Travels on the Amazon

by Alfred Russel Wallace

In the village were about a dozen houses belonging to Indians, all of whom had their sitios, or country-houses, at from a few hours' to some days' distance up or down the river, or on some of the small tributary streams. They only inhabit the village at times of festas, or on the arrival of a merchant like Senhor L., when they bring any produce they may have to dispose of or, if they have none, get what goods they can on credit, with the promise of payment at some future time.

There were now several families in the village to welcome their sons and husbands, who had formed our crew; and for some days there was a general drinking and dancing from morning to night. During this time, I took my gun into the woods, in order to kill a few birds. Immediately behind the house were some fruit-trees, to which many chatterers and other pretty birds resorted, and I managed to shoot some every day. Insects were very scarce in the forest; but on the river-side there were often to be found rare butterflies, though not in sufficient abundance to give me much occupation. In a few days, Senhor L. got a couple of Indians to come and hunt for me, and I hoped then to have plenty of birds. They used the gravatána, or blow-pipe, a tube ten to fifteen feet in length, through which they blow small arrows with such force and precision, that they will kill birds or other game as far off, and with as much certainty, as with a gun. The arrows are all poisoned, so that a very small wound is sufficient to bring down a large bird. I soon found that my Indians had come at Senhor L.'s bidding, but did not much like their task; and they frequently returned without any birds, telling me they could not find any, when I had very good reason to believe they had spent the day at some neighbouring sitio. At other times, after a day in the forest, they would bring a little worthless bird, which can be found around every cottage. As they had to go a great distance in search of good birds, I had no hold upon them, and was obliged to take what they brought me, and be contented. It was a great annoyance here, that there were no good paths in the forest, so that I could not go far myself, and in the immediate vicinity of the village there is little to be obtained.

I found it more easy to procure fishes, and was much pleased by being frequently able to add to my collection of drawings. The smaller species I also preserved in spirits. The electrical eel is common in all the streams here; it is caught with a hook, or in weirs, and is eaten, though not much esteemed. When the water gets low, and leaves pools among the rocks, many fish are caught by poisoning the waters with a root called "timbo." The mouths of the small streams are also staked across, and large quantities of all kinds are obtained. The fish thus caught are very good when fresh, but putrefy sooner than those caught in weirs or hooked.

Not being able to do much here, I determined to take a trip up a small stream to a place where, on a lonely granite mountain, the "Cocks of the Rock" are found. An Indian, who could speak a little Portuguese, having come from a village near it, I agreed to return with him. Senhor L. lent me a small canoe; and my two hunters, one of whom lived there, accompanied me. I took with me plenty of ammunition, a great box for my birds, some salt, hooks, mirrors, knives, etc., for the Indians, and left Guía early one morning. Just below the village we turned into the river Isanna, a fine stream, about half a mile wide, and in the afternoon reached the mouth of the small river Cobati (fish), on the south side, which we entered. We had hitherto seen the banks clothed with thick virgin forest, and here and there were some low hills covered entirely with lofty trees. Now the country became very bushy and scrubby; in parts sandy and almost open; perfectly flat, and apparently inundated at the high floods. The water was of a more inky blackness; and the little stream, not more than fifty yards wide, flowed with a rapid current, and turned and doubled in a manner that made our progress both difficult and tedious. At night we stopped at a little piece of open sandy ground, where we drove stakes in the earth to hang our hammocks. The next morning at daybreak we continued our journey. The whole day long we wound about, the stream keeping up exactly the same bleak character as before;—not a tree of any size visible, and the vegetation of a most monotonous and dreary character. At night we stayed near a lake, where the Indians caught some fine fish, and we made a good supper. The next day we wound about more than ever; often, after an hour's hard rowing, returning to within fifty yards of a point we had started from. At length, however, early in the afternoon, the aspect of the country suddenly changed; lofty trees sprang up on the banks, the characteristic creepers hung in festoons over them; moss-covered rocks appeared; and from the river gradually rose up a slope of luxuriant virgin forest, whose varied shades of green and glistening foliage were most grateful to the eye and the imagination, after the dull, monotonous vegetation of the previous days.

In half an hour more we were at the village, which consisted of five or six miserable little huts imbedded in the forest. Here I was introduced to my conductor's house. It contained two rooms, with a floor of earth, and smoky thatch overhead. There were three doors, but no windows. Near one of these I placed my bird-box, to serve as a table, and on the other side swung my hammock. We then took a little walk to look about us. Paths led to the different cottages, in which were large families of naked children, and their almost naked parents. Most of the houses had no walls, but were mere thatched sheds supported on posts, and with sometimes a small room enclosed with a palm-leaf fence, to make a sleeping apartment. There were several young boys here of from ten to fifteen years of age, who were my constant attendants when I went into the forest. None of them could speak a single word of Portuguese, so I had to make use of my slender stock of Lingoa Geral. But Indian boys are not great talkers, and a few monosyllables would generally suffice for our communications. One or two of them had blow-pipes, and shot numbers of small birds for me, while others would creep along by my side and silently point out birds, or small animals, before I could catch sight of them. When I fired, and, as was often the case, the bird flew away wounded, and then fell far off in the forest, they would bound away after it, and seldom search in vain. Even a little humming-bird, falling in a dense thicket of creepers and dead leaves, which I should have given up looking for in despair, was always found by them.

One day I accompanied the Indian with whom I lived into the forest, to get stems for a blow-pipe. We went, about a mile off, to a place where numerous small palms were growing: they were the Iriartea setigera of Martius, from ten to fifteen feet high, and varying from the thickness of one's finger to two inches in diameter. They appear jointed outside, from the scars of the fallen leaves, but within have a soft pith, which, when cleared out, leaves a smooth, polished bore. My companion selected several of the straightest he could find, both of the smallest and largest diameter. These stems were carefully dried in the house, the pith cleared out with a long rod made of the wood of another palm, and the bore rubbed clean and polished with a little bunch of roots of a tree-fern, pulled backwards and forwards through it. Two stems are selected of such a size, that the smaller can be pushed inside the larger; this is done, so that any curve in the one may counteract that in the other; a conical wooden mouthpiece is then fitted on to one end, and sometimes the whole is spirally bound with the smooth, black, shining bark of a creeper. Arrows are made of the spinous processes of the Patawá (Œnocarpus Batawa) pointed, and anointed with poison, and with a little conical tuft of tree cotton (the silky covering of the seeds of a Bombax) at the other end, to fill up exactly, but not tightly, the bore of the tube: these arrows are carried in a wicker quiver, well covered with pitch at the lower part, so that it can be inverted in wet weather to keep the arrows dry. The blow-pipe, or gravatána, is the principal weapon here. Every Indian has one, and seldom goes into the forest, or on the rivers, without it.

I soon found that the Cocks of the Rock, to obtain which was my chief object in coming here, were not to be found near the village. Their principal resort was the Serra de Cobáti, or mountain before mentioned, situated some ten or twelve miles off in the forest, where I was informed they were very abundant. I accordingly made arrangements for a trip to the Serra, with the intention of staying there a week. By the promise of good payment for every "Gallo" they killed for me, I persuaded almost the whole male population of the village to accompany me. As our path was through a dense forest for ten miles, we could not load ourselves with much baggage: every man had to carry his gravatána, bow and arrows, rédé, and some farinha; which, with salt, was all the provisions we took, trusting to the forest for our meat; and I even gave up my daily and only luxury of coffee.

We started off, thirteen in number, along a tolerable path. In about an hour we came to a mandiocca-field and a house, the last on the road to the Serra. Here we waited a short time, took some "mingau," or gruel, made of green plantains, and got a volunteer to join our company. I was much struck with an old woman whose whole body was one mass of close deep wrinkles, and whose hair was white, a sure sign of very great age in an Indian; from information I obtained, I believe she was more than a hundred years old. There was also a young "mamelúca," very fair and handsome, and of a particularly intelligent expression of countenance, very rarely seen in that mixed race. The moment I saw her I had little doubt of her being a person of whom I had heard Senhor L. speak as the daughter of the celebrated German naturalist, Dr. Natterer, by an Indian woman. I afterwards saw her at Guía, and ascertained that my supposition was correct. She was about seventeen years of age, was married to an Indian, and had several children. She was a fine specimen of the noble race produced by the mixture of the Saxon and Indian blood.

Proceeding onwards, we came to another recently-cleared mandiocca-field. Here the path was quite obliterated, and we had to cross over it as we could. Imagine the trees of a virgin forest cut down so as to fall across each other in every conceivable direction. After lying a few months they are burnt; the fire, however, only consumes the leaves and fine twigs and branches; all the rest remains entire, but blackened and charred. The mandiocca is then planted without any further preparation; and it was across such a field that we, all heavily laden, had to find our way. Now climbing on the top of some huge trunk, now walking over a shaking branch or creeping among a confused thicket of charcoal, few journeys require more equanimity of temper than one across an Amazonian clearing.

Passing this, we got into the forest. At first the path was tolerable; soon, however, it was a mere track a few inches wide, winding among thorny creepers, and over deep beds of decaying leaves. Gigantic buttress trees, tall fluted stems, strange palms, and elegant tree-ferns were abundant on every side, and many persons may suppose that our walk must necessarily have been a delightful one; but there were many disagreeables. Hard roots rose up in ridges along our path, swamp and mud alternated with quartz pebbles and rotten leaves; and as I floundered along in the barefooted enjoyment of these, some overhanging bough would knock the cap from my head or the gun from my hand; or the hooked spines of the climbing palms would catch in my shirt-sleeves, and oblige me either to halt and deliberately unhook myself, or leave a portion of my unlucky garment behind. The Indians were all naked, or, if they had a shirt or trousers, carried them in a bundle on their heads, and I have no doubt looked upon me as a good illustration of the uselessness and bad consequences of wearing clothes upon a forest journey.