In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

There are numbers of curious formations along the river which cannot fail to attract the interest of the traveller, no matter what his particular mission might be. One of these is the Cerro Yapacana, a square block of granite not over one thousand five hundred feet high; it is a very conspicuous landmark as it towers above the forest like a giant monument, and can be seen many miles away. We did not come abreast of it until eight days after first sighting it.

There are few rubber-camps along this part of the river, but several Indian families had come to spend some weeks collecting turtles and eggs on the sand-banks. At night absolute quiet reigned on the playas so long as the moon shone; but no sooner had the brilliant orb disappeared below the horizon than the water was broken with ripples as numbers of turtles emerged to deposit their eggs in the loose, warm sand, and jaguars came from the dark forest to feast on the defenseless creatures and rend the still night air with ugly coughs and grunts.

In returning from fishing excursions we usually cut across the several miles of sandy waste toward camp, guided by the bright fire which the cook was required to keep burning, and in this way learned a good deal about the turtle’s habits. After leaving the water the creature wends its way toward the highest point on the island or playa, and with a few powerful strokes of the flippers excavates a deep hole; the eggs, twenty to a hundred in number, are then deposited, after which the sand is scooped back into place and patted down so carefully that it takes a very experienced eye to locate the spot. The turtle then hurries back to the water, where it apparently remains until the following year. When the eggs, warmed by the sun’s rays, finally hatch, the playas swarm with small turtles which are eagerly collected by the natives, boiled entire and eaten. The egg contains a great deal of oil, and although cooked a long time always remains soft. Iguana eggs are taken, also, and boiled and eaten, even when about to hatch.

Besides the turtles there were many other signs of life on the sand-banks. Water-birds, squatting low in some cup-shaped hollow, looked stupidly at the dazzling light of the gas-lamps, and could be approached to within a few feet; downy young birds waited quietly until nearly touched with the hand and then ran away into the darkness, like puffballs rolling before a breeze.

The Raudal de Santa Barbara is a wicked stretch of water. The Ventuari, coming from the neighborhood of the Brazilian border, forms an extensive delta near its mouth. There are many islands, some of great size, and all heavily forested. The Orinoco is very wide, and hundreds of sharp, tall rocks protrude above the water, causing a series of rapids which are hard to ascend. It took us three days of the most trying kind of work to traverse this stretch of agitated water, and finally to haul the boat up the falls, which come as a sort of climax at the end. A strong wind blows from the north almost constantly, whipping the water into a choppy sea. On the bank stands a good-sized rubber-camp, and extra hands can usually be secured to help pull the boat through the rapids. The men from this place had just returned from a hunt in the forest, bringing two jaguars and an armadillo weighing sixty-five pounds. One of the jaguars was black. All of these animals were eaten, and of the two species the flesh of the jaguars was the better. One night, not long after, one of these animals invaded our camp. As the sand-bank we had selected was a narrow one, the crew chose to sleep on the forest side; they greatly feared the crocodiles in the river. Early in the morning I was awakened by a jaguar’s roaring mingled with frightened wails, and upon investigation discovered that the men had come to our part of the camp near the water, leaving the captain’s wife in their former location. They had reasoned that she was the least useful member of the party and had compelled her to remain as “bait.” Maria was sent back to San Fernando in the next canoe we met bound down the river.

The abundance of the big, spotted cats and their harmlessness under ordinary circumstances is astonishing, although at times they will attack human beings. At one of the rubber-camps we were shown the skin of a recently killed animal which had stalked a two-year-old child at play not far from the hut; the mother, a negress, seeing the animal in time, attacked it with a machete and killed it.

The next river of any importance to be encountered was the Rio Lao, reached February 17. Up to this time the strong north wind had continued to blow without interruption, and the course of the river was dotted with islands. Rubber-camps were situated on the river-bank, and we had our first glimpses of the Maquiritare Indians. Owing to the frequent rains, the year had been a bad one for the patrones, or managers of the camps; also, a kind of malady had broken out among the peons and Indians which killed many and frightened others away. Nevertheless, those who remained seemed quite contented, and if we chanced to spend the night at a camp or barraca, our men always joined them in their pastime of drinking, playing the guitar, and singing songs about one another, far into the night. Some of the men were clever at improvising songs apropos of the occasion. At one place, for instance, they heard of the jaguar’s visit to the sand-bank, and that the captain’s wife had been sent back to San Fernando. Without hesitation one of the peons sang:

Qué tristeza en nuestro campamento,
Pobrecito Ildefonso está llorando,
A caramba, nadie está alegre,
Será porqué Maria fué á San Fernando.

The largest barraca by far which we saw was owned by an old Turk named Parraquete. He received us cordially, shook our hands, and embraced us, apologetically explaining that a slight fever prevented his rising from the hammock; later we found out that he was a leper in the last stages of the disease. He had fifteen Maquiritares in his employ, each of whom collected the latex from several hundred rubber-trees every morning; in the afternoon the milk was smoked, one hundred pounds of the liquid yielding about forty or fifty pounds of crude rubber. A species of heavy, deep-red wood called mazarandul was used to produce the dense smoke necessary to coagulate the latex. Hevea only was gathered here, although balata was also collected farther down the river and on the Guaviare. The governor of the district told me that about fifteen million trees of the balata had been cut down along the latter river during the last ten years, as the method used to secure this class of rubber necessitates felling the trees.

The proprietors of rubber-camps use the same system of keeping their employees that the commission merchants in Ciudad Bolivar, who are the purchasers of the crude product, employ in dealing with themselves; namely, they keep them constantly in debt by advancing quantities of merchandise at exorbitant prices. It is not unusual for one patrón to sell some of his men to another for the amount of their indebtedness, or more, if he can get it, and sometimes an unsatisfactory peon is turned loose in the wilderness to shift for himself; we picked up one who had been abandoned on a sand-bank, in a half-starved condition.