Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

Before our departure from Caracas, we tried in vain to get some information not only about the dates of sailing of the Orinoco steamers but also about their character. After leaving the capital, some of our friends tried to dissuade us from our projected trip to Ciudad Bolivar, assuring us that the only craft plying up and down the river were filthy cattle boats unfit for a white man to enter. Imagine our surprise, then, when we found that our vessel, far from being the unclean, poorly-provisioned boat that had been pictured to us, was in every way fairly comfortable, and with a cuisine and service that were far from bad. In construction and general arrangement, it was not unlike the smaller double-decked steamers on the Hudson river or on our northern lakes. Our cabins were spacious, with broad berths, and clean bedding and furniture. Indeed, we have often had cabins in our large transatlantic steamers in which there was less of comfort and convenience than were afforded by our cabin in this unpretending boat on the Orinoco.

As to the passengers, they were quite a cosmopolitan crowd. Among them were some Europeans and several Americans, but the greater number were Venezuelans—most of them bound for Ciudad Bolivar. Of the Americans there were two men in quest of fortune in the celebrated Yuruari mining district in southern Guiana.

The upper deck of the boat was reserved for the first-class passengers, while the lower one was occupied by those of the second-class, and by such freight as was carried up and down the river. On returning to the Port-of-Spain, the steamer usually carried about two hundred head of cattle for the Trinidad market. When these were taken on board at night, as sometimes happened, sleep was impossible. What with the tramping and bellowing of the affrighted brutes below us and the shouting of the cattlemen and crew, there was a veritable pandemonium which continued the greater part of the night.

Frequently there are not enough cabins for the passengers. But this makes very little difference to the Venezuelan. He simply swings his chinchorro—hammock—between two stanchions of the vessel and is soon calmly reposing in slumberland. Indeed, many of the inhabitants of the tropics prefer a hammock to a bed, and do not apply for a stateroom when traveling on the rivers of equatorial America.

The second-class passengers sleep in their hammocks if they happen to have them; if not, they lie down anywhere they can find room and are soon fast asleep. Many of them have no beds at home, except a mat, a rawhide, or the lap of Mother Earth, and the absence of a bed or hammock is no appreciable privation to them.

There is no more curious sight than is presented at night on a crowded river steamer in the tropics. One sees scores of hammocks swung in every conceivable place. All davits and stanchions, all uprights and crosspieces are provided with hooks and rings, so that hammocks, when necessary, may be attached to them. In saloons and passageways, on forward-deck and after-deck, wherever there is any available space, there is stretched on the floor, or snugly ensconced in his chinchorro, some quietly sleeping or loudly snoring specimen of humanity. Sometimes one will see several persons stowed away in a single hammock. It is not an unusual thing to see two persons in the same chinchorro, and one may now and then see a mother and three children serenely reposing in one of these aerial cots. How they do it, it is difficult to say, but the fact is that they do it, and there is apparently not a budge in the hammock’s occupants until they are awakened in the morning by the call of the birds—Nature’s alarm clocks in the tropics.

A place of more than passing interest between Barrancas and Ciudad Bolivar is Los Castillos, formerly Guayana la Vieja, founded by Antonio de Berrio in 1591. It was here, in 1618, that young Walter Raleigh, the son of the Admiral, lost his life in an encounter with the Spaniards who had possession of this stronghold. It was near here, also, that Bolivar, at a critical hour during the War of Independence, saved his life by hiding in a swamp near the village.

About ten leagues further up the river, at the mouth of the Caroni, and opposite the island of Fajardo, Diego de Ordaz—the officer under Cortes who got sulphur out of the crater of Popocatepetl—found in 1531 a settlement called Carao during his exploration of the Orinoco. This was afterwards named Santo Tomé de Guayana, and was for a short time a missionary centre—the first on the Orinoco. It was, however, destroyed in 1579 by the Dutch under Jansen. There is little now at this point to interest the traveler except the beautiful Salto—cataract—of the Caroni river, so celebrated for its picturesque scenery, and the wealth of orchideous plants with which the adjacent trees are clothed. Raleigh in describing these falls says that so great was the mass of vapor due to the fury and rebound of the waters that “we tooke it at the first for a smoke that had risen ouer some great towne,” and Padre Caulin, in his description of it, says the roar of the cataract is so great that it can be heard at a distance of several leagues. Both these accounts are quite exaggerated. The falls are very beautiful and romantic, but by no means so grand or so imposing as they have been depicted.

Near the confluence of the Caroni and the Orinoco is the straggling little town of San Felix. At this point our mining party left us for their long journey of one hundred and fifty miles on mule-back to Callao. They gave us a cordial invitation to accompany them, but we had other plans, and, although we should have enjoyed exploring this famous mining district of southern Guiana, we felt constrained to continue our course westwards.

For a number of years the Yuruari mining district promised to equal, if not surpass, the most famous gold fields of Nevada and California. One of the mines, the Callao, rivaled the great Comstock mines of Virginia City, and for “a considerable period,” we are assured, “original shares of 1,000 pesos produced dividends of 72,000 pesos yearly.” In 1895, however, the main lode was lost, and since that time, owing to lack of funds, little has been done in any of the mines in the district. The owners of the Callao mine still hope to find the lost lode, and it was to investigate the condition of this mine, and of certain others in the neighborhood, that our American friends undertook their long trip southwards. If the outlook justifies it, they purpose improving the present wretched cart-road, which connects the mines with San Felix, and putting on suitable traction engines for the transportation of freight, which has hitherto been carried on the backs of burros and in carts of the most primitive type.