Down the Orinoco in a Canoe

by Santiago Pérez Triana

Like the spoils of battle on a stricken field, the shattered rocks stud the current, which sweeps roaring and foaming around and over them. They resemble the ruins in the breach of a battered bastion. The river is the victor, but, as will happen when two great forces counteract each other, the result is a compromise, and the course of the stream is deviated. The difference of level from the beginning to the end of the rapids is in itself not sufficient to cause the violence with which the waters run. It arises from the sudden compression of the powerful volume of waters into a narrow space. The waters rush through the openings made in the rock with a deafening sound, torn by the remnants of pillars in the bed through which they pass. They fill the air with the tumult of their advance; one would say an army was entering a conquered city, quivering with the rapture of triumph, lifting up the thunder of battle, Titanic bugle-calls, and the pæans of victory. After each one of these narrow breaches in the wall of granite the river plunges into deep basins, where the foaming waters soon sink into their former quiet flow. The soldiers have crossed the first entrenchments, and collect their forces before the next assault. Soon the margins on either side begin to hem in, the waters stir more rapidly, and soon again the mad rush, the desperate plunge, the wild, roaring, irresistible onslaught, and again through the very heart of the mountain into the next basin. Finally, after storming the last redoubt, the river, like a lion freed from the toils which imprisoned him, leaps upon the bosom of the plain, bounding forward in solemn flow towards the ocean. The clear tropical sun reflects itself on its ever-moving bosom, even as the clouds and the forests, the mountains and the birds on wing. The wandering mirror keeps on its course, being, as Longfellow has it, like unto the life of a good man ‘darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven.’

CHAPTER XV

We spent ten days in covering the distance from the upper to beyond the lower rapids, walking whenever it was impossible to use the canoes, which were drifted by the current or shot over the rapids. The delay was due chiefly to the loading and unloading of the canoes, and the necessarily slow transportation of packages, bundles, and sundry articles along the shore.

The banks of the river on either side along the whole length of the rapids are high and rocky, sometimes extending for a mile or two in flat, grass-covered, wavy meadows, and then rising in small hills, abrupt and ragged on the very edge of the water. This is specially the case in the narrow part of the gorges. The grass in the small meadow-like plains is the same as on the shores of the Meta, and the whole aspect of the region, bare of large forests, is that of a field in a civilized country.

A few days after leaving Maipures we noticed, to our joy, the absence of mosquitoes and other such tormentors. They seemed to have been blown away by the wind, which had freer scope in the more open stretches along the main river.

We missed the soft couch of the sand beaches to which we had become accustomed, the thin layer of sand or earth being powerless to soften the bed-rock on which we now had to stretch ourselves, but the flight of the mosquitoes and their companions more than made up for this.

Our commissariat had dwindled to utter meagreness; we had neither sugar nor coffee, and casabe was our only bread. The last drops of aguardiente had been drained at Santa Catalina. At Maipures we had obtained a drink which they called white rum—in truth, pure alcohol, which we had to drown in three times the quantity of water before we swallowed it. Our cigars, cigarettes and tobacco were all gone; they were part and parcel of an enchanted past—smoke wafted heavenward like so many of our hopes and illusions. We had obtained native tobacco, with which we made cigars or rolled cigarettes out of newspaper clippings. Thus we consumed many a literary article or political effusion which it would have been utterly impossible to utilize in any other way. Corn-cob pipes also came in handily.

Game, furred or feathered, was not to be found on the shores of the rapids; we had to rely principally on fishing, which was most abundant in the quieter pools and basins. We ate all sorts of fish, some of admirable quality, especially the morrocoto, far superior to the French sole or the American shad, blue fish, or Spanish mackerel. If Marguery could meet with it, his immense renown would increase tenfold, as with this fish at his disposal he would be certain to evolve what from a culinary point of view would amount to an epic poem of the most sublime order. Such, at least, was my opinion when eating that fish, with my imagination duly fired by a voracious appetite and a lack of material condiments which gave rise to dreams worthy of Lucullus in exile.

Rice and salt we had in plenty; butter, oil, and lard were unknown quantities. Had we been in Lent, necessity would have enabled us very easily to observe the ordinance of the Roman Church with regard to abstinence from meat. We thought of this, and although we were not sure of our dates, we at once decided to offer up our enforced diet in a truly Catholic spirit in atonement for some of our many sins! May our offering prove acceptable!

We did not go to sleep as readily on our new hard beds as on the sand. The clearness of the air and freedom from insects also contributed to long watches, which we spent in listening to the far-off roar of the river pealing incessantly through the night air, whilst Gatiño would tell us about the life of men and beasts in those territories. The voice of the river seemed like the distant bass of a powerful orchestra, all the high notes of which had been lost in space.