Up to this day I cannot say what happened. I do not know if we mistook the hour of the day and were overtaken by night, or if, in truth, as Fermin asserted, the wrathful ghost of the mishandled duck spread its black feathers above our heads, thus forming a mantle like the mantle of arrows which the Spartan warriors asked the Persian invaders to fire at them, so that they might fight in the shade. This problem, which contains historical, astronomical and atmospherical elements, will remain for ever as dark and mysterious as the feathers of the dead bird.
CHAPTER IX
Night soon asserted her sway. The blue vault of heaven, alive with innumerable stars, was clear and diaphanous; no cloud was to be seen. The evening noises died away, and the dead silence was only broken now and then by a vague rumour wafted mysteriously through space—the wash of waters on the shore, or possibly the lisp of forests by the river. We gave up all hope of the other canoe arriving that night, and faced the inevitable—no supper, no beds. As in our own canoe we carried a demijohn of aguardiente, one or two generous draughts were our only supper. We were not hampered by excess of riches or of comforts; as to the selection of our beds, the whole extent of the beach was equally sandy and soft; but, having slept for many nights on the shores of the Tua, and knowing that we were at its confluence with the Meta, for the sake of a change—a distinction without a difference—we stretched ourselves full length on the side of the beach looking to the Meta River.
The water-course, practically unknown to civilization, appeared to me as I lay there like a wandering giant lost amidst the forests and the plains of an unknown continent. The surface of the waters sparkled in the starlight like hammered steel. My thoughts followed the luminous ripples until they were lost to sight in the darkness of the opposite shore, or, wandering onwards with the flow, melted into the horizon. Whither went those waters? Whence came they? What were their evolutions, changes, and transformations? Idle questions! Flow of life or flow of wave, who but He that creates all things can know its source and its finality? Idle cavillings indeed!
Suddenly, as drowsiness had begun to seize me, a wonderful phenomenon took place. There from the midst of the waters arose an indistinct yet mighty figure; high it stood amidst the waters which parted, forming a sort of royal mantle upon its shoulders; it gazed upon me with the sublime placidity of the still seas, the high mountains, the unending plains, the primeval forests, and all the manifestations of Nature, great and serene in their power and majesty. And the figure spoke:
‘Listen to me, O pilgrim, lost in these vast solitudes; listen to the voice of the wandering streams! We rivers bring life to forest and valley; we are children of the mountains, heralds of continents, benefactors of man. My current, powerful and mighty though it seems, is but a tiny thread of the many streams that, mingled and interwoven, so to say, go to form the main artery of whirling, heaving water called the Orinoco. From north and south, from east and west, we all flow along the bosom of the plains, after having gathered unto ourselves the playful streamlets, the murmuring brooks that swell into torrents and dash down the mountain-sides, filling the hills and the intervening valleys with life and joy. They come from the highest slopes—nay, from the topmost peaks crowned with everlasting snow, the sources of our life; down they rush, and after innumerable turns and twists, after forming now cataracts, now placid lakes, reach the plain, and in their course they broaden the large streams which in turn merge with others in the huge basin, and form the vast artery that drains the surface of a great part of the continent, and bears its tribute to the Atlantic Ocean. Yea, verily indeed, we rivers are as twin brothers of Time; the hours pass and pass, ceaseless as our waves; they flow into Eternity, we into the bosom of the great deep. This land, the land of your birth and of mine, to-day an unknown quantity in the history of the world, is a destined site of a mighty empire. The whole continent of South America is the reserve store for the future generations of millions of men yet unborn. Hither they will come from all parts of the world: on the surface of the globe no more favourable spot exists for the home of mankind. Along the coast of the Pacific Ocean runs the mighty backbone of the Cordillera like a bulwark, high, immense, stately; above it, like the towers and turrets in the walls of a fortified city, rise the hundred snow-capped peaks that look east and west, now on the ocean, now on the ever-spreading undulating plains, and south and north to the line of mountains extending for thousands of miles.
‘In the very heart of the tropical zone, where the equatorial sun darts his burning rays, are the plateaus of the Andes, hundreds of square miles in extent, with all the climates and the multitudinous products of the temperate zone. In the heart and bowels of the mountains are the precious metals coveted by man’s avarice and vanity, those forming the supreme goal of his endeavours; and the useful—indeed, the truly precious—metals, coal, iron, copper, lead, and all others that are known to man, exist in a profusion well-nigh illimitable. The trade-winds, whose wings have swept across the whole width of the Atlantic Ocean, laden with moisture, do not stop their flight when the sea of moving waters ceases and the sea of waving grass begins. Across the plains, over the tree-tops of the primeval forests, shaking the plumage of the palm-trees, ascending the slopes of the hills, higher, still higher, into the mountains, and finally up to the loftiest peaks, those winds speed their course, and there the last drops of moisture are wrung from them by that immeasurable barrier raised by the hand of God; their force seems to be spent, and, like birds that have reached their native forest, they fold their wings and are still. The moisture thus gathered and thus deposited forms the thousand currents of water that descend from the heights at the easternmost end of the continent, and convert themselves into the largest and most imposing water systems in the world. Thus is formed the Orinoco system, which irrigates the vast plains of Colombia and Venezuela. Further south, created by a similar concurrence of circumstances and conditions, the Amazon system drags the volume of its wandering sea across long, interminable leagues of Brazilian forest and plain. Its many streams start in their pilgrimage from the interior of Colombia, of Ecuador, of Peru, and of Bolivia, and these two systems of water-ways, which intersect such an immense extent of land thousands of miles from the mouth of the main artery that plunges into the sea, are connected by a natural canal, the Casiquiare River, so that the traveller might enter either river, follow its course deep into the heart of the continent, cross by water to the other, and then reappear on the ocean, always in the same boat.
‘If the wealth of the mountains is boundless and virgin, if on the slopes and on the plateaus and the neighbouring valleys all the agricultural products useful to man may be grown—and the forests teem with wealth that belongs to him who first takes it—if the rocks likewise cover or bear immense deposits of all the metals and minerals useful to man, the lowlands and the plains offer grazing-ground for untold herds of cattle and horses, and further to the south beyond the Amazon, running southward, not eastward like the Orinoco and the Amazon, the Parana unrolls its waves, which, after leaving the tropic, enter the southern temperate zone, irrigating for untold miles the endless pampas of Argentina and Uruguay. In very truth, this continent is the Promised Land.
‘In your pilgrimage along the waters of the Orinoco, you will see all the wonders of tropical Nature. Now the forests will stand on either bank close along the shores in serried file, and moving mirrors of the waters will reflect the murmuring tops of the trees, noisy and full of life as the winds sweep by in their flight, or else the frowning rock, bare and rugged, will stand forth from the current like the wall of a medieval castle. Now the trees will open a gap through which, as from under a triumphal arch, the current of a river, a wanderer from the mysterious and unknown depths of the neighbouring forests, pours forth into the main stream and mingles with the passing waters, joining his fate to theirs, even as the High Priest of some unknown creed might issue from the temple and mingle with the passing crowd. Some rivers that reach the main artery have had but a short pilgrimage, the junction of their many waters having taken place at no great distance from the main stream; others have had a long wandering, sometimes placid and serene, sometimes amidst rocks and boulders, with an ever frenzied and agitated course like the lives of men striving and struggling till the last great trumpet sounds. The course of the river will be studded with islands large enough for the foundation of empires, and before reaching the sea the river will extend and spread its current into a thousand streams, as if loth to part from the Mother Earth it sought to embrace more firmly in its grasp, and our waters will flow into the unplumbed deep, there to mingle with those of all the rivers, whether their course has been through lands alive with civilization, swarming with multitudes of men on their shores, laden with the memories of centuries and famous in history, or whether they, like us, have wandered through vast solitudes where Nature is still supreme in her primeval pride, as yet unpolluted by the hand of man. There we all meet, and to us what men call time and its divisions exist not, for all the transformations that affect mankind are as naught to us who form part and parcel of Nature itself, who only feel time after the lapse of æons which to the mind of man are practically incomprehensible. Seek to learn the lesson of humility, to acknowledge the power of the Creator, who gave to man what we rivers and all other material things can never hope for—a future beyond this earth, higher, brighter, infinite, eternal.’
The figure seemed to sink slowly under the mantle of waters that had covered its shoulders; the sun was rising in the eastern horizon, the rumour of awakening Nature filled the air with its thousand echoes, and drifting rapidly towards us we saw Leal with the canoe that had remained behind the night before.