We now know far more about the migrations of birds than was known only a few decades ago. We are able to locate many of them during the various seasons of the year, and are quite certain that they never, as an ingenious writer of the early seventeenth century maintained, spend the winter in the moon, where they have no occasion for food; but we have yet much to learn regarding the causes of their periodic migrations, and the nature of that instinct that enables them to pass, with unerring precision, from the arctic to the antarctic regions, and from the Old World to the New. We are accumulating daily new facts regarding the distant flights of the birds of passage, but, notwithstanding the many theories, some of them more fantastic than scientific, that have been advanced to explain the cause of the migrations of birds; why such migrations were undertaken in the beginning, why they are still continued, and how birds are able to find their way, during their marvelous flights from the arctic to the antarctic—we are still in the dark about many questions connected with those mysterious migrations, which have excited the interest of even the most casual observer since the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle and the crane, and the swallows observe the time of their coming.”[8]
Almost before we were aware of it, the sun had begun to paint the crest of the Andes with bright vermeil and soft purple, and we were still far from Caqueza—the goal of our day’s journey. With the exception of the half-hour we had tarried for luncheon at an attractive posada, called Media Luna, we had been in the saddle all day, and had pushed forwards as rapidly as the strength of our animals would permit. We had left our vaqueano and peons in the rear early in the day, and it was not at all likely that they would be able to reach Caqueza before the following forenoon.
After a delightful, sunshiny day, the sky, towards sunset, suddenly became overcast with dark, threatening clouds, and presently it began to rain. One thing, however, was in our favor, and that was the trail. It was in a far better condition than that of the preceding day, but it lay along the breast of a precipitous mountain slope, at the foot of which, within ear-shot, coursed an impetuous mountain torrent. The greater part of the way was quite safe, and we could trust our mules, even in the dark, to keep to the path. But here and there were treacherous places—loose ground, and landslides caused by recent rains—which rendered traveling, even in the daytime, sufficiently difficult. In the darkness, that was every moment becoming more dense, locomotion was positively dangerous. There was no house on the way in which we could find shelter for the night. Our tent, with our other baggage, was in the hands of our dilatory peons. The only alternatives, then, were pressing on to Caqueza, despite darkness and danger, or standing still in our trail, where there was not even a shrub to temper the ever-increasing downpour. We elected to trust our lives again to our mules, as we had done the previous night. This seemed to be the lesser of the two evils that confronted us.
We then recalled the hesitating answer that our vaqueano had, in the morning, given to our query about reaching Caqueza before nightfall. His “Tal vez, no”—perhaps not, was a gentle prognostic that it was impossible, at least for the baggage mules. As a matter of fact, they did not arrive until towards noon the next day. Their mules had given out, and the vaqueano and peons had to make shift to spend the night as best they could under an inclement sky.
The last objects of interest that we descried in the deepening gloom were a number of peasant cots perched high upon the mountain sides—much like so many cottages in the higher Alps—and the junction of two rivers—the Rio Blanco and the Rio Negro. The rivers specially attracted our attention, as the color of the waters of the one, the Blanco—white—was in such marked contrast with the waters of the other, the Negro or black river. The one owed its color to the white clay soil through which it passed. The other was rendered black—like the well-known bog-tinctured, “black waters” of Ireland—by the presence of organic material. Even long after the waters of the two tributaries had entered their common channel, they kept quite separate—the black flowing along one bank and the white along the bank opposite.
It would take too long to enumerate the many difficulties we encountered, during our long ride in the darkness, before we finally arrived at Caqueza. Suffice to say that it was several long hours after nightfall, and that we were both quite exhausted, both by hunger and fatigue. We never felt time to pass so slowly, as during the last hour of the day’s journey, when there was danger in every step forward from the ever-threatening ravine, along the edge of which our path lay, and we were quite ready to exclaim with Shelley,
“How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl.”
In the posada where we purposed spending the night, which was recommended as the best in town, we found sufficient to appease the pangs of hunger, but we were soon made to realize that we had another sleepless night before us. In San Miguel our quarters were damp and our blankets wet, owing to some carelessness on the part of our peons. In Caqueza the rooms assigned us—and particularly the beds—could best be described by a single word—insectiferous. They were a veritable insectarium that served no scientific or economic purpose. It is but just, however, to record that this was our first experience of the kind during our journey thus far in the tropics. Under the circumstances, there was nothing left for us to do except resignedly to exclaim with the pious native—Sea por Dios—may it be received by God in atonement for sin.
[1] The reader who is interested in the famous expeditions of Hohermuth, von Hutten and Federmann, about which there is little in English that is satisfactory, is referred to Castellanos, Varones Ilustres de Indias, Partes II and III; Herrera, Historia de las Indias, Dec. VI; Oviedo y Baños, Conquista y Poblacion de Venezuela, Lib I and III; Oviedo y Valdéz. Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Tom. II, Lib. XXV; Ternaux—Compans, Voyages, Rélations et Memoires Originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découvarte de l’Amérique, Tom. II, Paris, 1840; Klunzinger, Antheil der Deutschen an der Andeckung von Süd-Amerika, Kap. VI, IX and XII, Stuttgart, 1857; Schumacher, Die Unternehmungen der Augsburger Welser in Venezuela, Kap. IV, IX and XII, in Tom. II, of a work published in Hamburg, 1892, Zur Errinnerung an die Endeckung Amerikas; Topf, Deutsche Statthalter und Konquistadoren in Venezuela, pp. 18, 19, 33–42, 48–55; Tom. VI, of the Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Hamburg, 1893; Humbert, L’Occupation Allemande du Venezuela au XVI Siècle, Période dite des Welser, 1528–1556, Bordeaux, 1905. The last-named work is illustrated by a valuable map. The subject possesses an added interest from the fact that it refers to the only attempt at colonial occupation ever made by Germans in South America. How different would now be the condition of Venezuela and Colombia if the Welser colony had been permanent and successful! [↑]