from the fluvial system of the Amazon to that of the Orinoco, a
remarkable hydrographic condition.
[Illustration: UNCIVILIZED FOREST INDIANS OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON.
Vol. II. To face p. 90.]
In Bolivia the Amazon system provides also some 10,000 miles of
navigation (and the Plate system a further thousand miles). The
principal affluent in Bolivia of this fluvial network is the Madeira
and the Mamoré.
The famous Madeira-Mamoré railway was built to avoid the cataracts and
rapids on that river, and provides a link in a chain of 2,000 miles
of river navigation, serving Bolivia and Brazil. The line has had a
terrible history, in the deaths during earlier explorations of the
route and during its construction, brought about by the adverse forces
of Nature in these forest wilds.
We reach the lower terminus of this railway by the steamer which
ascends the Amazon from Para and Manaos, at Porto Velho, 1,000 miles
upstream from the last-named town, and here our vessel, which may have
brought us from Liverpool or other European ports, lies 600 feet above
the level of the sea, where it has ascended under its own steam, 2,000
miles from salt water. Here the impenetrable curtain of the forest
closes in, and from it timidly emerge the harmless--if sometimes
cannibal--little Indian folk who dwell in its sombre depths.
* * * * *
"The northern region, including the territory of Colonias, the
department of El Beni, and a portion of that of La Paz, is that in
which the river navigation is most considerable, for it is in this
region that the majority of the _barracas_ are situated. These are
the establishments installed on the river banks by which the rubber
of the region is collected. They are at the same time warehouses
for the storing of rubber and stores containing the most varied
merchandise. The _barracas_ are often surrounded by plantations.
"Despite their number and their importance, the rivers of this part
of the country are subject to the common fate of all the higher
affluents and sub-affluents of the Amazon--namely, a considerable
diminution of their waters during the dry season, which renders the
channels difficult and unreliable on account of the obstacles which
accumulate at certain points. It is really only during the season
of high water that steam navigation is easy and rapid; in general,
on the Rios Beni and Madre de Dios, the steamboats run freely from
December to May. From June and July the steamers encounter increasing
numbers of obstacles and are exposed to the risk of a sudden fall of
water, when the types of vessel peculiar to each river come into use,
particularly from August to November.
"During the months of July and August navigation is inconvenient
on account of the expanse of mud, which has not as yet had time to
harden, but is left uncovered by the falling waters on either bank,
making landing a difficult matter. The reefs uncovered at low water
and the entanglements of tree trunks disappear with the rise of the
waters, and the steamers recommence running.
"Descending the rivers during high water, navigation is both
easy and rapid, but it is also rather dangerous on account of the
swiftness of the current. It is difficult to estimate the time needed
to navigate this or that river, as the day's journey, ascending or
descending, varies according to the river, the amount of water in it,
the kind of vessel employed, the amount of cargo carried, and the
crew which steers or propels the vessel.
"The vessels peculiar to the rivers of those regions which do not
permit of steam navigation, and which are everywhere employed when
the waters are low, are the _balsa_ and the _callapo_, each a species
of raft; together with boats of various dimensions--_monterias_ or
_batelon_, _egariteas_, _canoas_ or _pirogues_, the latter being
dug-out canoes.
"The _balsa_ is a raft consisting of seven pieces or trunks of a
peculiar and very light wood known as _palo de balsa_ (raft-wood);
these pieces are either bound together or pinned with stakes of
_chonta_, a kind of black palm which is very hard. The fore part
of the raft is narrowed slightly, and the trunks are arranged on a
curve whose elevation is perhaps eighteen inches, so that the sides
are higher than the middle. Each of the seven trunks is perhaps five
inches in diameter. On the framework thus made is placed a platform
of plaited bamboos, known as _chairo_; this platform, which is
intended for the reception of the cargo, and on which any passengers
take their places, is called the _huaracha_. At each end of the raft
a space of three to five feet is left free of any covering; here sit
or stand the three boatmen who form the crew--two at the bow and one
at the stern. A good raft is usually twenty-two to twenty-six feet
long, by five to six feet wide, and will carry about 7-1/2 cwt. of
cargo, as well as the three boatmen.
"A _callapo_ or _monteria_ consists of two or three _balsas_ lashed
together; such a raft will carry as much as 34 cwt. The crews of
these rafts, according to their dimensions, consist of three to
fifteen men; these men are Leco Indians, or Mosetenes, or Yuracares,
who are highly skilled in this kind of navigation.
"The pilot is the captain of the crew; he is naturally the calmest
and the most expert; the _punteros_, who are stationed at the two
ends, are the strongest; the rest are the rowers. The navigation of
the _balsa_ is terribly hard work when mounting against a current;
as a rule two men go ashore and tow the raft from the bank, pulling
on a rope some fifteen yards in length; a third, armed with a pole
sixteen or eighteen feet long, keeps the raft a certain distance from
the bank, so that it shall not run aground. Where the water is too
shallow to float the raft, it must be dragged over the stones in the
bed of the river. In reaches where it is impossible to make one's way
along the bank the raft is poled up-stream, a method of progression
which costs more effort and is less speedy.
"The crew of a _balsa_ or _monteria_ will usually navigate for some
ten or twelve hours a day, during which they will perhaps make nine
or ten miles; to rest, eat or sleep they go ashore, which action is
known as _encostar_.
"The navigation of the Mapiri (one of those rivers which run into the
Beni) must be made in _balsas_ or _callapos_ manned by Leco Indians.
From Mapiri the descent is rapid as far as Huanay, and the only
obstacles are a few sunken reefs, which cause dangerous vortices in
the impetuous stream. Where the Mapiri takes the name of Kaka (river
of rocks)--that is, at the confluence of the Coroico--there are many
dangerous passages full of surface rocks. This river finally flows
into the Beni.
"The Rio Boopi also leads to the Beni; rafts like those of the Mapiri
are piloted by Mosetenes Indians. The passage is rapid, for at the
outset the river enters a narrow gorge, that of the Meniqui, in which
the current flows at a dizzy speed; eventually the Beni is reached
at Guachi. Rafts are employed as far as Rurenabaque and Salinas or
Puerto Brais, as between the two ports there is the dangerous passage
of the Altamirani, which is encumbered with rocks and rapids.
"The Rio Beni is then freely navigable by large steamers as far as
Riberalta, at the mouth of the Madre de Dios, a distance of 473
miles. Steamers cannot proceed to Villa Bella on account of the
Esperanza rapids or falls, which are 340 yards long with a declivity
of 18 feet; the river here is nearly a thousand yards wide, and its
depth is three fathoms. The current is so rapid that boats and rafts
must be unloaded both ascending and descending. The railway now
being built between Riberalta and Guayaramirim will circumvent this
difficulty.
"The Rio Madre de Dios, on the banks of which there are numerous
settlements, is navigable for steamers during the months of high
water from Riberalta as far as its remotest tributaries, such as the
Inambari, the Manu, the Tambopata or Pando, etc.; during the rest of
the year the journey must be made in _callapos_. The navigation of
this river is difficult only about the middle of its course, where
there are two rapids, which are, however, completely covered when the
water is high. The Madre de Dios is navigable by its affluents as far
as the outlying spurs of the Andes.
"To pass from this river to the Rio Acre there is a choice of two
routes. One may go overland from the Carmen _barraca_ to Cobija, or
by water, by way of the Rios Manuripi and Tahuamanu, affluents of
the Orton. The Orton, an affluent of the Beni, is, like the Madre de
Dios, navigated by steam-launches during the season of high water,
and by other vessels--rafts and canoes--all the year. Numerous
_barracas_ (rubber stations) lie along the Orton, whence one can
easily pass to the Rio Acre."[19]
* * * * *
The wealth of the rubber-bearing regions of Peru and Bolivia has
of late years been made the subject of considerable study, but the
industry of rubber-gathering and export has been overshadowed from a
variety of causes. The Acre territory in Bolivia and that of Colonias
have been regarded as regions of untold wealth in this respect.
Difficult roads lead thereto from the capital of the Republic, but
these, in some cases, are extremely picturesque.
[Illustration: INDIANS OF THE NAPO, PERUVIAN AMAZON REGION.
Vol. II. To face p. 96.]
* * * * *
"Hardly has one crossed the Cordillera when on all sides, on the
flanks of the mountains, far off on the plains, in the valleys, the
vast virgin forests show as great sombre patches emerging from fields
of verdure. Varied as the vegetation which composes them, some seem
impenetrable, their huge trees garlanded with lianas and loaded with
innumerable parasites. These trees are not of great diameter because,
being huddled so closely together, they struggle upward to seek the
air and the light.
"Others, undulating in the wind, waving their palmated crests, seem
like the parks of some destroyed Eden; they are often so burdened
with flowers that when the wind blows it is as though the snow were
falling. Some of these forests are incessantly alive with myriads
of splendidly coloured birds and monkeys of every species; others,
on the contrary, are so full of silence and shadow and mysterious
solitude that the traveller might believe himself in a virgin world.
"Everywhere innumerable watercourses drain the country; some contain
flakes of gold, but the true wealth of the country is in its
vegetation, so marvellously vigorous and varied that even in America
the forests of the Amazonian basin are proverbial.
"Although this region lies wholly within the Tropics, it contains
every plant and animal to be found under the sun--from the cedar to
the banana with its velvet leaves, which never thrives but under the
Equator; from the jaguar to the heat-loving monkey gambolling in the
sun, and even, in the great plains of the east, from the shepherd
watching his flocks to the collector of rubber and the planter of
cocoa established beside the rivers or in the depths of the odorous
valleys.
"Despite these natural advantages, the greatest to be found on
earth, civilized man inhabits this region only at rare and isolated
points. This portion of Bolivia is still a wilderness almost unknown,
into which the Bolivians of the high plateau, attracted and held
by the metalliferous strata from which they strive to tear their
treasure, only come by chance to tempt fortune by the exploitation
of rubber. As men are everywhere prone to generalize, the territory
of Colonias has the reputation of being full of mosquitoes, Indians
and wild beasts, each category more dangerous than the other.
There is a manifest exaggeration here. Certainly the mosquitoes
are an objectionable race, but they are not found everywhere, and
as for the Indians, if they have on occasion displayed a certain
malevolence--possibly justified, but of which they themselves are
always the first victims--they are as a rule invaluable as boatmen
and collectors of rubber, and it is regrettable that they are not
more numerous. Remain the dangerous wild beasts: well, they fear man
far more than he fears them, and moreover they speedily desert such
localities as man inhabits or frequents.
"The climate of the territory of Colonias varies according to the
proximity of the chain of the Andes, the altitude, the abundance of
watercourses, and the direction of the winds. The temperature in May,
June and July is mild and agreeable, moderately cool in the morning
and evening, varying between 53·6° and 76·6° from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.,
and from 76·6° to 89·6° between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. during the hottest
months (September to December). Rarely does the thermometer rise or
fall above these extremes. The normal temperature does, however,
suffer a sudden fall when the cold south winds blow that are known
as _surazos_; they come in September and produce violent storms with
great and almost daily variations in the temperature, which may give
rise to affections of the lungs and throat as the sequel to sudden
chills. The force and direction of the winds contribute greatly to
modify the salubrity of any region; places reputed to be unhealthy
have become notably healthy when the forest has been opened or closed
in a given direction.
"The great defect of the climate here is the abundance of the rains.
They fall continually through the whole rainy season, which lasts
from December to May. The vapours of the Atlantic are brought up
by the east winds, which are prevalent at this season; on reaching
the Cordillera they are chilled as the air expands and loses heat
with its increasing altitude; then the vapours condense and fall in
torrents of rain, which often lasts for whole days together. But
these rains are never cold, so they are not unpleasant as such rains
would be in Europe; one braves them without thinking anything of it,
as in Europe one braves a summer shower.
"When it does not rain (the dry season lasts from June to November)
the climate is delightful; the middle of the day is hot, with a
somewhat heavy heat, although the sky is usually covered with a
diaphanous mist which tempers the rays of the sun.
"Floods are caused not only by rains in the western mountain regions,
but also by local rains. They are dependent on the slope of the
surface and the insignificant fall of the rivers. When the larger
rivers are full the tributaries rise because their waters are dammed
up or even flow backwards. The waters then become stagnant in every
sense of the word, and decompose rapidly through the action of the
heat and the vegetable and other detritus which they contain; at
such times they produce paludian fevers; principally in April and
May, when the waters begin to fall and the larger rivers receive
the supplies of stagnant waters released from their tributaries. As
the fall continues the mud left uncovered on the banks becomes an
additional cause of fevers.
"These paludian fevers, which are prevalent more especially during
the rainy season, attack more particularly the rubber collectors--an
ignorant and primitive population who know nothing of the most
elementary rules of hygiene. Careless or imprudent whites pay the
same penalty.
"The lack of medical attendance, intemperance, negligence which
results in the drinking of stagnant water drawn from pools or swamps
or from the river banks; above all, the bites of the mosquito,
against which no protection is employed, and which convey malaria to
healthy but debilitated persons: these are the causes of the ravages
occasioned by paludism in this region, as throughout the Amazon basin.
"These conditions do not obtain throughout the Territory; there are
numerous healthy localities as, for example, along the middle reaches
of the Madre de Dios, in all parts which lie at any altitude, and in
regions not subject to floods where a portion of the forest has been
cleared in order to give the beneficent breezes a free course. On the
other hand, and we speak from long personal experience, any healthy
individual of robust or even average constitution can maintain
himself in good health, suffering, in the long run, from nothing
worse than a little anæmia, by observing the following rules:
"Do not drink stagnant water unless it has been boiled; if one must
drink unboiled water take it from the river, not from the bank,
but from the middle of the current; do not walk or ride or exert
yourself in the morning fasting; cover the loins with a belt of wool
or flannel; take short but frequent baths or douches in order to
facilitate perspiration and to avoid congestion of the pores; and in
fever belts, or during the rainy season, take daily, as a preventive,
four to eight grains of sulphate or hydrochlorate of quinine (in
a cachet or compressed in tabloids) as well as a few granules of
arsenic; finally, keep to an abundant and nourishing diet and do not
forget that the nights being cool it is indispensable to take warm
clothing and good blankets; and, most important of all, never omit
the protection of mosquito-nets.
"Such is the territory of Colonias and the greater portion of El
Beni, a land of magnificent vegetation; it is regarded, not without
reason, as a country where tropical agriculture may have a future
before it. At present this vast country possesses a population of
only some 40,000 to 45,000 inhabitants, without counting its 15,000
to 18,000 wild Indians, a population of which the greater portion
if not the whole is occupied in the production and transport of
rubber, the chief product of the territory and the neighbouring
countries."[20]
* * * * *
The conditions of life and the treatment of the rubber gatherers of the
Amazon Valley were brought strongly before the world some years ago
by the disclosures of the Putumayo, in Peru, when it was shown that
terrible ill-treatment was meted out to the aborigines of the forests,
in the greed for rubber. They were shown to be frequently starved,
flogged to death, or tortured in various ways, their "crime" being
that they would not or could not bring a sufficient quota of rubber.
A powerful London company was involved in these scandals, but the
directors, when brought before a Parliamentary Commission, protested
that they had no knowledge of the matter.
It cannot be doubted that cruelties are still practised on the Indian
folk, in the rubber-districts of Peru and Bolivia, under the curtain
of the forest, although the authorities of these countries have taken
measures to endeavour to prevent these.
The condition of the rubber industry in the Amazon forests are not, of
course, all barbarous or uneconomic. It afforded, or affords, a means
of livelihood to a considerable number of people, and created wealth
where there was little other means of enrichment. It is, to an extreme,
unfortunate that the industry is, in parts, a dying one--superseded
in large measure by the active rubber plantations of the Straits
Settlement, Malaysia and elsewhere. But it remains to be seen if, some
day, under better auspices, the Amazon industry will not be revived.
It also remains to be seen if the exotic plantations of Malaysia will
be permanent, or whether exhaustion of the soil and other matters with
what is an exotic industry there may not lead to deterioration, or
decrease of the commodity and its yield, although it is to be hoped
that such eventualities may not occur.
It is affirmed by experts that wild rubber is superior to plantation
rubber. One of the evils of the Malaysian system is that whereby coolie
labour is brought in without their women, and consequently no family
life is possible among these coloured workers. In the Amazon Valley
there are no such restrictions, and under better auspices the native
rubber-gatherer could prosper and multiply. Herein lie important
matters for the future, especially for that fortunate part of civilized
mankind that rides on the rubber tyres of the modern motor-car.
Let us cast a passing glance at a rubber metropolis, here on this
mighty South American river, at Manaos, a name familiar at least to
the London reader of financial newspapers and to the shareholders of
British concerns thereat--for British capital furnishes light, and
power, and docks, and other matters, for some of these Amazon river
ports.
Near that fork of the great river where on the one hand the black
waters of the Rio Negro come down from a thousand miles' course from
Venezuelan, Colombian and Ecuadorian forests and mingle with the muddy
waters borne from the Peruvian Marañon and its tributaries, there
stood, in the middle of last century, a riverside village of Indians,
a handful of Portuguese, negroes and half-breeds. From this humble
beginning a city sprang to being, the geographical and trade centre of
the Amazon, with every comfort and every vice of modern civilization.
What was the cause of this transformation? It was the discovery of the
uses of rubber, the exploitation of the "black gold" of the forests.
Manaos grew until the place, to which all the rubber-producing lands
of the neighbouring Republics are tributary, provided ninety per cent.
of the world's supply of rubber. It has not, however, given its name
to this commodity, which has been associated rather with that of Para,
another riverside city near the mouth of the Amazon, itself created
largely by this trade.
* * * * *
"Formerly the basin of the Amazon was almost unpopulated. In 1848
the city of Belem, the only one in Amazonia, had 15,000 inhabitants,
but two years later an epidemic of yellow fever greatly diminished
their number. As for Manaos, even thirty years later it was only a
village; Mathews, who visited it in 1879, estimated its population
at 5,000. The Indian tribes of the forest refused to work; and a few
thousand half-breeds, _tapuyoz_, a mixture of Portuguese, Indian and
negro blood--were utterly inadequate to draw upon the wealth that
men were beginning to recognize in the bordering forests. Labourers
were demanded on every hand. The first immigrants, who settled about
Manaos, were Indians from Bolivia and Peru; but their numbers were
wholly insufficient.
"It was the influx of the inhabitants of Ceará, during the draught
of 1877-79, that made the development of the rubber trade possible.
From that date the colonization of the forest proceeded rapidly.
The seekers of rubber dispersed themselves throughout Amazonia; but
the region most regularly exploited was the basin of the Rio Purus
and that of the Rio Jurua. These two rivers are navigable for a
greater distance upstream than any other of the affluents of the
Amazon, and in the virgin forest, which the rubber-seekers were the
first to invade, the exportation of rubber is only possible along
the navigable water-ways. The Brazilians who mounted the Purus and
the Jurua did not stop at the Bolivian frontier; a war with Bolivia
very nearly broke out on the subject of these lands, which a few
years earlier had not even been explored. The foundation of the
independent Republic of Acré, the treaty of Petropolis, and the
cession of Acré to Brazil, were the result of the westerly march of
the rubber-seekers.
"The economic development of Amazonia was prodigiously rapid. In
1890 it exported 16,000 tons of rubber; in 1900, 28,000 tons; in
1905, 33,000 tons. It became, next to San Paulo, the most important
centre of exportation in Brazil.[21] The cities increased in size;
the population of Para surpassed 100,000; that of Manaos attained to
50,000; and this growth of the cities, which was more rapid than the
growth of the total population, is an index to the rapidity of the
commercial development of the country. The Amazon became one of the
great river highways of the world, serving not only the Brazilian
Amazon, but also the regions of Peru which are crossed by the upper
tributaries, and a portion of Venezuela, where products descend to
Manaos by the Rio Negro.
"The exportation of rubber created wealth on all sides. All other
occupations were abandoned for the collection of rubber. The herds
of cattle on Marajo and the cocoa plantations along the banks were
neglected. Similarly, in the neighbouring districts of Guiana the
fields and plantations were abandoned on the discovery of 'placer'
gold. No one thought of anything but rubber. Up to that time
the country had produced its own food; now it had to resort to
importation. It became a market in which the other States of Brazil
were able to sell their products at a highly profitable rate. All
these changes were due to the importation of labour from Ceará."[22]
* * * * *
We have seen elsewhere that the ocean steamer which carries us up
the Amazon will reach the Peruvian port of Iquitos, a place of much
importance, due to its position in the very heart of the continent, the
centre of a vast tributary region, whose value the future will better
be able to estimate.
A region of the utmost interest lies before the traveller who will
adventure himself upon these tributary streams and the diversified
territories which they drain. There might be fleets of motor-boats
upon these waterways, whether bent upon pleasurable exploration,
whether upon business and trade. The civilized folk of the eastern
slopes of the great Cordillera are, metaphorically, stretching out
their arms towards the east, casting eager glances thereover, for from
thence must come economic prosperity and civilized peoples.
And now, once more, a glance at the past in the great valley, though
brief, at those influences which have tried to make for good as against
evil: the forces of the Church and the missionary.
The Jesuit friars in Brazil have had terrible charges laid at their
doors, but they and the Franciscan friars did noble work in the forests
and the rivers among the savage or humble denizens. Had their work
been allowed to continue, it might have flourished greatly. Among the
missionaries the name of the Padre Samuel Fritz stands out (as did that
of Las Casas in the Cordillera and the coast). Fritz gave the greater
part of his life, from 1686, in work among these unfortunate Indians.
But the fighting between the Spaniards and the Portuguese, around the
forts built near Manaos, destroyed this work. The Portuguese dispatched
armed bands against the Spaniards, and destroyed the missions and the
settlements, waging war in their jealous pretensions over this savage
territory.
It will be recollected by students of history that the Popes--among
them Paul III--strove to protect the Indians of the Amazon. This
Pontiff, in 1537, issued a decree to the effect that "the Indians
were men like others." Later, alarmed by the atrocities which were
perpetrated in Mexico and Peru upon the aborigines, the Pope sanctioned
slavery as a means of avoiding such horrors. In 1639 Pope Urban VIII
excommunicated the captors and vendors of Indians, but later the
Portuguese Government allowed the establishment of slavery. Under Dom
John VI, the Indians were to be considered as "orphans" in the eyes of
the law, and to be protected. But the present condition of the Amazon
Indians is one in which they appear to have no civil or legal rights.
As regards modern missionary work here, this is full of difficulty,
for if it is to be carried out by Protestants it involves a clashing
with the Roman Catholic priesthood, which naturally occupies the whole
continent. The work, however, whether by Protestant or Catholic, is not
by any means neglected, although much greater effort is needful. Such
effort should go hand in hand with economic elevation--also a difficult
problem, due, in part, to the attitude of vested interests in the field.
It would but weary us to dwell upon the economic possibilities of the
Amazon Valley in detail. Its climate and the fertility of its soil
would render possible the cultivation of all those tropical products
which are needful to the growing and hungry world, which, complaining
that the cost of life is unbearable, is yet unable to set its hands to
the fuller development of the great fallow areas, among which lies the
vast Amazon territory. Here, then, is work for the future.
* * * * *
We now turn to the huge Republic of Brazil, mistress of the greater
part of Amazonia, and of much else.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] _Peru_, op. cit., where full details are given.
[18] _Ecuador_, op. cit.
[19] _Bolivia_, op. cit.
[20] _Bolivia_, op. cit., where a full account of the rubber industry
will be found.
[21]
Total exportation of Brazil in 1906, £52,000,000
Exportation of coffee " " £26,500,000
Exportation of rubber " " £13,300,000
[22] _Brazil_, Pierre Denis, South American Series.
CHAPTER XII
BRAZIL
When, in the year 1502, the early Portuguese navigators entered the Bay
of Rio de Janeiro--it was the first of January, hence the name they
gave to what they believed to be the estuary of a great river--they
little dreamed of that superb city which, as the centuries rolled on,
should arise on the edge of the sparkling waters, with their background
of picturesque mountains, with a harbour perhaps the finest in the New
World.
But such is the capital of Brazil to-day, and the traveller approaching
Rio de Janeiro revels--if the weather be propitious--in the sunlit
sea, the emerald islets that stud its bosom, the palm-fringed shores
and colour of the vegetation upon the mountain slopes, fit setting for
the handsome buildings, esplanades and avenues which unfold to the
view. Here the beauty of the Tropics, shorn by modern science of much
of its lurking dangers, combines with the handiwork of man to form a
metropolis which South America may contemplate with pardonable pride
as an instance of its civilization. In this vast oval bay, which
stretches inland for twenty-five miles, the navies of the world might
lie at anchor, and indeed the flags of all maritime nations unfurl
their colours near the quays of this vast mercantile seaport below the
Equator.
It is a vast land which we thus approach. Brazil spreads like a giant
across its continent. Its arms are flung westwards over South America
for over two thousand miles to the base of the Andes, and from above
the Equator to beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, crowding its smaller
neighbours--if crowding be possible here--into the extremities of the
continent, an area in which the countries of Europe might be more than
contained, and which is larger than the vast Anglo-American Republic,
the United States.
Still almost unknown are great portions of this great territory, still
inhabited by tribes as savage as when first the white man set foot upon
it, or as when the faithless Orellana, Pizarro's lieutenant, abandoning
his companions in the heart of the dreadful forests of the Amazon,
floated down the mighty waters of that river from the source to the sea.
Brazil is, of course, not a Spanish American country, although it was
at one period under the dominion of Spain; and it stands apart from
the remainder of the great sisterhood of the Latin American Republics
by reason of its Portuguese origin and language, although the common
Iberian ancestry renders it similar thereto in other respects. It
differs, furthermore, in the constitution of its people, in that
the African negro race has been so considerably absorbed into the
twenty-two million souls which form the population of the Republic: an
admixture which is of considerable ethnological interest, and may have
some important bearing on the future relation of the white and coloured
races of the world.
[Illustration: THE BAY OF RIO DE JANEIRO.
Vol. II. To face p. 112.]
The magnificent but somewhat incoherent land as is Brazil to-day,
offered at the time of its discovery few attractions to the sovereigns
of a Mother Country into whose coffers the wealth of Africa and of
India flowed. Its poor and barbarous tribes had no stores of gold ready
to the hand of the _Conquistador_; there was no civilized empire with
a polity and architecture and organized social life, with armies to
protect it, such as Mexico and Peru offered, and consequently neither
glory nor riches urged the European discoverer or invader to tempt
its hinterland and people its valleys and seaboard. For thirty years
the Portuguese sovereigns paid little heed to this newly acquired
dominion, except that they fought off the encroaching Spaniard and the
adventurers of France, who would have entered or traded with it.
Twenty years before the Conquest of Mexico it was that the first
explorer sailed the Brazilian coast--and only eight years after
Columbus had sighted the American mainland--that the Spaniard, Vicente
Yañez Pinzon, a companion of Columbus, with whom sailed Amerigo
Vespucci--who gave his name to America--sighted the shore of what is
now Brazil, near Cape San Augustine, reconnoitring the mouth of the
Amazon and coasting along to the Orinoco. He took away some gems from
the Indians, some drugs and a load of dye-wood.
From this later commodity of the dye-wood, the great dominion of Brazil
took its name. "Brazil" was originally a legendary island in the
Atlantic, which long retained its imaginary position in the lore of
the forecastle and upon the ancient charts, and from this circumstance
the name came to be bestowed upon that enormous part of South America
which produced the red dye-woods similar to those which bore the name
of Brazil in the Middle Ages.
A few months after the keel of Pinzon had furrowed these unknown seas,
another explorer, Cabral, close upon Easter in 1499 (O.S.), following
the course of Vasco de Gama to the east, was drifted by an adverse gale
so far from his proper track that he reached this same coast, and,
anchoring in Porto Seguro, erected an altar there, celebrated Mass, set
up a stone cross and took possession of the country for the King of
Portugal. He, like Columbus, thought he had reached India, and sent a
vessel to Lisbon with the news.
Let us turn for a space to examine the great land thus brought to
knowledge by these early voyagers.
To-day, the traveller in Brazil will soon be impressed by the immensity
of its spaces, will remark how broad are these wide tablelands, how
interminable the _serras_ and mountain ranges, how boundless the
forests. The territory of this great land is fifteen times that of
France. It is larger than the United States (without Alaska); it is
over 2,600 miles long upon the Atlantic, and 2,700 miles wide from
its coast to where, across the heart of the continent, it touches the
frontier of Peru. Its boundaries touch those of every South American
nation except Chile. Persistent trespassers were the Portuguese in the
early Colonial period, and their land-hunger carried them beyond those
boundaries which the Pope, as we have seen in a former chapter, fixed
between Portugal and Spain.
What is the general nature of this great territory? Here is a coastline
with many sandy beaches, mangrove swamps and lagoons, with inland
channels following the coast for long distances, but giving place to
rolling, fertile coastal plains terminating in headlands overlooking
the Atlantic waves. The coast is indented with many land-locked bays,
forming large and easily accessible harbours, with others smaller and
difficult of approach.
Back from this characteristic littoral, from Cape San Roque--nearly the
easternmost point of South America, whose tropic headland here juts
out far towards Europe--and southward to Rio de la Plata extends a
vast tableland, covering half Brazil, and beyond this we reach immense
undulating plains of sandy soil, forming the great depression of South
America from the basin of the Amazon in the north to the basin of the
Paraná River in the south.
Thus do we remark a singular incoherence and lack of symmetry in
the physiography of Brazil, largely due to geological conditions.
Yet Brazil is a land which has been immune from violent geological
disturbances from an early time. Such oscillations as there have
been have not brought to being enormous mountain chains or intensive
foldings of the rocks, such as are so marked elsewhere in South
America. Flat bedding or low angles mark the geological horizons since
the Devonian Age, and since that age it would seem that none of Brazil
has been beneath the sea. There are eruptive rocks in the Devonian and
carboniferous beds, but since the Palæozoic epoch it does not appear
that there has been any volcanic activity. These devastating forces
of Nature seem to have had their vent on the western side of the
continent. The Palæozoic beds of the interior are of red sandstones,
and these have their place in marked degree in the economics and
appearance of the landscape.
The formation of the country has been interestingly described by a
well-informed recent writer, whom we may quote here.
* * * * *
"The high plains of the interior, which shed their waters both
north and south, have never been of economic importance; the
valley of the Amazon has been developed only of late years, and
its population is as yet small. It is therefore the tableland of
the Atlantic seaboard, from Uruguay to Ceará, that constitutes the
soil of historic Brazil. Through its length of 1,800 to 2,200 miles
this tableland presents the greatest variety of aspect, and has no
hydrographic unity. Its height is greater to the south, where it
reaches some 3,200 feet. This general slope from south to north is
revealed by the course of the San Francisco. In Brazil the name of
Borburema is employed to denote the northern portion of the plateau.
This old geographical term deserves preservation, as it represents
a region which has its own peculiar characteristics. The dry season
there is a long one, and the Borburema does little to feed the small
seaboard rivers which flow fan-wise into the Atlantic; for the
plateau in that region slopes gently to the sea.
"It is otherwise in southern Brazil. From the State of San Paolo
southwards the seaward face of the plateau is a huge bank, some 2,500
or 3,000 feet in height, which separates a narrow strip of coast from
the basin of the great rivers inland. This long bank or watershed
bears successively the titles of Serra do Mar and Serra Geral. From
San Paolo to the Rio Grande no river pierces its barrier; but the
streams which rise upon its landward side, almost within sight of
the sea, cross the whole width of the plateau before they join the
Paraná or the Uruguay. Thus the Serra do Mar is not really a mountain
range; though it has, from the sea, all the appearance of one, owing
to its denticulated ridge; but the traveller who reaches the crest
by crossing the inland plateau arrives at the highest point by the
ascent of imperceptible gradients, and only discovers the _serra_
when he breaks suddenly upon the sight of the ocean thousands of feet
below.
"Beyond the _serra_ is the territory of Minas; a confused mass of
mountainous groups, among which it is no easy matter to trace one's
way, either on the map or on the trail itself. An enormous backbone
of granite, the Mantiqueira, crosses the southern portion of Minas;
and the railway painfully ascends its grassy slopes. The Mantiqueira,
which receives on its southern flank the rains brought by the ocean
winds, is the highest point of the plateau, and the hydrographic
centre of Brazil. It gives birth to the Rio Grande, the principal arm
of the Paraná.
"As soon as we cross the southern frontier of the State of San
Paolo the plateau is transformed; there is no more granite, and the
landscape grows tamer. The primitive measures of gneiss and granite,
out of which the Serra do Mar is carved, are covered to the westward
by a bed of sedimentary rocks, of which the strata, dipping toward
the west, plunge one after the other under other more recent strata.
They consist exclusively of red and grey sandstone, and the sandy
soil which results from their decomposition covers the western
portions of the four southern States. The topography of the country
changes with the geologic structure. The outcrops of sandstone,
which one crosses in travelling westward, cut the tableland into
successive flats. Irregular ranges turn their abrupter slopes towards
the east, as the banks of the Meuse and Moselle in the basin of the
Seine; the rivers flow close underneath them, running through narrow
gorges. Even the least experienced eye could never mistake these
cliffs of sandstone for ridges of granite; these are not mountain
chains, not _serras_, but, according to the local term, _serrinhas_.
"In Santa Catharina and Rio Grande enormous eruptions of basaltic
rocks have covered a portion of the plateau. The basalt has even
reached the seaboard, and southward of the island on which Desterro
is built it overlies the granites of the Serra do Mar. The south
flank of the plateau, which overlooks the prairies of Rio Grande, is
also basaltic. The popular judgment has gone astray, having given the
same name--the Serra Geral--to the granitic chain and to the edge of
the basaltic overflow, as if one were a continuation of the other.
"If we except the prairies of Rio Grande, where the pampas of the
Argentine and of Uruguay commence, there is nothing in front of the
Serra do Mar but a narrow sandy waste. The rains which scar the
face of the _serra_, wearing it into ravines, do not irrigate it
sufficiently; and the rivers, of little volume, are spent in slowly
filling the marshes that border the coast; they are lost finally
among the granite islets, in the deep bays which the first explorers
insisted were great estuaries. From the Rio Grande to Espirito Santo
the Parahyba is the only river that has been able to deposit, at the
foot of the _serra_, and around its outlets, a solid and fertile
alluvial plain; it is there that the sugar-mills of Campos are
established.
"It is the vegetation above all that gives the various regions of
Brazil their peculiar character. It is a mistake to suppose that
Brazil is entirely covered with forests. The forests are concentrated
upon two regions: the basin of the Amazon and a long strip of
seaboard along the Atlantic coast between Espiritu Santo and Rio
Grande. The forests require abundant rains; and the Serra do Mar,
receiving the humidity of the ocean winds upon its dripping flanks,
incessantly hidden by mists, produces far to the south the conditions
which have made the Amazonian basin the home of the equatorial
forest. For a distance of 1,200 miles those who have landed at the
various practicable inlets have found everywhere on the slopes of
the _serra_ the same splendid and impenetrable forest. Even to-day
it is almost untouched. It encircles and embraces Rio; it seems to
refuse it room for growth, as in the tale of Daudet's, in which the
forest reconquered in a single springtide the land which the intrepid
colonists had stolen from it in order to found their settlement.
"Beyond the belt of swamps which extends along the coast, where
ill-nourished trees, overladen with parasites, struggle against
imperfect drainage and poverty of soil, at the very foot of the
_serra_, the true forest begins. The dome-like summits of the great
trees, ranged in ascending ranks upon the slope, completely screen
the soil they spring from, thus giving the peculiar illusion that
this wonderful vegetation rises, from a common level, to the extreme
height of the range. Here and there only emerges from the foliage the
smooth water-worn side of a granite bluff. The railway track runs
between walls of verdure; the underwoods, which elsewhere suffer from
the lack of light, grow eagerly along the sides of the trench-like
clearing. Lianas, ferns, bamboos, grow vigorously as high as the
tree-tops. One seems actually to see the brutal struggle of the
plants toward the sunlight and the air. Many travellers have spoken
of the sense of conflict and of violence produced by the virgin
forest. There is, indeed, along the clearings cut by man, and over
the trees which he fells but does not remove, a fierce battle between
species and species, individual and individual; a desperate struggle
for space and air. As always, it is man who introduces disorder into
the heart of Nature. Far from his track order reigns, established by
the victory of the strongest; and the forest which has never been
violated gives a profound impression of peace and calm.
"The _serra_ is the true home of the equatorial forest. But it
covers beyond the ridge the southern and western portions of the
State of Minas and the basins of the Rio Doce and the Parahyba.
The Martiqueira very nearly marks the limit of the forests; beyond
commences a dense growth of bush. I remember a long journey along
the northern slope of the range upon which is built the new capital
of the State of Minas, the city of Bello Horizonte. Towards the north
we could see vast stretches of uncovered land; the mountains were
partly clothed with narrow belts of forest, which climbed upward
through the valleys to the very sources of the streams; we passed
alternately through thickets of thorn and prairies where the soil
was studded with the nests of termites. The dense trees, deprived
of their leaves by months of drought, were beginning to revive, and
were decking themselves with flowers, of a startling wealth of colour
unknown to the forests of the humid regions. There it was that the
bush commenced. It stretched unbroken to the north--unbroken save for
the streams, which were full or empty according to the rain they had
received.
"In San Paolo also and Paraná the region of afforestation is not
limited by the ridge of the _serra_. Forests and prairies alternate
on the plateau. The fires which the Indians used to light in the
savannahs have destroyed the forest in places; yet man has played
but a little part in the present distribution of vegetation. The
forest has persisted wherever the natural conditions were favourable,
holding tenaciously to the humid slopes of the hills or to rich and
fertile soils. Certain soils, either by reason of their richness or
their moisture, particularly favour the forest, while on lighter
soils the trees can ill resist the drought. The diabasic soils of
San Paolo are always covered with a mantle of forest; so much so that
a map of the forests would be equivalent to a geological map.
"The forest of the plateau, intersected as it is by stretches of
prairie, is less dense and less exuberant than the forest the
_serra_; and as we approach the south the difference is yet more
evident. Towards the boundaries of San Paolo and Paraná the tropical
trees are replaced by resinous varieties. The immense pines of the
Paraná, with straight trunks and wide, flattened crests, whose shape
is rather reminiscent of that of a candelabrum with seven branches,
cover with their sombre grey the wooded portions of the plateau from
the Paranápanema to beyond the Uruguay. With their open foliage,
pervious to the light, these woods resemble the pinewoods of Europe.
"To find the tropical forest once more we must push as far as the
Serra Geral, whose southern slopes run down towards the prairies
of Rio Grande, as on the east they descend towards the sea. There,
on the basaltic flanks of the _serra_, is a last fragment of the
tropical woods. In magnificence it almost equals the forests of Rio
or of Santos. It is the equatorial forest that makes the continuity
of the _serra_, not its geological constitution. When the Brazilians
speak of the _serra_ they think of the forest rather than of the
mountains. Incautious cartographers, who have worked from second-hand
data, which they have not always interpreted correctly, have sown
the map of Rio Grande with a large number of imaginary ranges. One
seeks them in vain when traversing the country; but one finds, in
their place, the forests which the inhabitants call _serras_; the
term for mountain has become, by the latent logic of language, the
term for forest. Nothing could better emphasize the importance
of vegetation in the Brazilian landscape; it effaces all other
characteristics.
"Forest, bush and prairie change their aspect with the cycle of the
seasons. The whole interior of Brazil knows the alteration of two
well-defined seasons. The temperature is equal all the year through;
there is no hot season, no cold season, but a dry season and a
rainy season; this latter corresponds with the southern summer. At
the first rains, which fall in September or October, the wearied
vegetation abruptly awakens. Then comes the time of plenty, when
earth affords the herds of cattle an abundant pasturage. March brings
back the drought to the scorching soil. The region of rainy summers
includes all the State of San Paolo, extending sometimes as far as
Paraná. Further south the rhythm of vegetable life is no longer
swayed by the distribution of the rains, but by the variations of the
temperature, which grow always greater as one travels south. From
June to September frosts are frequent in Rio Grande. The cattle on
its pastures suffer from cold as much as from hunger. Spring returns,
and the grass grows as the sun regains its power. This is the only
portion of Brazil in which the words winter and summer are understood
as they are in Europe.
"But the _ocean_ side of the _serra_ knows no seasons; all the months
of the year are alike; all bring with them an almost equal rainfall.
There vegetation is truly evergreen, everlasting, unresting. The
ridge of the _serra_ divides two different countries. If it is true
that the division of the year into well-marked seasons, that powerful
aid to the agriculturist, is the privilege of the temperate regions,
then tropical Brazil is found only at the foot of the _serra_ and on
its slopes; the interior is another Brazil.
"Its advent into Brazilian history dates very far back. The first
colonists immediately climbed the _serra_, and so discovered the
vast territories which offered them a climate more favourable to
their efforts. The belt of seaboard was too narrow and too hot to
be the cradle of a nation. Colonization was effected otherwise than
in the United States. In North America the pioneers settled along
the seaboard, in a bracing, healthy climate, and there dwelt for
a long period without any thought of crossing to the west of the
mountains which limited their outlook. They prospered and multiplied
in their narrow domain, and, having formed a nation, only then began
to extend their territories toward the west. In Brazil, although the
administrative capital of the colony remained upon the coast, men
quickly began to penetrate the interior. To-day even to the seaward
of the plateau to which the immigrants made their way, and which
they have everywhere opened up for exploitation by labour, the soil
remains but sparsely populated. While the forests of the interior
gradually recede before the agriculturist, Brazil has kept the forest
of the littoral intact, and man has not disputed the claim of the
woods. They form, between the seaboard cities and the agricultural
regions of the plateau, an uninhabited frontier, a sumptuous but
deceptive frontage. Many travellers know nothing of the country but
the seaboard forest. It deceives them as to the nature of Brazil, and
as to its economic progress. The living members of Brazil are hidden
behind it as behind a screen.
"After the first astonishment has abated, and when one has travelled
far and for long periods, the eyes at last become tired; they
become inured to the opulent scenery, and even find the landscape
monotonous. The sombre green of forest or prairie everywhere hides
the rocks; the soil stripped bare by the roads, is of a dull,
uniform red; even the dust is red. Bright colours and broken lines
are equally rare. One travels continually among rounded hillocks
of green; the humid climate hides or softens the contour of hill
and valley alike. The memories of one's journey's blend and grow
confused; reminiscences of forests, skirted or traversed; clumps of
banana-palms near fordable streams; windings of the twisted trail in
the midst of undulating prairies."[23]
From mountain slopes and forest glades let us turn to glance into the
Brazilian home, at the Brazilian people.
In one sense, Brazil is an old country, as far as any American nation
may be termed so, and in its three hundred years of life since the
white man became established within its shores life has taken on a
settled form and engrafted itself upon its environment. It is a land
of marked social customs and distinctions. It has an aristocracy, a
culture refined and stable. Education, music, poetry, the arts, are
revered and enjoyed, and in this sense the traveller is transported
to the Old World. Yet Brazil is democratic in its ideas, as far as
democracy has been possible in the Latin American Republics--a matter
which is of circumscribed limits at present.
The foreigner, unless he specially lay himself out to know the folk of
the Latin American lands, cannot readily look into their homes. They
are a people, as elsewhere remarked, full of reserve, almost mediaeval
in their seclusion, sensitive, yet extremely hospitable and open-handed
whenever these barriers of reserve are penetrated. This is naturally
but the Iberian social character transplanted to America.
It is to be recollected, moreover, that Brazil was a slave-owning
land, with all in social life that that condition brings. Brazil was
always a viceregal or monarchical country too. The fall of slavery in
1888 in part brought about the fall of the empire. Thus we have here
everywhere--except in the southern States where recent immigration has
brought other thoughts and customs--a rigid ruling class and caste, the
privileges of an old society, such as does not exist in its neighbour
of Argentina, for example, and which is foreign to the United States.
Essentially an agricultural country, the land, moreover, belongs almost
in its entirety to this ruling class.
Yet this condition of land-owning seclusion and reserve is not
necessarily accepted as a final and irrevocable circumstance. "In
the cities, and especially Rio, where social life is more developed
and the national character tempered by contact with foreigners of
all nationalities, the country magnates, ignorant of the ephemeral
passage of the fashions, are the subject of ready ridicule. The country
magnate's name is never pronounced without exciting merriment."[24]
This is a curious circumstance, and shows how custom differs in varying
lands. In England, for example, the "country magnate" is generally a
personage upholding all that is best in the community.
In Brazil there is a marked taste for country life, such as is scarcely
yet developed in the Spanish American Republics. The elegant suburb
does not necessarily attract the newly rich Brazilian, who loves to
return to the _fazenda_, or country estate. It has been said, however,
that this is less the result of delight in rural amenities than in the
lust of power, for in the _fazenda_ he is absolute master, with a
power over his dependants stronger perhaps than in any other land.
[Illustration: PALM AVENUE, RIO DE JANEIRO.
Vol. II. To face p. 128.]
Says the writer before quoted: "One of the qualities of the
_fazendeiro_, one which I ought particularly to mention, is his
extreme hospitality. In cordiality, delicacy and unfailing tact the
hospitality of the Brazilian surpasses the imagination of the most
hospitable of Europeans. The _fazendeiro_ will make every possible
effort to render his house agreeable to you; if you wish to take the
air the best horse is at your service; or the safest, according to
your talents as a horseman; the eldest son of the house will be your
companion. After dinner the family will search among the gramophone
discs for the latest music, the latest French songs. In the morning,
upon your departure, your host, cutting short your thanks, will
assure you of the gratitude he owes you for your visit. I have
witnessed this scene a score of times, and each time--whether or
not I owed such fortune to my French nationality--I felt that I was
received as an old family friend.
"Such hospitality introduces one to the heart of many families.
These families, too, are large; ten children are considered in no
way extraordinary. Paternal authority is respected; the son, upon
his entrance, kisses his father's hand. The wife is occupied with
household cares; the husband's duty is to do the honours of the
house. A stranger rarely sees Brazilian women, except as the guest of
a Brazilian family. The women do not receive male callers; for them,
or so it seems to me, mundane life ceases upon marriage.[25] They
marry, I believe, very young, and are absolutely under the marital
thumb. Outside their family their independent life is extremely
limited. Admirable mothers, one knows them rather by their children
than personally; they seem to cherish their domestic obscurity. The
traveller who lands in the United States is immediately surrounded,
questioned, advised and chaperoned by the American woman; there is
nothing of this sort in Brazil.
"In addition to its social authority, this Brazilian aristocracy
enjoys political power as well. Brazil has, it is true, established
universal suffrage; but the sovereign people, before delegating
its sovereignty to its representatives, confides to the ruling
class the duty of supervising its electoral functions. The large
landed proprietors choose the candidates, and their instructions
are usually obeyed. They form the structure, the framework, of all
party politics; they are its strength, its very life; it is they
who govern and administer Brazil. And the administration is a great
power in Brazil. Its province is very wide, and much is expected
from it; whether the explanation is to be found in Latin atavism, or
in the material conditions of life in this limitless territory, or
in the fact that the individual is so powerless, and association
so difficult. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the
administration plays the same part in Brazil as in a European colony
like Algeria, or as in India.
"Between the members of the all-powerful administration who during
my travels granted me facilities, and their friends and relations,
whose hospitality I enjoyed in their _fazendas_, I was perhaps in
danger of becoming exclusively acquainted with the superior social
class of which a portion directs the agricultural exploitation of the
country while the remaining portion governs it. It would be a great
mistake to suppose that this class, by itself, is Brazil. I have done
my best to see beyond it, and to keep in mind the populace, which is
both more numerous and more diversified; a confused mass of people
upon whom, before all else, the whole future of Brazil depends. It
lives under a benign climate; or at least under a climate which makes
impossible what we call poverty in Europe. It is also a rural class;
all the agricultural labour of the country is performed by its hands.
"In Southern Brazil the population has been renewed, all through
the second half of the nineteenth century, by a stream of
European immigration. In San Paolo the Italians have provided the
long-established Paulista population with the labour necessary to
the extensive production of coffee. They live on the plantations, in
villages which are veritable cities of labourers. Nothing ties them
to the soil; they do not seem to feel the appetite for land; very
few buy real estate. They bind themselves only by yearly contracts;
they readily change their employers after each harvest. No more
nomadic people could be imagined; they change incessantly from
_fazenda_ to _fazenda_. Neither is there anything to retain them in
the State of San Paolo; and not the least danger of the coffee crisis
is the exodus which it is producing among the Italian colonists.
"Farther south, from Paraná to Rio Grande, immigration has
resulted in the settlement of a very different population: a small
peasant democracy, composed of Poles, Germans and Venetians. Being
proprietors, they are firmly rooted to the soil. Just as the influx
of Italians to San Paolo was not a spontaneous movement, but the work
of the Paulista administration, so the German and Polish colonization
of the south was evoked and subsidized by the Government of Brazil
and the interested provinces. The newcomers were sent into regions
hitherto unpopulated, where commercial communications could not be
established and economic vitality was unknown. There they lived
abandoned to themselves, without neighbours, without customers. The
political and artificial origin of these colonies condemned them to
isolation; isolation kept them faithful to their national customs
and languages, which they would soon have abandoned under other
circumstances."[26]
* * * * *
It is seen that the Brazilian has a strong leaning towards the
exercise of the intellectual gifts of mankind. They are philosophical.
The love of scientific and learned titles is strong. The doctorate--of
laws, literature, medicine, science--has been a coveted distinction,
indeed has been carried out to become a weakness or failing, a passion,
as among all Latin American communities. At one time the ambition of
every family capable of affording a superior education to its sons was
that the boy should be a priest. That passed, and then he was to be a
doctor, in one of the professions, and, moreover, to marry the daughter
of a neighbour who was also a member of the learned class. Nearly all
professions, it is to be recollected, in the Latin communities carry
the doctorate with them. Nearly all statesmen are doctors--when they
are not military men, and then the sword is apt to oust the diploma!
[Illustration: A COLONY, RIO GRANDE.
Vol. II. To face p. 132.]
Now Brazil--and the same has taken place in Chile--has abolished the
doctorate as being "undemocratic," has abolished the universities
and all their ceremonies and the cap and gown, regarding them as too
aristocratic-seeming, and, in their place, a simple certificate of
knowledge is given from the "professional school."
This may seem destructive, but perhaps there is a measure of wisdom
in it, for apart from a measure of danger in too marked social
distinctions, the system tended among the youth of the country towards
too great an aspiration for academic honours, and not enough towards
the more practical and productive walks of life.
The aristocratic society of Brazil naturally centred around the
monarch, for, as we have not forgotten, Brazil was the only
self-contained empire in the New World, except for Mexico's short-lived
monarchical regime. We may not here trespass much upon the field of
history, but we shall recollect that, in 1808, the fugitive Portuguese
Court, under the regent, Dom Joâo VI, sought Rio de Janeiro as his
refuge. This advent gave a stimulus to the growth of the capital,
which was opened to foreign commerce with the removal of industrial
restrictions, printing was introduced and medicine and literature
established. In 1822 Brazil declared its independence, with Dom Pedro I
as its emperor. The expulsion of royalty in 1889, by a military revolt,
was accomplished without bloodshed, but under subsequent presidents
revolution reared its head.
Brazil is a land that has depended largely for its prosperity upon the
system of what may be termed "monoculture," that is, the exploitation
of one principal crop or product. In earlier times this was sugar; more
recently it has been coffee. This policy, whilst it had advantages,
and, indeed, may have been inevitable, has also serious disadvantages.
Such products are bound for foreign markets and susceptible to the rise
and fall of exchange. The producers may be enriched or impoverished by
such fluctuations.
Moreover, "monoculture," as pointed out elsewhere, tends to the
sacrifice or neglect of other interests, those of smaller and more
varied industries, which go to make up the life of a nation, to
increase its happiness, prosperity, knowledge--indeed, to feed it and
supply it. There is a tendency to draw off labour under monocultural
systems from smaller occupations, from local food supply and
local industry, to herd labour into barracks or congested places,
to discourage individual initiative and peasant proprietorship,
concentrating industry into too few hands. This condition is of easy
growth in such countries as Spanish America, where raw materials,
rather than finished articles, are produced.
There are evidences, however, that Brazilian Governments are awakening
to these matters and encouraging the implantation of a wider variety of
industry. Along such paths undoubtedly lies greater national prosperity
and stability.
The high protective tariffs of the Latin American countries at the
same time tend to raise enormously the price of imported articles
and to foster the industries of the countries themselves. In Brazil
the national manufacturing industries have grown very considerable
under this system of economic fostering. None is more striking
than the cotton-weaving industry, and we are already in sight of
the time when the country will cease to import English or other
foreign cotton goods, except perhaps certain special kinds. This, of
course, is sound economics (however unpleasing it may be for British
manufacturers). Brewing and soap-making are other industries that
have similarly prospered in the Republic. But, so far, factories are
few, comparatively, though there is some useful decentralization of
manufacture. One finds tiny factories in small struggling villages
where their presence might have been unsuspected, industries brought
about by the immensity of distance, the high cost of carriage, which
soon exceeds the value of the finished product, and thus Nature has
here provided a sort of natural protective zone; factories being
established where customers exist, and for the purpose of serving them,
rather than for the object of sale beyond their borders. Each small
factory has its own circle of customers, under these circumstances, and
can rely upon its market close at hand. It enjoys a monopoly of its
peculiar region.
Apart from any defects to which such a system may give rise, this may
be regarded as a valuable condition, and, if preserved, may avoid
in Brazil the serious evils which in some European countries, such
as England, over-centralization of manufacture has given rise--a
philosophy to which, however, English people have not yet awakened.
Similar conditions exist as regards agriculture: the dispersal or
decentralization of industry is necessarily accompanied by the
dispersal or decentralization of agriculture. Food products are grown
where they are to be consumed. Each hamlet, and indeed each family,
has its own fields of maize, manioc and often sugar-cane. The village
is enabled not only to provide itself with employment and with
manufactured articles, but with foodstuffs, and, in the future, this
circumstance might give rise to an intensive general settlement and
contentment.
For trading conditions it may have its adverse side. But the question
is how far trading should be encouraged as against economic settlement.
* * * * *
"As a result of the difficulty of communications, and also, perhaps,
of the defective organization of trade, Brazil is far from forming
a national market. Her territory may be decomposed into a host
of little isolated markets, each independent of the other, each
sufficing to itself. If the prices vary, neither rise nor fall
affects the outer world. In Rio I find the sugar-planters in a state
of joyful excitement: in a few months the price of sugar has risen by
100 per cent. Two days later I land in Paraná; there, in the narrow
tropical belt of seaboard, are a few sugar-plantations, whose crop
is sold on the plateau; not in the shape of sugar, but as 'brandy,'
_aguardiente_, or, strictly speaking, rum. The local crop of cane is
abundant, the owners of the sugar-mills at the foot of the _serra_
are grumbling at having to sell their spirit at far below its usual
price.[27] Similarly the price of coffee will fall in San Paolo
and in Santos, until the Paulist coffee industry appears in actual
danger, and the State undertakes the perilous business of running
up the prices to save the planters. Yet in Ceará there are only a
few growers, who can barely supply the consumers of the State, who
are selling an inferior coffee at double the usual prices, and know
no other anxiety than the fear that the drought may threaten their
crops. Such contrasts are frequent. If such is the case with luxuries
like sugar and coffee, what of the heavier products, whose transport
is still more costly?
"The limitation of the markets renders the economic life of the
country unequal and ill-adjusted. It exposes it to continual partial
crises which naturally check its development. When production
exceeds consumption the local market cannot unload itself upon the
neighbouring markets, in which the producers would perhaps receive
better prices, since these, on account of the cost of transport,
are shut off, as it were, by water-tight compartments. Prices
accordingly fall, without any possible remedy; immediately production
is limited and becomes insufficient; then prices rise, and there
is no importations from without to limit their rise. Reawakened by
better prices, production is once more stimulated; and its very
improvement provokes a new crisis. I found the settlers of Paraná
accustomed and even resigned to the sudden leaps of the market, which
they had come to regard as a normal and inevitable state of affairs.
They live, therefore, always in a state of uncertainty, never able
to foresee what will be their resources for the coming year. The
spirit of saving has decayed among them. In the same way wholesale
trade used to suffer formerly from the extravagant variations of
exchange. The Brazilians have at last come to understand the dangers
of such conditions. There is only one remedy: to improve the means of
communication. The great question of Brazil is above all a question
of roads."[28]
* * * * *
In Brazil the question of means of transport is a serious one. The
magnificent network of railways (largely built by British capital)
serves only the more settled part of the country.
The great export trade of Brazil, with its staple products, furnishes a
stream of gold, which, more or less, becomes dispersed throughout the
country, and creates strong ties of union between the various States,
which otherwise might not exist in unison.
As to sugar, however, Brazil is in large degree its own customer. The
great export is coffee, as it was once sugar, and in part rubber. Meat
also finds its principal market at home. Brazil will soon supply its
own wants in flour, which now comes in part from Argentina.
The rise of the coffee-growing industry in Southern Brazil, in the rich
State of San Paolo, has in it the element of an economic romance.
The condition was the result of Nature's geological work here. It was
discovered about the year 1885 that Nature had disposed large areas of
what came to be called "red earth"--a certain diabasic soil of rich
decomposed lavas--in this part of Brazil, and that the coffee-shrub
flourished wonderfully upon them. A coffee-planting "fever" was the
result. Rich and poor flocked in to take up these lands and plant the
berry; other forms of agriculture were despised; all hunted for the
red-earth deposits, built their homes, set out rows of young shrubs.
The forests receded, cut down by the axe of the new settlers. Towns
sprang to being as if by magic, where people were drawn from the four
quarters of the globe, from every nation. _Fazendas_ rapidly spread,
railways were multiplied, coffee occupied all minds. They thought it
the one thing on earth. Coffee was their art, literature, religion.
Thus the great and to-day rich and handsome city of San Paolo grew up,
into which coffee pours, to have its final outlet for the market beyond
the sea, at Santos--once a dreadful and fever-stricken port, whose
very name was anathema to the traveller, now a fine and fairly healthy
seaport of vast importance.
[Illustration: A VIEW IN SAO PAULO.
Vol. II. To face p. 140.]
The life and circumstances of the immigrants or "colonists," as they
are termed, in these coffee-growing districts of Brazil is one of
peculiar interest for the student of race matters and human geography,
of great value in the science of colonization. Here is an account by a
careful observer:
"Each _fazenda_ constitutes a little isolated world, which is all
but self-sufficient, and from which the colonists rarely issue; the
life is laborious. The coffee is planted in long regular lines in the
red soil, abundantly watered by the rains, on which a constant
struggle must be maintained against the invasion of the noxious
weeds. The weeding of the plantation is really the chief labour of
the colonist. It is repeated six times a year. Directly after the
harvest, if you ride on horseback along the lines of shrubs, which
begin, as early as September, to show signs of their brilliant
flowering season, you will find the colonists, men and women, leaning
on their hoes, while the sun, already hot, is drying behind them the
heaps of weeds they have uprooted.
"Each family is given as many trees as it can look after; the number
varies with the size of the family. Large families will tend as many
as eight or ten thousand trees; while a single worker cannot manage
much more than two thousand.
"Like the vine, coffee requires a large number of labourers in
proportion to the area
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