Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

Our steamer, like all the others there, was moored head and stern by cables leading to the venerable Ceiba trees that lined la Calle del Coco high above us. The inclination of the bank, where merchandise is landed, amounts in places to almost 45°, and yet no machinery of any kind is used for transferring even the heaviest kinds of freight from the vessel to the top of the acclivity. All is carried on the shoulders of men, usually mestizos and negroes.

We spent a week in and around Ciudad Bolivar, and, during this time, we had ample opportunities to study the manners and customs of its people. The population of the city is not more than twelve or thirteen thousand—a small number for the entrepot of the immense Orinoco basin. Under less untoward conditions it would be many times as great.[15]

To this place are brought the products of the forests and plains of the upper Orinoco and its numerous tributaries. Among the most important articles of export are hides, rubber—especially the coarser variety known as balata—cacao, coffee, and tobacco from Zamora, pelts of the jaguar and other wild animals, tonka beans, copaiba and feathers.

The last item is amazing, when one considers what a slaughter of the feathered tribe it implies. We met a Frenchman here who was just packing for shipment to Paris several hundred thousand egrets, the result of a three-years’ hunt in the forests and plains of the Orinoco basin. But he was not the only one engaged in this wholesale slaughter of birds. There were many others, and their work of despoiling the tropics of their most attractive ornaments extends to all the vast regions on both sides of the equator.

The small egret—Ardea candidissima—which supplies the most valuable plumes, and the large egret—Ardea garzetta—which produces a coarser feather, are the principal victims. As only a few drooping plumes from the backs of the birds are taken, one can readily see what a terrific slaughter is required to meet the demands of the markets of the world.

The worst feature about the business is that the birds are killed during the mating and breeding season. Already the result is manifest in the rapidly diminishing numbers of egrets that frequent the garceros—the name given to the places where they nest and rear their young.

“The beauty of a few feathers on their backs,” writes one who, if not a misogynist, is evidently in sympathy with the aims and purposes of our Audubon society, “will be the cause of their extinction. The love of adornment common to most animals is the source of their troubles. The graceful plumes which they doubtless admire in each other have appealed to the vanity of the most destructive of all animals. They are doomed, because the women of civilized countries continue to have the same fondness for feathers and ornaments characteristic of savage tribes.”[16]

The houses of Ciudad Bolivar, built on a hill of dark, almost bare hornblende-schist, are in marked contrast with those of the Port-of-Spain. In Trinidad’s capital each residence—usually frame—is provided with numerous doors, and jalousied windows, and surrounded by gardens, with a profusion of the most beautiful tropical flowers and trees. Here, on the contrary, the houses, generally only one story high, have but one door, with all the external windows crossed by heavy iron bars, not unlike those of our jails.[17]

This, however, is not peculiar to Ciudad Bolivar, but obtains throughout Latin America, as it obtains in all the parts of Spain formerly occupied by the Moors. Yet these windows, which are in themselves so forbidding, are in the cool of the evening the most attractive parts of the house. Here bevies of bright, well-dressed señoritas, who, during the heat of the day remain secluded in their rooms or some shady corner of the patio, congregate to enjoy the fresh air that is wafted to them on the wings of the trade-winds, to listen to the daily gossip and to exchange confidences with those of their companions who may have called to spend the evening. Here and there one will observe some philandering caballero, dressed as faultlessly as Beau Brummel, exchanging vows with some languishing Dulcinea behind the bars. So absorbed are they in each other that they are totally oblivious of all else in the world, and utterly unconscious of the attention they attract from the passers-by. For the time being they themselves are the world and for them everything else is nonexistent.

We were sitting one evening in the beautiful plaza of Ciudad Bolivar, listening to the music of the military band which plays here several times a week. The élite of the city were there. Beautiful, dark-eyed señoritas, adorned with their graceful mantillas, were promenading with their fathers and mothers, and gay young cavaliers were following at a discreet distance, á la Española. The tropical trees and flowers, which gave to the plaza the aspect of a botanical garden, were beautifully illuminated, and, without any effort of the imagination, one could easily imagine one’s self in fairyland. Hard by, a young lady from Trinidad, on whose finger was a sparkling solitaire, was recounting, in a more audible tone than she imagined, the pleasures of her voyage up the Orinoco. In the glow of her enthusiasm she declared to her confidant, “I am going to come to the Orinoco during my honeymoon. Don Esteban”—evidently her fiancé—“will just have to bring me here. I cannot imagine a more delightful trip anywhere.”