It seems astonishing how such large vessels can be at all constructed by persons entirely ignorant of the principles of naval architecture. They are altogether made by the Indians without drawing or design. During the time when Brazil and Venezuela were under the Portuguese and Spanish governments, building-yards were established in several places where good timber was to be found, and the Indians were employed, under naval architects from Spain and Portugal, in the construction of vessels for the coast and inland trade. When the independence of these countries took place, all such establishments were broken up, and a long succession of revolutions and disturbances occurred. The Indians employed had however learnt an art they did not forget, but taught it to their children and countrymen. By eye and hand alone they will form the framework and fit on the planks of fine little vessels of a hundred tons or more, with no other tools than axe, adze, and hammer. Many a Portuguese, who has scarcely ever seen a boat except during his passage to Brazil, gets together half-a-dozen Indians with some old Indian carpenter at their head, buys a dozen axes and a few thousands of nails, and sets up as a shipbuilder. The products of the Upper Rio Negro, principally piassába, pitch, and farinha, are bulky, and require large vessels to take them down, but their value in iron and cotton goods can be brought up again in a very small canoe. Large vessels, too, cannot possibly return up the cataracts. Those made on the Upper Rio Negro, therefore, never return there, and the small traders require a new one annually. They are used below in the navigation of the Amazon, and of all its branches not obstructed by falls or rapids. The vessels are made very cheaply and roughly, and seldom of the best timbers, which are difficult to obtain in sufficient quantity. On an average these canoes do not last more than six or eight years,—many not more than two or three, though there are woods which will stand for thirty years perfectly sound. Owing to these peculiar circumstances, there is a constant demand for these Spanish vessels, as they are called; and the villages of São Carlos, Tiriquím, São Miguel, Tómo, and Maróa are entirely inhabited by builders of canoes.
While I was at Tómoe the village was being cleaned, by scraping off the turf and weeds wherever they appeared within the limits of the houses. The people show an instance of their peculiar delicacy in this work: they will not touch any spot on which there lies a piece of dung of a dog or any animal, or the body of any dead bird or reptile, but hoe carefully around it, and leave a little circular tuft of grass marking the spot where all such impurities exist. This is partly owing to a kind of superstition; but in many other ways they show a dislike to touch, however remotely, any offensive animal substance. This idea is carried so far as to lead them sometimes to neglect the sick in any offensive disease. It seems to be a kind of feeling very similar to that which exists in many animals, with regard to the sick and the dying.
Senhor Antonio Dias was rather notorious, even in this country of loose morals, for his patriarchal propensities, his harem consisting of a mother and daughter and two Indian girls, all of whom he keeps employed at feather-work, which they do with great skill,—Senhor Antonio himself, who has some taste in design, making out the patterns. The cocks of the rock, white herons, roseate spoonbills, golden jacamars, metallic trogons, and exquisite little seven-coloured tanagers, with many gay parrots, and other beautiful birds, offer an assortment of colours capable of producing the most exquisite effects. The work is principally applied to the borders or fringes of hammocks. The hammocks themselves are of finely netted palm-fibre string, dyed of red, yellow, green, and other brilliant colours. The fringes are about a foot deep, also finely netted, of the same material, and on these are stuck, with the milk of the cow-tree, sprays and stars and flowers of feather-work. In the best he puts in the centre the arms of Portugal or Brazil beautifully executed; and the whole, on a ground of the snowy white heron’s feathers, has a very pleasing effect.
Senhor Antonio informed me, that, owing to the lowness of the water, I could not go on any further in my canoe, and must therefore get an Indian obá, of one piece of wood, to stand the scraping over the rocks up to Pimichín; so, on the 13th, I left Tómo with Senhor Antonio in his canoe, for Maróa, a village a few miles above, where I hoped to get an obá suited for the remainder of the journey. This was a large village, entirely inhabited by Indians, and with an Indian Commissario, who could read and write, and was quite fashionably dressed in patent-leather boots, trowsers, and straps. I here got an obá, lent me by a Gallician trader, and took two Indians with me from the place to bring it back. Senhor Antonio returned to Tómo, and about three P.M. I started, with my little tottering canoe, on my journey.
About a mile above Maróa, we reached the entrance of the little river Pimichín, up which we were to ascend. At the very mouth was a rock filling up the channel, and we had great difficulty in passing. We then had deep water for some distance, but came again to rocks and reedy shallows, where our heavily-laden canoe was only got over by great exertions. At night we reached a fine sandy beach, where we staid, but had not been fortunate enough to get any fish, so had nothing for supper but farinha mingau and a cup of coffee; and I then hung my hammock under a little palm-leaf shed, that had been made by some former traveller.
Our breakfast was a repetition of our supper, and we again started onwards, but every half-hour had to stop and partly unload our boat, and drag it over some impediment. In many places there was a smooth ledge of rock with only a little water trickling over it, or a series of steps forming miniature cascades. The stream was now sunk in a little channel or ravine fifteen or twenty feet deep, and with an interminable succession of turnings and windings towards every point of the compass. At length, late in the evening, we reached the port of Pimichín, formerly a village, but now containing only two houses. We found an old shed without doors and with a leaky roof—the traveller’s house—of which we took possession.
Our canoe being unloaded, I went to one of the cottages to forage, and found a Portuguese deserter, a very civil fellow, who gave me the only eatable thing he had in the house, which was a piece of smoke-dried fish, as hard as a board and as tough as leather. This I gave to the Indians, and got him to come and take a cup of coffee with me, which, though he had some coffee-trees around his house, was still quite a treat, as he had no sugar or molasses. From this place a road leads overland about ten miles through the forest to Javíta, a village on the Témi, a branch of the Atabapo, which flows into the Orinooko. Finding that here I could get nothing to eat, I could not remain, as I had at first intended, but was obliged to get my things all carried by road to Javíta, and determined to walk over the next day to see about getting men to do it. In the evening I took my gun, and strolled along the road a little way into the forest, at the place I had so long looked forward to reaching, and was rewarded by falling in with one of the lords of the soil, which I had long wished to encounter.
As I was walking quietly along I saw a large jet-black animal come out of the forest about twenty yards before me, and which took me so much by surprise that I did not at all imagine what it was. As it moved slowly on, and its whole body and long curving tail came into full view in the middle of the road, I saw that it was a fine black jaguar. I involuntarily raised my gun to my shoulder, but remembering that both barrels were loaded with small shot, and that to fire would exasperate without killing him, I stood silently gazing. In the middle of the road he turned his head, and for an instant paused and gazed on me, but having, I suppose, other business of his own to attend to, walked steadily on, and disappeared in the thicket. As he advanced, I heard the scampering of small animals, and the whizzing flight of ground birds, clearing the path for their dreaded enemy.
This encounter pleased me much. I was too much surprised, and occupied too much with admiration, to feel fear. I had at length had a full view, in his native wilds, of the rarest variety of the most powerful and dangerous animal inhabiting the American continent. I was however by no means desirous of a second meeting, and, as it was near sunset, thought it most prudent to turn back towards the village.
The next morning I sent my Indians all out to fish, and walked myself along the road over to Javíta, and thus crossed the division between the basins of the Amazon and the Orinooko. The road is, generally speaking, level, consisting of a series of slight ascents and descents, nowhere probably varying more than fifty feet in elevation, and a great part of it being over swamps and marshes, where numerous small streams intersect it. At those places roughly squared trunks of trees are laid down longitudinally, forming narrow paths or bridges, over which passengers have to walk.