In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

The bushmaster, called surucucú in Brazil, is truly a terrible creature. It grows to a length of ten feet or more, and attains a great thickness. A snake of that size has fangs an inch and a half long and injects nearly a tablespoonful of poison at a single thrust. The ground-color is reddish yellow crossed by black bands, sometimes forming a series of X’s along the back. It does not take kindly to captivity and dies of starvation after a few months of confinement. It is one of the few snakes which are supposed to incubate their eggs. After selecting a hole in the ground or in a stump the reptile lays a dozen or more eggs; then it coils up on top of them and does not leave the vicinity until they hatch; at such times it is very irritable, and will strike with deadly results any creature which disturbs it. The poison acts rapidly, and I heard of a case where an Indian died in less than half an hour after having been bitten.

There were also small brown salamanders and lizards with spiny backs that resembled horned toads. Perhaps the rarest catch of all was a splendid example of the curious cane-rat (Dactylomys), an animal seldom encountered on account of its rarity and secretive habits. It resembles a large rat, being twenty-five inches long, and of a dark-gray color; the toes are divided into pairs in order to enable it to easily climb slender stalks, and instead of claws it has nails. The pupils of the eyes are elliptical, like a cat’s; when annoyed it uttered a hoarse scream, a sound occasionally heard at night, but which we did not heretofore recognize.

After the brush had been removed for the distance of a hundred yards or more from the edge of the clearing, the Indians began to cut down the trees; some of these were of enormous size, especially the ceibas; one that I measured was twenty-five feet through the base, counting the supporting, bracket-like roots, and fifteen men hacked at it at the same time. When the tree fell they set up a wild cheering and took great delight in watching this monarch of the forest tumble to the ground.

Three days of each week were devoted to hunting and fishing. Usually the Indians went many miles away, in small parties, returning promptly at the expiration of their time. The children rarely accompanied them, and then only after having obtained special permission from the priest. Upon their return they brought baskets of fish and meat—enough to last them until their next journey into the wilds. Nearly all fish and game were taken with bow and arrow. To secure the former they selected a small creek up the shallow water of which huge shoals of fish went to feed, and then shot them. After a sufficient supply had been obtained they erected a framework of sticks, built a fire under it and slowly roasted and smoked them; later they were packed in baskets between layers of green leaves and taken home. They also brought numbers of freshly killed animals for our examination, for in keeping with his promise Padre Fulgencio had announced from the pulpit that all creatures taken by them were to be shown to us first, and we were permitted to select any that were of scientific value. In this manner a number of animals new to us were added to the collection.

The curl-breasted toucan (Beauharnaisia) is one of those birds of the Amazonian basin which is seldom seen by travellers, or even naturalists, who make every effort to learn something of its habits. Bates records having seen a number during his eleven years of exploration, and on one occasion he was attacked by a flock after he had wounded one of them. We therefore considered it an unusually good streak of fortune to find a large flock inhabiting a section of the forest several miles from the mission. They were wary, nervous creatures, and spent their time in the top of tall trees from which one of our men succeeded in shooting several with arrows before the remainder took alarm and flew away; they never returned to the locality. The bird is black above, with yellow underparts barred with black; the feathers on the top of the head are flattened and curled, resembling shining scales, and are drawn together to form a ridge. On the throat and breast the brilliant yellow feathers are tipped with glossy black dots, resembling beads of jet. Unfortunately they were not nesting, but the Indians reported having found the two white eggs in cavities in the taller trees. Another bird not frequently encountered is the giant frogmouth (Nyctibius), which, while not so rare, perhaps, is seldom seen, as it is nocturnal in habits and spends the days squatting horizontally upon some thick branch, where it resembles a gray lichen, or is altogether invisible. When the time for domestic cares arrives the bird lays a single white egg on the branch which has served as its perch, or at the junction of a limb and the tree-trunk, without making any sort of a nest. Doubtless many eggs roll off this precarious location and are broken. It feeds upon beetles and insects which are caught on the wing, and some observers say that it also catches small birds; this latter I am inclined to question. One individual that we collected was twenty-two inches long, with an expanse of wings of thirty inches. The mouth when opened measured five inches from tip to tip of the bill, and was three inches wide; but the œsophagus was less than half an inch in diameter, which would prevent it from swallowing anything larger than a humming-bird.

The nights at the mission were always pleasant. The priest usually conducted a short service in the chapel, and then we sat in front of his hut for an hour’s chat, while the children romped and played before being sent to bed. Sometimes one of the boys brought out a queer drum; the ends were made of skin taken from the neck of a jabiru stork. He beat it in slow rhythm, swaying his head from side to side with each low thud. The girls placed their arms around one another’s waists, forming lines of threes, and shuffled forward three steps and back, swinging their bodies all the while; suddenly they would whirl around once, take hold of one another’s hands, and then the long line swept around at such a rapid pace that the individuals at the ends invariably went sprawling some distance away. After tiring of this or any other pastime upon which they were engaged, they lined up and said a “Buenas noches, Padre,” in chorus. Then they ran away to the sleeping quarters.

After spending nearly two weeks at the mission we accepted the priest’s invitation to accompany him on a short trip down the Chimoré. Twenty young men and boys were selected as paddlers; they started early one morning, taking all of our personal luggage with them; a large number of girls and women followed soon after, carrying baskets of plantains, yuccas, and other provisions. The missionary, Boyle, and I brought up the rear, and encouraged the few stragglers we met on the way, for the distance from the mission to the river is three miles, through the virgin forest.

The Chimoré is of about the same width as the Chaparé, although the water is in normal times somewhat clearer. It rises far to the south and is formed by the junction of the Blanco and Icona. Some distance below it unites with the waters of the Ichilo, a mighty river flowing from the south, through a solitary and unknown wilderness, and up which Padre Fulgencio had ascended a number of miles on a previous trip. In latitude 15° 30´ South, the Ichilo and Chaparé join, and form the Rio Mamorecillo, which lower in its course is known as the Mamoré.

The meaning of Mamoré, which is a Yuracaré word, is “mother of the human race.” They have a legend to the effect that far away, at the source of the Sajta, which is the beginning of the furthermost tributary of the mighty river, there are three rocks of pyramidal shape that rise in terraces, one above the other, and in the heart of which the stream rises. In the very beginning of things this rock gave birth to the first people, for which reason it is called “Mamoré.” Later the name was also given to the river because its water, teeming with fish, supplied them with food and offered an easy highway for the dissemination of the race.

Arrived at the point of embarkation, the men began to load the five canoes which were waiting, and the women built a fire and cooked lunch. In a short time everything was ready and the canoes moved easily down-stream. The paddlers were adepts at their work, and as a good deal of rivalry existed between the different crews, they kept up an almost continuous race, with the natural consequence that we made good time. The scenery along the Chimoré is exactly like that on the upper courses of the many rivers of tropical South America; there is the same monotony of the yellow water highway, flanked by walls of deepest green. One thing that impresses the traveller as much as any other is the immensity of the silent, uninhabited areas; and also their comparative worthlessness. For days and even weeks one may enter deeper and deeper into the heart of the undefiled wilderness, and see always the same dark forest, the hurrying, mysterious streams, and the rafts of low, threatening clouds; hear the annoying buzz and feel the poisonous sting of the insect swarms, and swelter in the humid, enervating climate. The greater part of this country can never be cultivated to any extent, as the annual floods cover it to a depth of many feet; there are very few eminences safe from the inundations, and these are of inconsiderable size. The person who pictures the untrodden tropics as a paradise of fruits and flowers, teeming with gorgeous-colored creatures and inhabited by tribes of gracious Indians whose one desire in life is to serve the traveller or explorer, has yet to cut his eye-teeth in the field of exploration.