Near this interesting young couple, both in the heyday of youth, lay a cluster of plantains, which was doubtless to contribute to their morning repast. But what a coincidence that, even in this trifling circumstance, we should find an additional reminder of the Earthly Paradise! Have not men of science named the plantain Musa Paradisaica, in allusion to the tradition, which has long obtained, that it was the plantain, and not the apple, that was the forbidden fruit in Eden?[18] It was there to fill out the picture as an artist in the tropics would wish to see it painted.
But there was still something wanting. While we were yet under the spell of our environment, and lost in the contemplation of the Edenic beauties around us, we were awakened from our reverie by a plunge and a splash before the prow of our vessel—and there, greatest surprise of all in our series of coincidences, was a giant anaconda, full thirty feet long, vigorously plowing its way to the opposite bank of the river. It was like the water-snakes in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
“Blue, glossy, green and velvet black,
It coiled and swam,
And when it reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.”
So startling was this strange apparition that we could scarcely credit our senses, and, had it not been for exclamations of surprise by several of the passengers near by, we should have thought, for a while, that it was all a dream.
The picture was now complete. There was the serpent in this paradise of delights, as in the paradise of our first parents. And what added to the strangeness—the uncanniness—of the appearance of the serpent at this particular juncture was the extraordinary rarity of such an occurrence. One of the officers of the steamer told us that he had been sailing up and down the Orinoco for twenty years and had never seen one of these boas before. And more wonderful still, it was the first and last we ourselves saw, although we subsequently traveled many thousands of miles on tropical rivers along which such serpents have their habitat.[19]
All in all, our first view of the Orinoco fully met our fondest expectations so far as they related to variety and exuberance of vegetation and beauty of scenery. The entire delta of the Orinoco may aptly be described as one of Nature’s choicest conservatories, in which Flora has collected together the fairest growths of garden and forest, and where the charm of foliage and flower is enhanced by the presence of countless species of the feathered tribe of richest plumage and of dazzling hue.
A distinguished German traveler, Friedrich Gerstäcker, writing of his impressions of the delta of the Orinoco, does not hesitate to declare that “there is not in the world anything more glorious in vegetation than is to be seen on the banks of the Orinoco,” and that there is no place more attractive to the tourist.[20]