On telling Alex, Raoul, and Fermin my experience, and asking in good faith what they had thought of the visitation, they looked askance at me. It seems that sleep had overpowered them; they had not seen the river-god of the Meta, and irreverently set down the whole occurrence to the quality of my supper the preceding night. It is ever thus with unbelievers; they will seek some material or vulgar explanation for that which they cannot understand and have not seen.
That very morning, after the necessary arrangements and the usual morning coffee, we started down the Meta River. If we might have called the navigation on the Tua somewhat amphibious, navigation on the Meta, specially for such small craft as we possessed, seemed to us as on the open sea. Our first care was to seek larger canoes. Leal guided us through one of the neighbouring caños to a cattle-ranch, where he expected to suit our requirements. This caño chanced to be famous for its snakes, principally of the kind called macaurel, a dark brownish species, varying from 2 to 4 and 5 feet in length, and from ¼ inch to 2 inches in diameter. When in repose they coil themselves around the branches of the trees, and their bite, if not cured immediately, is fatal. Leal shot one of the horrible reptiles in the body; the linking of the rings that take the place of vertebræ being thus unloosened, the coils became wider, the animal lost its grip and fell into the water, staining it with a blue-greenish reflection of a metallic hue. It seems that one shot of the smallest size is sufficient to kill these snakes, provided it breaks one of the rings above mentioned. I shuddered as we passed under the trees, knowing that many of these dreaded reptiles must be above our heads. The caño in some parts was so narrow and the forest so dense that it was impossible to avoid the overhanging branches, and when I thought that we should have to go over the same route next day, disgust and a feeling of dread took possession of me. By the time we reached our destination, after a journey of eight or ten miles, over twenty of these creatures had been brought down. We obtained two large canoes, which seemed to us like veritable ships or floating palaces compared to the little craft we had used for so many days. We turned to the river Meta, and did not feel safe until we had left the caño behind, and could breathe once more in the open air on the bosom of the large river, with only heaven above our heads.
The Meta River, which flows entirely upon Colombian territory, describes large winding curves in its course eastward towards the Orinoco. Its banks are high and well defined, its channel fairly steadfast even in the dry season. This is not common, most of these rivers often shifting their course, to the despair of pilots and navigators. Both sides of the Meta we knew were occupied, or, rather, frequently visited, by various wild tribes. Now and then Leal would point out a part of the shore, stating that it belonged to some ranch, but how he could know was a mystery to us, as no visible difference existed.
The temperature, though quite hot in the middle of the day, was agreeable, and even cool, in the early morning and a greater part of the night. The trade-wind, which blows steadily every day during the dry season, at times gathered such force that we were compelled, going against it as we did, to wait long hours for it to subside. Our canoes were not so arranged as to enable us to hoist sail and tack against the wind.
On the river Meta we observed a large species of fish, which, had we been at sea, we should have identified at once as porpoises. The men told us that they were called bufeos, and in reality came from the sea, having ascended the waters of the Orinoco for thousands of miles, and branched off into the Meta River. One of the men, illiterate like all his fellows, but versed in forest, mountain and plain lore, stated that those bufeos were the friends of man; that they loved music and song; that they would follow a boat or canoe whence the echoes of singing or of some musical instrument could be heard for miles and miles at a time; that when they were present in the water the alligators and all the other enemies of man kept away, or were driven away by the bufeos; and that whenever by chance the fishermen caught one of these, he would at once release it in remembrance of their friendship for mankind. These were, therefore, our old-time friends the porpoises.
The simple tale of the man, one of our paddlers, who had never been in a city in his life nor seen any of the wonders of our times, to whose mind such words as civilization, Fatherland, and religion, as well as many others that form the glib vocabulary of modern man, were mere empty sounds or air, could not but set me a-thinking—first, as to the value of those words. Fatherland, our country, his and mine, yet how different the conception, and how those consecrated, holy words are abused by the tricksters, great and small, who control and exploit mankind for their own benefit! Patriotism should consist in justice and equality of rights and tolerance to all, whereas, in fact, it is but a mask for the greed and avarice of the strong. My countryman is he whose ideals are identical with mine. What makes another being my fellow-man and my brother is an identity of ideals, not a concurrence of geographical conditions of birth. If he who is born ten thousand miles away in an unknown climate and in a different latitude shares with me the love of justice and of freedom, and will struggle for them even as I would, why should we be separated by conventional distinctions which benefit neither him nor me nor justice nor freedom as ideals?
I thought, are these lands and this vast continent still virgin in the sense that humanity has not exploited them? are they to be the last scene of the stale criminal imposture now called civilization? Are men to come by thousands and by millions to these plains and these mountains, and settle on the shores of these rivers, bringing with them their old prejudices, their old tyrannical conventionalities, the hatreds that have stained history with blood for hundreds and for thousands of years, rearing on these new lands the old iniquities, calling them fatherlands, baptizing their crimes with holy words, and murdering in the name of patriotism? If such is to be the future of these lands, far better were it that the mighty rivers should overflow their course and convert into one immense lake, twin brother of the neighbouring sea, the vast plains, the endless mysterious forest; and that the immense bulwark of the Andes, aflame with a thousand volcanoes, should make the region inhospitable and uninhabitable to man: for of iniquity there is enough, and no more should be created under God’s heaven.
But the tale set me also a-thinking of the power of tradition and the beauty of song. If my memory plays me no trick, Arion, homeward-bound from the Court of Corinth, and laden with gifts of a King who worshipped song, was seized and thrown into the sea by the crew, but the listening dolphins or porpoises, grateful for the heavenly message thus delivered by him, bore him ashore and saved his life. So, more or less, runs the classical tale; and here in the wilds of America, from the lips of an unlettered woodman, the same beautiful conceit, clothed in simple words, had rung in my ears. The power of song, the beauty of the legend, had filtered itself through hundreds of generations from the days of our mother Greece, the mother of art and of beauty, across the mountains and the years and the seas and the continents, and the legend and the allegory were alive in their pristine and essential characteristics in the forests of tropical America. This gave me hope. If the power of things ideal, of things that have in them the divine charm of undying force, overcomes time and distance, why should not the ideal of righteousness, of liberty, and of justice prevail? And the vast continent of South America, why should it not be the predestined home of a happy and regenerate humanity? The trade-winds which come from the old world and across the ocean are purified on the heights of the Cordilleras. Even so humanity in that pilgrimage that is bound to take place ere long, as the ancient world begins to overflow, may regenerate itself and establish liberty and justice in that new world. If these be dreams, awakening were bitter.
We soon heard that it was easy to reach one of the affluents of the Vichada by crossing the plains for about a mile overland, and, all things considered, decided to abandon the Meta River, even though the journey might be longer than we had at first intended. Thus, on the fourth day of navigation down the Meta we stopped, and at a place known as San Pedro del Arrastradero, where we found quite a large settlement, about 150 people, we left the Meta behind us and at once made ready for our journey through the Vichada, as large as the Meta, we were told, and inhabited by numerous savage tribes. This gave additional interest to the journey, and we looked forward to it with pleasure.