In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

During the dry season steam-navigation on the Chaparé is very irregular, but canoes of large size and native paddlers may always be had. During the rainy season there is a small steamer or launch each fortnight.

Several years before, the government had by law abolished the practice of keeping Indians in the condition of semislavery, and had ordered all owners to turn them over to the missions; this, however, had not been done, and each Bolivian family living at Todos Santos had a number of Yuracarés in its service. Not far from the settlement were a number of clearings, some of considerable size, where fruits and vegetables were cultivated for the benefit of the amos, as the owners of Indians are called; the Indians cleared the ground, cultivated it, and then brought in the results of their labor, receiving nothing in return. They seemed fairly contented, however, and did not appear to be suffering from ill treatment. They frequently spent days at a time in their shelters on the edges of the fields, or in hunting and fishing trips far from their homes.

Each Yuracaré woman kept a number of Amazon parrots which she looked after carefully and refused to sell, even at a good price. Upon asking the reason for this I was told that they reared them for the sake of the tail-feathers, which are in great demand by the Aymarás. Each parrot will grow three “crops” of feathers a year, each of which is worth fifty centavos. The Aymarás from the vicinity of La Paz send down agents at regular intervals to purchase these feathers, as they use them in making ornaments worn during their annual festivals.

In the branches of one of the tall trees near the village a neat little hut had been built of bamboo and leaves, reminding one a great deal of a Philippine tree-dwelling. Indians armed with bows and arrows would conceal themselves in this house, forty feet above the ground, and shoot many of the birds which came to feed on the fruit covering the tree; other Indians, hidden about the base of the tree, watched where the birds fell, gathered them up and skinned or plucked them. In this way quite a number could be shot without alarming a feeding flock.

The forest around Todos Santos abounds in wild life. Squirrel-monkeys (Saimiri) are very numerous and travel in troops of from twenty to fifty individuals; we saw them daily, playing about in the trees, and feeding on fruits, buds, and insects. They are delightful little pets, and one that we owned spent the greater part of the day catching the mosquitoes which infested our habitation. It searched every nook and crevice for insects, and one of its chief pastimes was to look through a pack of cards in the hopes of finding mosquitoes between them. Harpy eagles also are very plentiful, and feed on the squirrel-monkeys to a great extent, as they are easy to catch. However, monkeys are not the only animals which suffer; we one day found the remains of a sloth which had been dropped by an eagle, the entire fore part of which had been eaten away.

There were numerous trees covered with vivid-scarlet blossoms, scattered throughout the forest, and forming gaudy little islands of color, which stood out very conspicuously amid the green tree-tops. These trees are known as madres de cacao, because they are frequently planted in cacao-groves to shield the young plants from the sun. The flowers contain so much nectar that numbers of birds feed upon them, including parrots, macaws, and orioles; when the brilliant blooms fall into the river they are greedily snapped up by fish.

Of small birds there was such a variety that it would be impossible to mention all of them, but one in particular deserves attention. It is a species of manakin called the “child of the sun” by the Yuracarés, who look upon the tiny creature with reverence and would not harm it under any circumstances. The bird is not as large as a sparrow, but is of stocky build, with a bright orange-red head and neck, the remainder of the body being black. As it whirs from branch to branch it makes a loud sputtering, crackling noise which reminds one of a bunch of small, exploding firecrackers. The female of the species is of a dull-green color.

At Todos Santos, as elsewhere, local migrations of birds in the heart of the tropics were several times forcibly brought to our attention. We had been hunting in the forest a number of weeks and were pretty well acquainted with its inhabitants; suddenly a species entirely new to us appeared in great abundance in all parts of the region; each member of the expedition, including the native assistants, brought in specimens of it the same day. This can be explained only by the fact that flocks of these particular birds had arrived suddenly from some distant part, probably attracted by a fruit or insect which chanced to be plentiful at the time, and upon which they fed.

Several miles from port, and entirely concealed by the forest, stretches a lagoon of considerable size; it is connected with the Chaparé by a small, brush-clogged creek, but the water is stagnant and filled with decaying vegetation and detritus. Masses of bushes and swamp-grass grow all along the borders, and in some sections the surface of the water is covered with floating, aquatic plants. As may be supposed, many species of birds live both about the water and in the dense thickets that line the banks. Among the former was the rare little sun-grebe, but it was by no means abundant; the few solitary individuals we saw were always surprised out in the open water and, after giving a series of hoarse, loud cries, either flew or swam as rapidly as possible to the nearest clump of vegetation, which offered a secure retreat. Graceful jacanas stepped about daintily on the lily-pads; their toes are very long and give the feet a wide spread, thus enabling the birds to walk on the floating little islands of water-hyacinths and wild lettuce; for this reason the natives call them pájaro de Jesu-cristo, because they can “walk on the water.”

Several species of flycatchers and large, noisy wrens (Donacobia) lived in the partly submerged bushes; we found several of the bulky, domed grass nests of the former, but it was almost invariably impossible to reach them as they always harbored colonies of biting ants, which rushed out in maddened frenzy when the nest was touched; however, the birds and ants seemed to live in perfect harmony.