Up the Orinoco and down the Magdalena

by J. A. Zahm

“The fact is,” says Brisson, “the poor creatures have heretofore been very badly treated by those who claim to be civilized, and flee in terror when they see a white man. The question now is not to civilize them but to win their confidence. The problem would easily be solved if this delicate task were confided to the missionary priests. They would bring it to a successful issue much sooner than could government officialdom.”[6]

Contrary to what is often imagined, the Indians who visit the settlements along the Meta and the Orinoco are always decently if but scantily clad. In their forest homes, however, their raiment usually consists of a simple lap-cloth. On occasions of feasting or public rejoicing they make an addition to their toilet. This consists in painting their bodies with various dyes, but chiefly with the yellowish-red annatto, which is obtained from the pulp of the fruit of the arnotto tree, Bixa Orellana. They frequently cover their persons with the most fantastic designs. Indeed, it is only when thus decorated that the true children of the forest consider themselves properly dressed. They would be ashamed to appear before strangers otherwise.[7]

“Tigers and serpents,” observes Mr. Brisson, “are bug-bears of the same family as Indios bravos”—savages. It is certain that the tiger—jaguar—is fond of heifers and calves. But herdsmen will tell you, that in order to get rid of one, it is at times necessary to follow him for a fortnight before being able to find and kill him. This is sufficient to prove that the tiger is never the first to attack a man in the llanos of Casanare, where it has food in abundance. “Serpents are met with only casually.”[8]

I was glad to find one writer, who is so familiar with the country as is Sr. Brisson, to speak thus of the wild beasts most dreaded and of the still more dreaded Indios bravos, for it harmonized perfectly with my own experience.

We were one day talking with our host in Orocué about the stories told by travelers and writers regarding the jaguars of the South American forests. He smiled, and said, “I have lived in this country thirty-five years. I have several hatos in various parts of the country, which I visit frequently. In doing this I am obliged to travel much through the forests and plains. I have often journeyed up and down the Orinoco, and the Meta from Trinidad to Bogotá, and, believe me, during all these years, I have never seen but one jaguar and that was in passing.” How different his experience from that of those who, after a short excursion into the interior of South America, where they rarely leave the beaten track used for centuries, have, nevertheless, such wonderful adventures to relate; such miraculous escapes from savage beasts and more savage Indians!

Our host was a Venezuelan of Spanish descent, and a splendid type of the old Spanish school. He had spent a part of his youth in Germany, and was a man of education and refinement. He was untiring in his delicate attentions to us during our sojourn in Orocué, and made us quite forget that we were so far from home and what we so often fancy are the indispensable necessities of civilization. He had been eminently successful in business. Besides owning the largest business house in Orocué—which is a distributing point for the great Casanare territory—he is the proprietor of several of the largest hatos in the country and counted his cattle by tens of thousands. In addition to all this, he has various other interests that yield him a handsome income. He enjoys the reputation of being a millionaire, and the reputation is apparently justified.

How he could content himself to live in this isolated quarter of the world—“six months from everywhere,” as one of his clerks expressed it—when he could enjoy all that money could command in the capitals of the Old or the New World, was a mystery to us, and yet he seemed to be perfectly happy here, and to have no desire to live elsewhere. Was it the ever dominant feeling that “There is no place like home,” that made him prefer Orocué to Paris or London? Quien sabe?

The only Europeans living here were three Germans. Two of them had arrived but a few months before our visit, while the third had been here for nearly twenty years. This latter was also as much attached to Orocué as was our host. The year before he had visited his family and friends in Hamburg and Berlin. “But,” he said, “I had heimweh—got homesick—for Orocué, and came back much sooner than I intended. The noise and bustle and hurry and high-pressure of Europe were quite unendurable, and I was more than delighted when I got back to dear old Orocué.” He, too, had realized that there is no place like home. And he, also, like our host, was educated and cultured; was interested in science and literature and passionately fond of music. He had several musical instruments in his house—among others a piano—on all of which he was a skillful performer.

“What wonderful men these Germans are!” I said to myself, when I saw these three men in the prime of life burying themselves away off here in the wilderness, so far away from friends and country. But this is not an unique instance of young Germans going to distant lands to engage in business and to contribute thereby towards that wonderful development of trade and influence for which the Vaterland is becoming so famous. In every part of Venezuela which we visited, we found it the same. The greatest and most successful business houses are in the hands of Germans.

In all parts of South America you will find Germans, and find them, too, successful in their enterprises, and often getting more than their share of the trade of this vast continent. But they deserve success, for they have earned it, and know how to make sacrifices when they are necessary to attain it, or to reach the goal for which they are striving—to become the dominating commercial power of South America. If the United States would display but a tithe of the energy and enterprise exhibited by Germany, it would not now occupy in the southern continent the humiliating position it does among the great mercantile nations of the world, and among our friends of the great Latin American republics. It is not too late to retrieve our loss, but, to do so, we must change our policy and our methods of doing business, and conduct them along the lines recommended by such alert and far-seeing statesmen as Blaine, Root and Roosevelt.