CHAPTER XIX.
OLD GRANNY’S DESCRIPTION OF THE PATH TO RORAIMA—TREE-BRIDGES—MONKEY-POTS—BUSH-ROPES—CASHEW COTTAGE—SAVANNA INDIANS—MAZARUNI—MAGNIFICENT PALMS—BIXA ORELLANA—COTENGA RIVER—FALLS OF OOKOOTAWIK—VILLAGE OF MENAPARUTI—MARIKA RIVER—THE SORCERER AGAIN.
About half a mile higher up the creek lived Abraham’s mother, and there we intended to leave sufficient provisions for our return journey and whatever articles we could not carry with us.
Our first care on the day following our arrival was to hide the woodskins in the forest, so that they should not be appropriated by any passing Indians. Then we followed a trail through the bush which brought us to the hut. A very old lady with long white hair received us, and began to moan and beat her breast wildly. We asked what she was doing, and discovered that she was relating the difficulties of the path to Roraima. Over level country she travelled smoothly and in low tones, but when she came to the mountains that had to be crossed, then her voice rose, she shrunk to the ground, raised herself on tip-toes, waved her arms, struck her chest, uttered strange cries, and the higher and steeper the mountain the louder and shriller became her screams.
Already our superstitious carriers had lent too ready an ear to the terrors of Roraima as depicted by the son, and now the mother seemed disposed to add her store of legends and tales of witchcraft for general information. We therefore arranged our quakes as quickly as possible, rethatched her crazy shed so as to preserve from the weather the numerous articles we deposited on fresh rafters and were ready to start. Before we left she made the entire party blow three times on her back for good luck, but whether the luck was for her or for us we never found out. It was an odd farewell, but as it pleased old granny—as we called her—we were content.
Our path did not differ much from that of our previous foot-journey, but the creeks and streams were more numerous and the crossings often extremely difficult. Our bare-footed and trained carriers walked easily enough over the narrowest logs, but for us, with boots and weighed down with gun, bag and cartridges, it was different. Generally the water was too deep to wade through, and the only way of crossing was by means of a slippery trunk as narrow as a tight-rope, and many feet above the stream. Sometimes when the slender bridge was suspended at an angle, the crossing was more dangerous than amusing, as a fall would probably have been on to the sharp snags and branches that threw their points out of the deep pools underneath. As in our former walk, the ground was covered with dark blue gloxinias and a pretty creeping plant whose glossy leaves were delicately veined with pink; near the streams grew cannas and thick masses of the umberilla grass[89] varied with soft-textured marantas. Palms were more plentiful than before, and we saw varieties that we had not previously met with. We saw also the curious “monkey-pot” tree[90] with its strange bowl-shaped fruit and wooden covers. Purple-heart and the crab-oil tree[91] were not uncommon and strange nuts constantly fell around us.
Many of the bush-rope forms were very curious, differing in size and shape from a boot-lace to a ship’s cable. Here, like the strangling serpents of Laocoon, they hold a great tree in their huge folds, and there a delicate vine had formed a complete network around some forest giant until it was as helpless as a fly in a spider’s web. Very terrible are these lace-like parasites which cling at first in their helplessness to some lordly trunk and then slowly extend their treacherous embrace until their support is shut up in a living grave. The poor tree dies, and its destroyers live and thrive on the dead body of their benefactor. Few flowers relieve the monotony of these dark forests, and it is strange that here, where birds have such brilliant plumage, flowers should be almost unnoticeable. Nor do they atone by perfume for their want of colour, as with the exception of a faint breath of vanilla, or of the fragrant blossoms of a lecythes, no odour of flowers greets the senses.
The forest was not dull, as besides the tolling bell-birds, numerous kites and hawks added their harsh cries; nearer at hand little humming-birds were perpetually lisping “tweek-tweek” or a gay fire-bird calling out “quark.”