Wanderings in South America

by Charles Waterton

I do not believe that there is a single Indian in ci-devant Dutch Guiana who can read or write, nor am I aware that any white man has reduced their language to the rules of grammar; some may have made a short manuscript vocabulary of the few necessary words, but that is all. Here and there a white man, and some few people of colour, talk the language well. The temper of the Indian of Guiana is mild and gentle, and he is very fond of his children.

Some ignorant travellers and colonists call these Indians a lazy race. Man in general will not be active without an object. Now when the Indian has caught plenty of fish, and killed game enough to last him for a week, what need has he to range the forest? He has no idea of making pleasure-grounds. Money is of no use to him, for in these wilds there are no markets for him to frequent, nor milliners' shops for his wife and daughters; he has no taxes to pay, no highways to keep up, no poor to maintain, nor army nor navy to supply; he lies in his hammock both night and day (for he has no chair or bed, neither does he want them), and in it he forms his bow and makes his arrows and repairs his fishing-tackle. But as soon as he has consumed his provisions, he then rouses himself and, like the lion, scours the forest in quest of food. He plunges into the river after the deer and tapir, and swims across it; passes through swamps and quagmires, and never fails to obtain a sufficient supply of food. Should the approach of night stop his career while he is hunting the wild boar, he stops for the night and continues the chase the next morning. In my way through the wilds to the Portuguese frontier I had a proof of this: we were eight in number, six Indians, a negro and myself. About ten o'clock in the morning we observed the feet-mark of the wild boars; we judged by the freshness of the marks that they had passed that way early the same morning. As we were not gifted, like the hound, with scent, and as we had no dog with us, we followed their track by the eye. The Indian after game is as sure with his eye as the dog is with his nose. We followed the herd till three in the afternoon, then gave up the chase for the present, made our fires close to a creek where there was plenty of fish, and then arranged the hammocks. In an hour the Indians shot more fish with their arrows than we could consume. The night was beautifully serene and clear, and the moon shone as bright as day. Next morn we rose at dawn, got breakfast, packed up, each took his burden, and then we put ourselves on the track of the wild boars which we had been following the day before. We supposed that they too would sleep that night in the forest, as we had done; and thus the delay on our part would be no disadvantage to us. This was just the case, for about nine o'clock their feet-marks became fresher and fresher: we now doubled, our pace, but did not give mouth like hounds. We pushed on in silence, and soon came up with them: there were above one hundred of them. We killed six and the rest took off in different directions. But to the point.

Amongst us the needy man works from light to dark for a maintenance. Should this man chance to acquire a fortune, he soon changes his habits. No longer under "strong necessity's supreme command," he contrives to get out of bed betwixt nine and ten in the morning. His servant helps him to dress, he walks on a soft carpet to his breakfast-table, his wife pours out his tea, and his servant hands him his toast. After breakfast the doctor advises a little gentle exercise in the carriage for an hour or so. At dinner-time he sits down to a table groaning beneath the weight of heterogeneous luxury: there he rests upon a chair for three or four hours, eats, drinks and talks (often unmeaningly) till tea is announced. He proceeds slowly to the drawing-room, and there spends best part of his time in sitting, till his wife tempts him with something warm for supper. After supper he still remains on his chair at rest till he retires to rest for the night. He mounts leisurely upstairs upon a carpet, and enters his bedroom: there, one would hope that at least he mutters a prayer or two, though perhaps not on bended knee. He then lets himself drop in to a soft and downy bed, over which has just passed the comely Jenny's warming-pan. Now, could the Indian in his turn see this, he would call the white men a lazy, indolent set.

Perhaps, then, upon due reflection you would draw this conclusion: that men will always be indolent where there is no object to rouse them.

As the Indian of Guiana has no idea whatever of communicating his intentions by writing, he has fallen upon a plan of communication sure and simple. When two or three families have determined to come down the river and pay you a visit, they send an Indian beforehand with a string of beads. You take one bead off every day, and on the day that the string is beadless they arrive at your house.

In finding their way through these pathless wilds the sun is to them what Ariadne's clue was to Theseus. When he is on the meridian they generally sit down, and rove onwards again as soon as he has sufficiently declined to the west; they require no other compass. When in chase, they break a twig on the bushes as they pass by, every three or four hundred paces, and this often prevents them from losing their way on their return.

You will not be long in the forests of Guiana before you perceive how very thinly they are inhabited. You may wander for a week together without seeing a hut. The wild beasts, snakes, the swamps, the trees, the uncurbed luxuriance of everything around you conspire to inform you that man has no habitation here--man has seldom passed this way.

Let us now return to natural history. There was a person making shingles with twenty or thirty negroes not far from Mibiri Hill. I had offered a reward to any of them who would find a good-sized snake in the forest and come and let me know where it was. Often had these negroes looked for a large snake, and as often been disappointed.

One Sunday morning I met one of them in the forest, and asked him which way he was going: he said he was going towards Waratilla Creek to hunt an armadillo; and he had his little dog with him. On coming back, about noon, the dog began to bark at the root of a large tree which had been upset by the whirlwind and was lying there in a gradual state of decay. The negro said he thought his dog was barking at an acouri which had probably taken refuge under the tree, and he went up with an intention to kill it; he there saw a snake, and hastened back to inform me of it.

The sun had just passed the meridian in a cloudless sky; there was scarcely a bird to be seen, for the winged inhabitants of the forest, as though overcome by heat, had retired to the thickest shade: all would have been like midnight silence were it not for the shrill voice of the pi-pi-yo, every now and then resounded from a distant tree. I was sitting with a little Horace in my hand, on what had once been the steps which formerly led up to the now mouldering and dismantled building. The negro and his little dog came down the hill in haste, and I was soon informed that a snake had been discovered; but it was a young one, called the bush-master, a rare and poisonous snake.