[3] Padre Caulin, Historia Coro-Grafica, Natural y Evangelica, Lib. I, Cap. X, p. 79, 1779. [↑]
[4] Maluco, a word frequently used in Venezuela for malo, bad. [↑]
[5] “A sambo,” writes Depons, “is the offspring of a negress with an Indian, or of a negro with an Indian woman. In color he nearly resembles the child of a mulatto by a negress. The sambo is well formed, muscular, and capable of supporting great fatigue; but unfortunately, his mind has a strong bias to vice of every kind. The word sambo signifies, in the language of the country, everything despicable and worthless, a knave, a drone, a drunkard, a cheat, a robber, and even an assassin. Of ten crimes committed in this district, eight are chargeable on this villainous and accursed race.”—Travels in South America, p. 127, London, 1806. [↑]
[6] Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 43. [↑]
[7] Compare Cassani, J., Historia de la provincia de la compañia des Jesus del Nuevo Reino de Granada en la America, descripción y relación exacta de sus gloriosas missiones en el reino, llano, meta, y rio Orinoco, etc. Con 1 mapa. Folio. Madrid, 1741. [↑]
[8] P. 14. How like the labors and cares of the bishops of the early Church were those of the missionaries among the children of the forest! Both were continually called upon to act as causarum examinatores—arbitrators—and to settle difficulties that were ever arising among the flocks entrusted to their care. St. Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo, refers frequently to “the burdensome character of this kind of work, and the distraction from higher activities which it involved”—“Quantum attinet ad meum commodum,” he writes in his De Opere Monachorum, XXIX, 37, “multo mallem per singulos dies certis horis, quantum in bene moderatis monasteriis constitutum est, aliquid manibus operari, et ceteras horas habere ad legendum et orandum, aut aliquid de divinis litteris agendum liberas, quam tumultuosissimas perplexitates caussarum alienarum pati de negotiis secularibus vel judicando dirimendis vel interveniendo præcidendis.” [↑]
[9] Every reader is familiar with the story that has long been in circulation regarding monkey bridges, and, in his youth, was, no doubt, entertained by pictures of such imaginary bridges. It is quite safe to say that no one ever saw such bridges in any part of South America or elsewhere. And yet the tale regarding their existence has had currency since the time of Acosta, who visited the New World in 1570. “Going from Nombre de Dios to Panamá,” he writes, “I did see in Capira one of these monkies leape from one tree to an other, which was on the other side of a river, making me much to wonder. They leape where they list, winding their tailes about a braunch to shake it; and when they will leape further than they can at once, they use a pretty devise, tying themselves by the tailes one of another, and by this means make as it were a chaine of many; then doe they launch themselves foorth, and the first holpen by the force of the rest takes holde where hee list, and so hangs to a bough and helps all the rest, till they be gotten up.” Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Bk. IV, Chap. 39, Grimston’s Translation, London, 1604.
The fable about the monkey bridge belongs to the same class as those that obtain in certain parts of South America regarding the “great devil,” or “man of the woods,” a near relative of Waterton’s “Nondescript.”
Kingsley, in the following passage from Westward Ho!, referring to some of the things seen and heard by Amyas Leigh and his companions during their voyage up the Meta, paints a picture that is doubtless before the mind’s eye of most people when they think of the forest-fringed banks of this river, but which is about as far from the reality as could well be imagined. “The long processions of monkeys,” he writes, “who kept pace with them along the tree tops and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of the jaguar and the rustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear.” Chap. XXIII. [↑]