The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates

[5] Meaning, in Tupí, the river of many mosquitoes: from carapaná, mosquito, and itúba, many.

We ran ashore in a most lonely and gloomy place, on a low sand-bank covered with bushes, secured the montaria to a tree, and then, after making a very sparing breakfast on fried fish and mandioca meal, rolled up our trousers and plunged into the thick forest, which here, as everywhere else, rose like a lofty wall of foliage from the narrow strip of beach. We made straight for the heart of the land, John Jabutí leading, and breaking off at every few steps a branch of the lower trees, so that we might recognise the path on our return. The district was quite new to all my companions, and being on a coast almost totally uninhabited by human beings for some 300 miles, to lose our way would have been to perish helplessly. I did not think at the time of the risk we ran of having our canoe stolen by passing Indians, unguarded montarias being never safe even in the ports of the villages, Indians apparently considering them common property, and stealing them without any compunction. No misgivings clouded the lightness of heart with which we trod forward in warm anticipation of a good day’s sport.

The tract of forest through which we passed was Ygapó, but the higher parts of the land formed areas which went only a very few inches under water in the flood season. It consisted of a most bewildering diversity of grand and beautiful trees, draped, festooned, corded, matted, and ribboned with climbing plants, woody and succulent, in endless variety. The most prevalent palm was the tall Astryocaryum Jauarí, whose fallen spines made it necessary to pick our way carefully over the ground, as we were all barefooted. There was not much green underwood, except in places where Bamboos grew; these formed impenetrable thickets of plumy foliage and thorny, jointed stems, which always compelled us to make a circuit to avoid them. The earth elsewhere was encumbered with rotting fruits, gigantic bean-pods, leaves, limbs, and trunks of trees; fixing the impression of its being the cemetery as well as the birthplace of the great world of vegetation overhead. Some of the trees were of prodigious height. We passed many specimens of the Moratinga, whose cylindrical trunks, I dare not say how many feet in circumference, towered up and were lost amidst the crowns of the lower trees, their lower branches, in some cases, being hidden from our view. Another very large and remarkable tree was the Assacú (Sapium aucuparium). A traveller on the Amazons, mingling with the people, is sure to hear much of the poisonous qualities of the juices of this tree. Its bark exudes, when hacked with a knife, a milky sap, which is not only a fatal poison when taken internally, but is said to cause incurable sores if simply sprinkled on the skin. My companions always gave the Assacú a wide berth when we passed one. The tree looks ugly enough to merit a bad name, for the bark is of a dingy olive colour, and is studded with short and sharp, venomous-looking spines.

After walking about half a mile we came upon a dry watercourse, where we observed, first, the old footmarks of a tapir, and, soon after, on the margin of a curious circular hole full of muddy water, the fresh tracks of a Jaguar. This latter discovery was hardly made when a rush was heard amidst the bushes on the top of a sloping bank on the opposite side of the dried creek. We bounded forward; it was, however, too late, for the animal had sped in a few minutes far out of our reach. It was clear we had disturbed, on our approach, the Jaguar, whilst quenching his thirst at the water-hole. A few steps further on we saw the mangled remains of an alligator (the Jacarétinga). The head, fore-quarters, and bony shell were the only parts which remained; but the meat was quite fresh, and there were many footmarks of the Jaguar around the carcase; so that there was no doubt this had formed the solid part of the animal’s breakfast. My companions now began to search for the alligator’s nest, the presence of the reptile so far from the river being accountable for on no other ground than its maternal solicitude for its eggs. We found, in fact, the nest at the distance of a few yards from the place. It was a conical pile of dead leaves, in the middle of which twenty eggs were buried. These were of elliptical shape, considerably larger than those of a duck, and having a hard shell of the texture of porcelain, but very rough on the outside. They make a loud sound when rubbed together, and it is said that it is easy to find a mother alligator in the Ygapó forests by rubbing together two eggs in this way, she being never far off, and attracted by the sounds.

I put half-a-dozen of the alligator’s eggs in my game-bag for specimens, and we then continued on our way. Lino, who was now first, presently made a start backwards, calling out “Jararáca!” This is the name of a poisonous snake (genus Craspedocephalus), which is far more dreaded by the natives than Jaguar or Alligator. The individual seen by Lino lay coiled up at the foot of a tree, and was scarcely distinguishable, on account of the colours of its body being assimilated to those of the fallen leaves. Its hideous, flat triangular head, connected with the body by a thin neck, was reared and turned towards us: Frazao killed it with a charge of shot, shattering it completely, and destroying, to my regret, its value as a specimen. In conversing on the subject of Jararácas as we walked onwards, every one of the party was ready to swear that this snake attacks man without provocation, leaping towards him from a considerable distance when he approaches. I met, in the course of my daily rambles in the woods, many Jararácas, and once or twice narrowly very escaped treading on them, but never saw them attempt to spring. On some subjects the testimony of the natives of a wild country is utterly worthless. The bite of the Jararácas is generally fatal. I knew of four or five instances of death from it, and only of one clear case of recovery after being bitten; but in that case the person was lamed for life.

We walked over moderately elevated and dry ground for about a mile, and then descended (three or four feet only) to the dry bed of another creek. This was pierced in the same way as the former water-course, with round holes full of muddy water. They occurred at intervals of a few yards, and had the appearance of having been made by the hand of man. The smallest were about two feet, the largest seven or eight feet in diameter. As we approached the most extensive of the larger ones, I was startled at seeing a number of large serpent-like heads bobbing about the surface. They proved to be those of electric eels, and it now occurred to me that the round holes were made by these animals working constantly round and round in the moist, muddy soil. Their depth (some of them were at least eight feet deep) was doubtless due also to the movements of the eels in the soft soil, and accounted for their not drying up, in the fine season, with the rest of the creek. Thus, whilst alligators and turtles in this great inundated forest region retire to the larger pools during the dry season, the electric eels make for themselves little ponds in which to pass the season of drought.

My companions now cut each a stout pole, and proceeded to eject the eels in order to get at the other fishes, with which they had discovered the ponds to abound. I amused them all very much by showing how the electric shock from the eels could pass from one person to another. We joined hands in a line whilst I touched the biggest and freshest of the animals on the head with the point of my hunting-knife. We found that this experiment did not succeed more than three times with the same eel when out of the water; for, the fourth time the shock was scarcely perceptible. All the fishes found in the holes (besides the eels) belonged to one species, a small kind of Acari, or Loricaria, a group whose members have a complete bony integument. Lino and the boy strung them together through the gills with slender sipós, and hung them on the trees to await our return later in the day.

Leaving the bed of the creek, we marched onwards, always towards the centre of the land, guided by the sun, which now glimmered through the thick foliage overhead. About eleven o’clock we saw a break in the forest before us, and presently emerged on the banks of a rather large sheet of water. This was one of the interior pools of which there are so many in this district. The margins were elevated some few feet, and sloped down to the water, the ground being hard and dry to the water’s edge, and covered with shrubby vegetation. We passed completely round this pool, finding the crowns of the trees on its borders tenanted by curassow birds, whose presence was betrayed as usual by the peculiar note which they emit. My companions shot two of them. At the further end of the lake lay a deep watercourse, which we traced for about half a mile, and found to communicate with another and smaller pool. This second one evidently swarmed with turtles, as we saw the snouts of many peering above the surface of the water: the same had not been seen in the larger lake, probably because we had made too much noise in hailing our discovery on approaching its banks. My friends made an arrangement on the spot for returning to this pool, after the termination of the egg harvest on Catuá.

In recrossing the space between the two pools, we heard the crash of monkeys in the crowns of trees overhead. The chase of these occupied us a considerable time. José fired at length at one of the laggards of the troop, and wounded him. He climbed pretty nimbly towards a denser part of the tree, and a second and third discharge failed to bring him down. The poor maimed creature then trailed his limbs to one of the topmost branches, where we descried him soon after, seated and picking the entrails from a wound in his abdomen; a most heart-rending sight. The height from the ground to the bough on which he was perched could not have been less than 150 feet, and we could get a glimpse of him only by standing directly underneath, and straining our eyes upwards. We killed him at last by loading our best gun with a careful charge, and resting the barrel against the tree-trunk to steady the aim. A few shots entered his chin, and he then fell heels over head screaming to the ground. Although it was I who gave the final shot, this animal did not fall to my lot in dividing the spoils at the end of the day. I regret now not having preserved the skin, as it belonged to a very large species of Cebus, and one which I never met with afterwards.

It was about one o’clock in the afternoon when we again reached the spot where we had first struck the banks of the larger pool. We hitherto had but poor sport, so after dining on the remains of our fried fish and farinha, and smoking our cigarettes, the apparatus for making which, including bamboo tinder-box and steel and flint for striking a light, being carried by every one always on these expeditions, we made off in another (westerly) direction through the forest to try to find better hunting-ground. We quenched our thirst with water from the pool, which I was rather surprised to find quite pure. These pools are, of course, sometimes fouled for a time by the movements of alligators and other tenants in the fine mud which settles at the bottom, but I never observed a scum of confervæ or traces of oil revealing animal decomposition on the surface of these waters, nor was there ever any foul smell perceptible. The whole of this level land, instead of being covered with unwholesome swamps emitting malaria, forms in the dry season (and in the wet also) a most healthy country. How elaborate must be the natural processes of self-purification in these teeming waters!