One of the sentinels was a taciturn, morose-looking, but sober and honest Indian, named Daniel; the other was a noted character of Ega, a little wiry Mameluco, named Carepíra (Fish-hawk); known for his waggery, propensity for strong drink, and indebtedness to Ega traders. Both were intrepid canoemen and huntsmen, and both perfectly at home anywhere in these fearful wastes of forest and water. Carepíra had his son with him, a quiet little lad of about nine years of age. These men in a few minutes constructed a small shed with four upright poles and leaves of the arrow-grass, under which Cardozo and I slung our hammocks. We did not go to sleep, however, until after midnight: for when supper was over, we lay about on the sand with a flask of rum in our midst, and whiled away the still hours in listening to Carepíra’s stories.
I rose from my hammock by daylight, shivering with cold; a praia, on account of the great radiation of heat in the night from the sand, being towards the dawn the coldest place that can be found in this climate. Cardozo and the men were already up watching the turtles. The sentinels had erected for this purpose a stage about fifty feet high, on a tall tree near their station, the ascent to which was by a roughly-made ladder of woody lianas. They are enabled, by observing the turtles from this watch-tower, to ascertain the date of successive deposits of eggs, and thus guide the commandante in fixing the time for the general invitation to the Ega people. The turtles lay their eggs by night, leaving the water when nothing disturbs them, in vast crowds, and crawling to the central and highest part of the praia. These places are, of course, the last to go under water when, in unusually wet seasons, the river rises before the eggs are hatched by the heat of the sand. One could almost believe from this that the animals used forethought in choosing a place; but it is simply one of those many instances in animals where unconscious habit has the same result as conscious prevision. The hours between midnight and dawn are the busiest. The turtles excavate with their broad, webbed paws, deep holes in the fine sand: the first corner, in each case, making a pit about three feet deep, laying its eggs (about 120 in number) and covering them with sand; the next making its deposit at the top of that of its predecessor, and so on until every pit is full. The whole body of turtles frequenting a praia does not finish laying in less than fourteen or fifteen days, even when there is no interruption. When all have done, the area (called by the Brazilians taboleiro) over which they have excavated is distinguishable from the rest of the praia only by signs of the sand having been a little disturbed.
On rising, I went to join my friends. Few recollections of my Amazonian rambles are more vivid and agreeable than that of my walk over the white sea of sand on this cool morning. The sky was cloudless; the just-risen sun was hidden behind the dark mass of woods on Shimuní, but the long line of forest to the west, on Bariá, with its plumy decorations of palms, was lighted up with his yellow, horizontal rays. A faint chorus of singing birds reached the ears from across the water, and flocks of gulls and plovers were drying plaintively over the swelling banks of the praia, where their eggs lay in nests made in little hollows of the sand. Tracks of stray turtles were visible on the smooth white surface of the praia. The animals which thus wander from the main body are lawful prizes of the sentinels; they had caught in this way two before sunrise, one of which we had for dinner. In my walk I disturbed several pairs of the chocolate and drab-coloured wild-goose (Anser jubatus) which set off to run along the edge of the water. The enjoyment one feels in rambling over these free, open spaces, is no doubt enhanced by the novelty of the scene, the change being very great from the monotonous landscape of forest which everywhere else presents itself.
On arriving at the edge of the forest I mounted the sentinel’s stage, just in time to see the turtles retreating to the water on the opposite side of the sand-bank, after having laid their eggs. The sight was well worth the trouble of ascending the shaky ladder. They were about a mile off, but the surface of the sands was blackened with the multitudes which were waddling towards the river; the margin of the praia was rather steep, and they all seemed to tumble head first down the declivity into the water.
I spent the morning of the 27th collecting insects in the woods of Shimuní; and assisted my friend in the afternoon to beat a large pool for Tracajás, Cardozo wishing to obtain a supply for his table at home. The pool was nearly a mile long, and lay on one side of the island between the forest and the sand-bank. The sands are heaped up very curiously around the margins of these isolated sheets of water; in the present case they formed a steeply-inclined bank, from five to eight feet in height. What may be the cause of this formation I cannot imagine. The pools always contain a quantity of imprisoned fish, turtles, Tracajás, and Aiyussás.[[3]] The turtles and Aiyussás crawl out voluntarily in the course of a few days, and escape to the main river, but the Tracajás remain and become an easy prey to the natives. The ordinary mode of obtaining them is to whip the water in every part with rods for several hours during the day; this treatment having the effect of driving the animals out. They wait, however, until the night following the beating before making their exit. Our Indians were occupied for many hours in this work, and when night came they and the sentinels were placed at intervals along the edge of the water to be ready to capture the runaways. Cardozo and I, after supper, went and took our station at one end of the pool.
[3] Specimens of this species of turtle are named in the British Museum collection, Podocnemis expansa.
We did not succeed, after all our trouble, in getting many Tracajás. This was partly owing to the intense darkness of the night, and partly, doubtless, to the sentinels having already nearly exhausted the pool, notwithstanding their declarations to the contrary. In waiting for the animals, it was necessary to keep silence: not a pleasant way of passing the night; speaking only in whispers, and being without fire in a place liable to be visited by a prowling jaguar. Cardozo and I sat on a sandy slope with our loaded guns by our side, but it was so dark we could scarcely see each other. Towards midnight a storm began to gather around us. The faint wind which had breathed from over the water since the sun went down, ceased; thick clouds piled themselves up, until every star was obscured, and gleams of watery lightning began to play in the midst of the black masses. I hinted to Cardozo that I thought we had now had enough of watching, and suggested a cigarette. Just then a quick pattering movement was heard on the sands, and grasping our guns, we both started to our feet. Whatever it might have been it seemed to pass by, and a few moments afterwards a dark body appeared to be moving in another direction on the opposite slope of the sandy ravine where we lay. We prepared to fire, but luckily took the precaution of first shouting “Quem vai lá?” (Who goes there?) It turned out to be the taciturn sentinel, Daniel, who asked us mildly whether we had heard a “raposa” pass our way. The raposa is a kind of wild dog, with very long tapering muzzle, and black and white speckled hair. Daniel could distinguish all kinds of animals in the dark by their footsteps. It now began to thunder, and our position was getting very uncomfortable. Daniel had not seen anything of the other Indians, and thought it was useless waiting any longer for Tracajás; we therefore sent him to call in the whole party, and made off ourselves, as quickly as we could, for the canoe. The rest of the night was passed most miserably; as indeed were very many of my nights on the Solimoens. A furious squall burst upon us; the wind blew away the cloths and mats we had fixed up at the ends of the arched awning of the canoe to shelter ourselves, and the rain beat right through our sleeping-place. There we lay, Cardozo and I, huddled together, and wet through, waiting for the morning.
A cup of strong and hot coffee put us to rights at sunrise, but the rain was still coming down, having changed to a steady drizzle. Our men were all returned from the pool, having taken only four Tracajás. The business which had brought Cardozo hither being now finished, we set out to return to Ega, leaving the sentinels once more to their solitude on the sands. Our return route was by the rarely frequented north-easterly channel of the Solimoens, through which flows part of the waters of its great tributary stream, the Japurá. We travelled for five hours along the desolate, broken, timber-strewn shore of Bariá. The channel is of immense breadth, the opposite coast being visible only as a long, low line of forest. At three o’clock in the afternoon we doubled the upper end of the island, and then crossed towards the mouth of the Teffé by a broad transverse channel running between Bariá and another island called Quanarú. There is a small sand-bank at the north-westerly point of Bariá, called Jacaré; we stayed here to dine and afterwards fished with the net. A fine rain was still falling, and we had capital sport, in three hauls taking more fish than our canoe would conveniently hold. They were of two kinds only, the Surubim and the Piraepiéüa (species of Pimelodus), very handsome fishes, four feet in length, with flat spoon-shaped heads, and prettily-spotted and striped skins.
