Our protracted stay made a large draft on our yucas and plantains, and it became important to us to look out for fruit and vegetables. The current in the river was too strong, and too much obstructed with floating timber, to permit us to use our boat. The water, even at the broadest part of the stream, had risen upward of fifteen feet, equivalent to a rise of twenty or twenty-five feet in the interior! The banks were overflowed; the low islands outside of us completely submerged and our own space much circumscribed. A few plantain-trees, which we had observed on the first evening, had been broken down or swept away, and we were fain to put ourselves on a short allowance of vegetables. One morning, during a pause in the rain, I ventured out; and, after a little search, found a tree, resembling a pear-tree, and bearing a large quantity of a small fruit, of the size and shape of a crab-apple, and exactly like it in smell. I cried out delightedly to Antonio, holding up a handful of the supposed apples. To my surprise, he shouted, “Throw them down! throw them down!” explaining that they were the fruit of the mangeneel or manzanilla, and rank poison. He hurried me away from the tree, assuring me that even the dew or rain-drops which fell from its leaves were poisonous, and that its influence, like that of the fabled upas, is so powerful as to swell the faces and limbs of those who may be ignorant or indiscreet enough to sleep beneath its shade! I found out subsequently, that it is with the acrid milky juice of this tree that the Indians poison their arrows. I ever afterward gave it a wide berth. In shape and smell it is so much like the crab-apple that I can readily understand how it might prove dangerous to strangers. Under the tropics, it is safe to let wild fruits alone. Antonio, more successful than myself, found a large quantity of guavas, which the natives eat with great relish, but which to me have a disagreeable aromatic, or rather, musky taste. So I stuck to plantains, and left my companions and “El Moro” to enjoy a monopoly of guavas.
Finally, the windows of heaven were closed, the rain ceased, and the sun came out with a bright, well-washed face. It was none too soon, for every article which I possessed, clothing, books, food, all had begun to spot and mould from the damp. I had myself a sympathetic feeling, and dreamed at night that I was covered with a green mildew; dreams so vivid that I once got up and went out naked in the rain, to wash it off!
After the leaves had ceased to drip, we stretched lines between the trees, and hung out our scanty wardrobe to dry. I rubbed and brushed at my court suit of black, but in vain. What with salt water at “El Roncador,” and mould here, it had acquired a permanent rusty and leprous look, which half inclined me to follow the Poyer boy’s suggestion, and soak it in palm oil! Few and simple as were our equipments, it took full two days to redeem them from the effects of the damp. My gun more resembled some of those quaint old fire-locks taken from wrecks, and exhibited in museums, than any thing useful to the present generation. In view of all things, I was fain to ejaculate, Heaven save me from another “temporal” on the Mosquito Shore!
Chapter VI.
It was three days after the rain had ceased, before we could embark on the river, and even then its current was angry and turbid, and filled with floating trees. We hugged the banks in our ascent, darting from one side of the stream to the other, to avail ourselves of the back-sets, or eddies, sometimes losing, by an unsuccessful attempt, all we had gained by half an hour of hard paddling. The banks were much torn by the water; in some places they had fallen in, carrying many trees into the stream, where they remained anchored to the shore by the numerous tough vines that twined around them. Elsewhere the trees, half undermined, leaned heavily over the current, in which the long vines hung trailing in mournful masses, like the drooping leaves of the funeral willow. The long grass on the low islands had been beaten down, and was covered with a slimy deposit, over which stalked hungry water-birds, the snow-white ibis, and long-shanked crane, in search of worms and insects, and entangled fish.
We were occupied the whole day, in reaching the first settlement on this river—a picturesque collection of low huts, in a forest of palm, papaya, and plantain-trees. Near it were some considerable patches of maize, and long reaches of yucas, squash, and melon-vines. There were, in short, more evidences of industry and thrift than I had yet seen on the entire coast.
As we approached the bank, in front of the huts, I observed that all the inhabitants were pure Indians, whom my Poyer boy hailed in his own tongue. I afterward found out that they were Woolwas, and spoke a dialect of the same language with the Poyers, and Cookras, to the northward. As at Wasswatla, nearly all the inhabitants crowded down to the shore to meet me, affording, with their slight and symmetrical bodies, and long, well-ordered, glossy black hair, a striking contrast to the large-bellied, and spotted mongrels on the Wawashaan. I produced my “King-paper,” and advanced toward a couple of elderly men bearing white wooden wands, which I at once conjectured were insignia of authority. But no sooner did they get sight of my “King-paper,” than they motioned me back with tokens of displeasure, exclaiming, “Sax! sax!” which I had no difficulty in comprehending meant “take it away!” So I folded it up, put it in my pocket, and extended my hand, which was taken by each, and shaken in the most formal manner. When the men with the wands had finished, all the others came forward, and went through the same ceremony, most of them ejaculating, interrogatively, Nakisma? which appears to be an exact equivalent of the English, “How are you?”
This done, the men with the wands beckoned to me to follow them, which I did, to a large hut, neatly wattled at the sides, and closed by a door of canes. One of them pushed this open, and I entered after him, followed only by those who had wands, the rest clustering like bees around the door, or peering through the openings in the wattled walls. There were several rough blocks of wood in the interior, upon which they seated themselves, placing me between them. All this while there was an unbroken silence, and I was quite in a fog as to whether I was held as a guest or as a prisoner. I looked into the faces of my friends in vain; they were as impassible as stones. I, however, felt reassured when I saw Antonio at the door, his face wearing rather a pleased than alarmed expression.