PLATE V.
THE BULGE-STEMMED PALM, IRIARTEA VENTICOSA, SHOWING PORTION OF LEAF AND FRUIT
Where a stream has to be crossed there is rarely any bridge more stable than a small tree cut down and thrown across just when and where it may be wanted. Frequently such impromptu bridges are under water. They are invariably of the slightest; a branch no thicker than a man’s hand suffices to span a deep chasm, and over this an Indian will pass more unconcernedly than an Englishman over London Bridge. The worst penance of all in forest journeyings is to cross a river or a gully full of great fallen trees, on such flimsy foothold. The drop at times may be 40 to 50 feet, and there will be but the one tree across without any attempt at a hand-rail to steady the traveller. Nor can you grasp an Indian’s shoulder for aid in the perilous transit, for to do so is to lose once for all every trace of prestige and authority. The man who cannot get over a river unaided, the man who is not man enough to walk and must be carried in a hammock, is but a poor creature in the eyes of the South American Indian. Still it is more than a test of nerve. In the middle of such a bridge you feel yourself swaying, and it is only with a fearful concentration of will-power and a bitten lip that you arrive safely on the other side, having leapt the last three feet. In the first month of forest journeying I bit my lip through time and again. It is not the torrent below that frightens, it is the rotten trees in the gully. A fall may possibly be a broken neck, more probably it would be a broken leg. Of the two in country of this description a broken neck is preferable.
Where a stream has to be crossed that is too deep to be forded and cannot be bridged over in this elementary fashion, there is little difficulty in the construction of a raft or a temporary canoe. The bulging-stemmed palm furnishes an almost ready-made one. This palm, Iriartea ventricosa, is readily known by the peculiar swelling on the upper part of the trunk. It will attain the height of 100 feet, and the swollen portion is big enough to form the body of an improvised canoe.
Forest bridges are not the only terrors to confront the traveller; lurking dangers are many, and imagination is but too quick to multiply the risks. Peril from wild beasts does not loom largely in the picture, though the jaguar is a savage brute, and the experienced traveller will never sleep without a weapon at hand in case one of these daring creatures should venture to attack. But of animals more anon. There is one danger by no means imaginary, the danger of falling trees. A sudden crack, startlingly noisy in the all-pervading stillness, will give warning of a fall, but there is nothing to guide to safety. It may be the nearest tree that is coming down, or one at some distance; yet the deceptive noise will not determine which may be the doomed one, beyond the fact that a palm gives the sharpest crack. Indians when they hear such a sound are invariably frightened, and often will run backwards and forwards in terrified uncertainty, to try and discover whence came the danger signal.
Then there are plants that injure more directly. One palm, an Astrocaryum, has spines six inches in length up its stem. These spines, black in colour, hard, unbreakable, fall in the bush and spike the foot of the unfortunate who may tread on them. On the palm-stem itself they will wound the unwary hand incautiously or involuntarily thrust in the thicket. Many of the climbing plants have thorns or hook-like prickles, and perhaps the worst are the many kinds of twining river-side palms, whose barbed leaves will tear both flesh and clothing.[15] But trying as these vegetable torments may be, they are outclassed in the eyes of the tyro by the more active evil of perils from snakes and insects. Creeping through dense bush is an agony at first. Poisonous reptiles may lie concealed all about one, virulent insects surround in their myriads. If imagination has painted a floral paradise it has also run riot over a profusion of deadly snakes, an uninterrupted purgatory from creeping things innumerable, and winged pests before which the plague of flies in ancient Egypt sinks to insignificance. And there is some excuse for imagination if it be fed on travellers’ tales. As a matter of fact, if these were true life would in all verity be insupportable. But the fear of snakes passes in two weeks, never to return, and mercifully the most pestilent creatures exist only in limited spheres, and seldom or never in the same. Places that are troubled with the pium will be found free of mosquitoes at night; in a belt of country where the mosquito abounds the pium will be absent, and in any case the two are never active together. The pium, a most vile little fly, comes out at sunrise. It is an intolerable pest, will attack any exposed part of the body, and draws blood every time. The traveller is forced, when journeying through a pium-infested country, to don guarded boots, gauntlets, and a veil. It is impossible to eat, drink, or smoke, till sunset puts a period to the troubling. Fortunately, piums are only found within a few hundred yards of the rivers. This is also the case as a rule with mosquitoes. There is a bad belt of pium country on the Issa, at the Brazilian frontier. It takes two days to get through on a steamer, and during the forty-eight hours life is a long-drawn torture. But once through you are rid of them. Robuchon noted that the Culex mosquito disappears on entering this river: but there are others; one, a kind of Tabano in miniature, is called the Maringunios. I found piums on the Kahuanari at low river, but a light breeze would suffice to sweep them away, and both mosquitoes and piums are practically non-existent in the middle Issa-Japura valley, though mosquitoes are found in certain parts of tracts of flatter country, but are not bad enough to make a net a necessary adjunct for comfort. There is also a tiny sand-fly that occasionally appears at sunset, when the river is low, and though minute in size, causes a very painful wound. It is known in Brazil as the Maruim.
A most annoying little insect that is very common in the bush is a kind of harvest bug. This almost invisible “red tick” must not be confused with another parasite that is only obtained from contact with Indians. The forest tick lives on the leaves of plants and bushes, and when shaken off creeps everywhere, and will burrow under the skin, which gives rise to maddening irritation.
Wasps and wild bees—the bee of these regions is a waspish creature—are frequently a nuisance. Often in a forest path I have come upon a huge black overhanging nest pendant from a tree. It looks like a tarred lobster-pot full of black pitch, and it is necessary to rush past to avoid the stings of the easily-roused inhabitants. Some of the wasps are exceedingly handsome fellows, noticeable even among Amazonian winged beauties, unsurpassed in any other land for gorgeous colouring. Among other fine insects of the Montaña are the huge Morphos, a dazzling blue butterfly many sizes bigger than a humming-bird; dragonflies with iridescent wings and jewelled bodies, fireflies and glow-worms with their living lights, so brilliant that I have often in a moment of forgetfulness mistaken them for distant lights from some human dwelling-place. But the butterflies, the most resplendent of all, frequently illustrate the proverb that beauty is but skin deep. Exquisitely graceful in flight, marvellous in subtle colourings, I have found them to be the dirtiest possible feeders. The sight of one now fills me with repugnance, for it calls to mind pictures of these so apparently dainty and aerial beings fluttering about some mass of offal, actually eating manure.[16] They will congregate in thousands round a spot of blood, so absolutely fearless that it is not possible to drive them away. They will actually smother the kill during the disembowelling process after hunting. The contrast of their ethereal loveliness and their gross habits is revolting—Psyche and putrid filth, an inconceivably horrible combination.
Butterflies and moths exist in great numbers and varieties. The most ordinary kind is a large bright sky-blue; other common ones are tiger-marked and yellow, like our sulphur butterfly but larger. Most of them are strong fliers. If the perfect insects themselves inflict no injury, the same cannot always be said of them in the caterpillar stage, for very many have hair that stings quite painfully.
Ants are the greatest curse. They are everywhere, of all kinds, of varied colours, and almost invariable viciousness. They drop from the overhanging foliage. They may come singly or in battalions—army corps rather. The traveller pushing through the thicket will knock them off the bushes, and they will proceed to crawl down the neck or up the sleeves. They swarm over the bare feet. And then they sting. The worst kind is a small stinging ant not more than the size of a pin’s head. In many places the earth is broken up and transformed into irregular heaps, the late habitations of some gregarious ant, such as the Ecodema cophelotos, or it may be built into cones to the height of 4 or 5 feet by the termites. It needs but short experience of the bush to endorse very heartily Spruce’s comment that they “deserve to be considered the actual owners of the Amazon valley.”[17] On more than one occasion stinging ants drove me from dry land to water. In inundated country these insects forced me to take refuge off the higher points of land, which, turned into temporary islands, form the natural resting-place for the traveller exhausted by the wading, the swimming, and the stumbling through the unseen undergrowth. Unfortunately the ants, too, are driven to take the same refuge. The traveller may find that choice lies between torture on land or again seeking the comparative peace of the water in perhaps an exhausted condition. Happily ants, like the pium, keep in belts, and of these it can only be said that discreet avoidance is better than valour.