In laying open the ant-hill which I have above-mentioned, we discovered a couple of the cobras de duas cabeças, or two-headed snakes or worms; each of them was rolled up in one of the nests. These snakes are about eighteen inches in length, and about the thickness of the little finger of a child of four or five years of age. Both extremities of the snake appear to be exactly similar to each other; and when the reptile is touched, both of these are raised, and form a circle or hoop to strike that which has molested it. They appear to be perfectly blind, for they never alter their course to avoid any object until they come in contact with it, and then without turning about they crawl away in an opposite direction. The colour is grey inclining to white, and they are said to be venomous. This species of snake is often found in ant-hills, and I have likewise killed them in my house; they frequent dung-hills and places in which vegetable matter has been allowed to remain for a length of time unremoved.
The island of Itamaraca is said to be less infested with snakes than the main land, and perhaps this opinion is founded on experience; but some of those which are generally accounted venomous certainly exist upon it. A rattle-snake was killed at Amparo two years previous to the period of which I am speaking. A horse died one night in my neighbourhood, and his death was attributed to the bite of a snake; there was a wound upon him, and his body was much swoln. Manoel killed a cobra de veado, or antelope snake (Boa Constrictor) which he brought home to shew me. It was a young one, of seven feet in length, and about the thickness of a man’s arm. The name which it bears of antelope snake proceeds from the destruction which it causes among these animals. The full-grown snake of this species lies in wait for the antelope and other animals of the same size; it entwines its tail around a tree, and patiently expects that its prey will pass within its reach; when this occurs, it encircles the unfortunate animal with its enormous body, thus securing it. I never could discover, after much enquiry, that it had ever been found in a torpid state, digesting its food. Men have sometimes been caught by them; but if the person so situated can draw his knife, his escape is very possible, though he will probably receive several wounds. The opinion is general in the country that the person who receives the bite of one of these snakes, has nothing farther to fear from that of any other snake of whatever description.
One of the negroes whom I had hired with the plantation of Jaguaribe, had one leg much thicker than the other. This was occasioned, as he told me, by the bite of a rattle-snake; he said, that he had been cured from the bites of snakes by a Curador de cobras or Mandingueiro, and had therefore not died; but that “as the moon was strong[120],” he had not escaped receiving some injury from the bite. He had frequently violent pains in his limbs, at the full and change of the moon particularly, and sometimes the wound opened, and remained in this state for weeks together; but if he was careful in not exposing it to the early dews of the morning, it would again heal without any medicinal applications being made use of.
The most beautiful reptile which I saw was the cobra de coral, or coral snake or worm. It is about two feet in length, and of the thickness of a man’s thumb; it is marked with black, white and red stripes transversally. The general opinion is that it is venomous.[121]
But the snakes do not cause so much annoyance as the smaller species of vermin which I am about to mention; because the former seldom enter the houses, nor are they very frequently to be seen in the paths or roads. But the aranha caranguejeira, or crab-spider, (aranea avicularia); the lacraia or scorpion, and the piolho de cobra, or snake louse, (scolopendra morsitans), are to be met with in the houses and in all situations. They should be carefully avoided, for their bites are painful, and are said to cause inflammation. An instinctive recollection of the chance of meeting with these or other vermin of less importance became so habitual with me (and indeed is so with most persons) that when I was about to begin to read, I closed the book in the first place violently so as to crush any thing that might have crept in between the leaves; when my hat, or boots, or cloaths were put on, some precaution was taken, as a thing of course; this was not done from a direct idea of the likelihood of finding any thing unpleasant in that immediate instance; but the precaution was entered into from habit, unconsciously. I was one day bit by a lacraia; I had mounted my horse, and had taken my umbrella in my hand for the purpose of shading me from the sun when I had advanced farther upon my ride; when I was in the act of opening it, I felt suddenly a violent pain upon the fleshy part of the inside of one of my hands; on looking down I soon saw what it was that had bitten me, upon which I turned back, and rode home. I applied the juice of lemons to the part, and in about half an hour, not finding any particularly disagreeable sensations, again mounted my horse. The only effect which I experienced from the bite was a numbness in my hand for the remainder of the day, and a redness about the point which was immediately affected; but on the following day the former was removed, and the latter did not last long. Labat mentions an instance in which the bite of a scorpion caused as little inconvenience as that which I have related. When I mentioned to some of my neighbours the slight consequences of the bite, they ascribed it to the state of the moon.
In the month of September, I went up the river in a canoe to Iguaraçu. The distance from my residence was two leagues. The river or creek has two mouths, which are situated in the bay of the village of Camboa, which is immediately opposite to Conception. In the river there are several islands which are covered with mangroves, and are too low to be cultivated; the banks of the river are likewise lined with the same description of plant, excepting at one point to the left in going up, where the bank is high and perpendicular, and projects considerably. At this place the forest trees come down to the edge of the bank. Near to the town of Iguaraçu the mangroves have been destroyed, and perhaps upon some particular spots they did not originally grow. When the tide is out, the quantity of water which remains in the river is trifling, and in some parts it is nearly dry; indeed, were it not for two places of inconsiderable breadth, where the water is always deep, a man on foot might walk along its bed from about one mile above Camboa to the town. I came down from Iguaraçu one day at the ebb of the tide in a small canoe, which held one man besides myself; it was with difficulty that he could find a channel in which there was sufficient water to float our vessel. It was to Conception that the Portugueze came down from Iguaraçu for provisions, during the siege of the latter place by the savages in 1548, as is related by Hans Stade. I also observed one of the spots at which the savages attempted to sink the boat as it returned, by means of letting a large tree fall upon it[122]. The town of Iguaraçu was plundered, and the inhabitants slaughtered by the Dutch in 1632, under the direction of the dreadful mulatto Calabar.[123]
The mangroves entirely destroy the beauty which it is natural to suppose that the rivers of the country of which I am treating would possess. Until they are destroyed a dull sameness presents itself, for the eye cannot penetrate beyond them. Upon the banks of the Capibaribe they have given place to houses and gardens, and the alteration is most pleasing; upon the banks of the Maria Farinha, the mangroves are beginning to give way to cultivation at the settlements (sitios) of Jardim and Olaria; but the Iguaraçu is without any break, and the Goiana is, I understand, in the same state. There are plantations along these rivers, but the owners content themselves with merely cutting a path through the mangroves down to the water’s edge, so that to a stranger who goes up the rivers the country appears to be uninhabited, until he passes some of these small openings, at which a canoe or a jangada is moored; but the openings are very narrow, and are only to be seen on coming immediately opposite to them. The mangroves grow as far down as low water-mark, and when the tide is out their entangled roots and sprouts, and their stems covered with oysters and besmeared with mud, are left uncovered; but at the height of the tide these are concealed, and the water reaches up to the branches of the trees, so that those which bend downwards are partly wetted, presenting to the beholder the view of a forest growing in the water. This species of mangrove sometimes attains the diameter of fifteen or eighteen inches, and the height of twenty-five or thirty feet. There are two species with which I am acquainted, the mangue vermelho or red mangrove, of which I have been speaking, and the mangue bravo or wild mangrove. The bark of the former is used for tanning, and the timber is much esteemed for beams and rafters in building, but it cannot be used as posts, for under ground it decays very quickly; nor as railings, for it does not bear exposure to the weather. A considerable trade is carried on from Itamaraca, and from some other parts to Recife, in the wood of these plants, which is used as fuel. The tree grows again as often as it is cut down if the root is not injured, and with such rapidity that the supply of the wood will, for a length of time—I mean unless the destruction of the plant becomes more extensive than it is at present—be fully adequate to the demand for it. The fish forsake those parts to which the trees are brought to be cut up for firewood. This may be judged to proceed from the properties of the bark. In a fish-pen, (cural de peixe) near to my place no fish was caught after the fuel-cutters had established themselves at the bridge hard by; of this I heard much, as there was some squabbling upon the subject. The ashes of the mangrove plants are used as temper in the sugar boiling houses.[124]
As I did not, in 1814, suppose that on the following year I should be recalled, I began to make some addition to my cottage, for it was too small for me; and besides it was old, and was constructed of bad timber, which caused it to be much infested by the ants and the copim. I had a considerable quantity of timber of excellent quality at Jaguaribe, which had been prepared by me for building there, and therefore I determined to send for it. Permission was also obtained from the owner of the Engenho Novo, to cut down some trees in his woods, for which he ultimately refused to be paid. The woods of his plantation came down nearly to the water’s edge near to Camboa, and were consequently very conveniently situated for my purpose. The building was to be constructed of wood and mud,—that is, of thick posts supporting the roof and smaller posts at fixed distances between the principal ones, and the openings between each of them were to be filled up with mud. I could not help regretting that such beautiful woods as those which were used should be employed in purposes so much beneath their worth. The pao ferro or iron wood, which is also called the coraçam de negro or the negro’s heart[125], was the most valuable of those which I employed. The outward coat of the wood of this tree is not particularly hard, but the heart destroys many hatchets. I have seen some of this timber taken out of the ground after standing for many years as a supporter to the roof of a house; and though the outward coat was crumbling into dust, the black heart seemed to be literally of iron, or to have increased rather than decreased in hardness[126]. This wood admits of considerable polish; but the black wood, which is most esteemed for furniture, is the jacaranda; this is also hard, but is much more penetrable than the pao ferro, and the polish to which it may be brought is more complete.[127]
The pao d’arco is another valuable wood, and is so called, I imagine, from the use which the Indians made of it for their bows; it is much used in building, and is accounted almost as durable as the pao ferro. It admits of being cleft into splinters, which are flexible without breaking. The pao d’arco has the property of retaining fire for a long time without being stirred, and of yielding a bright light if the log be occasionally touched. The peasantry take advantage of this, and cleave the logs into several narrow splinters, of which they form a bunch; this being lighted, serves them as a flambeau. Formerly, likewise, when every thing was in a ruder state even than it is now in Brazil, the sugar-works were lighted with logs of pao d’arco instead of oil; indeed I have heard that some of the mills in the back settlements still continue this practice. The ashes of this tree are used as temper in the boiling houses of the mills. The number of fine species of timber in Brazil is very great, but I am myself acquainted only with a few of them.[128]