[4] Viajes Cientificos á los Andes Ecuatoriales, p. 29, Paris, 1849. [↑]
[5] Personal Narrative, up. sup., Vol. II, p. 438 et seq. [↑]
[6] Casanare, p. 11, Bogotá, 1896. [↑]
[7] Writing of the juice of the arnotto berries, “that die a most perfect crimson and carnation,” Sir Walter Raleigh declares, “And for painting, al France, Italy or the east Indies yield none such. For the more the skyn is washed, the fayer the cullour appeareth, and with which euen those brown and tawnie women spot themselues and cullour their cheekes.” Op. cit., p. 113.
Peter Martyr, referring to certain painted Indian warriors, encountered by the Spaniards in the West Indies, declares, “A man wold thinke them to bee deuylles incarnate newly broke owte of hell, they are soo lyke vnto hell-houndes.” Op. cit., p. 91. [↑]
[9] Bongo, falca, and curiara are names given in Colombia and Venezuela to the dugouts or canoes fashioned from a single tree-trunk. They are sometimes large enough to hold from twenty to twenty five persons. Usually, however, their capacity is limited to five or six persons. The curiara is smaller than the bongo or falca. The bongo is generally provided with a covering in the centre called a toldo or carroza. This is made of lattice-work with palm leaves to shelter the traveler from the sun and rain. It is steered and urged backwards and forwards by a man standing at the stern, who uses a kind of oar—canalete—very much as a Venetian gondolier handles his oar for steering and propelling his gondola. When the current does not permit the use of oars those standing near the prow urge the boat forward by poles called palancas. The boatmen are called bogas and the ropes with which they sometimes pull their canoes forward are called sogas. The bongo, especially when the river is high, is a very slow means of locomotion. And owing to the very limited space of the toldo, even in the largest canoes, traveling in a bongo is, at best, very confining and uncomfortable. A journey any distance in one of these long, narrow, crank dug-outs—more unstable than a shell—is a trying experience, and one that all travelers in equatorial America avoid whenever possible. The treacherous craft is liable to capsize when one least expects it. Even a skilled Oxford or Harvard sculler would at times have great difficulty in keeping his balance in one of them. [↑]
[10] Also called papelon—cane-syrup boiled down, without being clarified, and cast into molds. The only kind of sugar obtainable here. [↑]
[11] A stanza from this poem will show what value the author placed on the hammock. It expresses, at the same time, the opinion of it entertained by all travelers in tropical countries.
“Mi hamaca ea un tesoro,