The Wanderers; Or, Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Marian said she should be delighted; and my father and I at once expressed our readiness to become plaiters and weavers, and to give our thoughts to the subject;—though, of course, we could not expect to accomplish much at first, as we had very little knowledge of the art we proposed to exercise. Kallolo, however, said that he would show us how matting was manufactured in his country. It could be made sufficiently fine for clothing, or thick and coarse for roofs of cabins on board river-boats, or very strong for sails.

Some feathery-leaved reeds grew on the shore of the lake not far off, and as we were eager to begin, Arthur and I cut a few, and bringing them back to Kallolo, begged him to show us how to plait. He at once undertook to do so, observing, however, that the reeds were not fit for any other purpose than to make coarse hats; and that they must be first dried, and then split, before they could be fit for use. “However, they will do to learn with, and you can at once make hats with your plaiting,” he added. Being anxious to learn, we kept hard at work, and before Marian repaired to her hut for the night we had made several yards of plaiting, and my father had designed a plan for manufacturing matting.

I cannot attempt to describe the labour of each day, or the progress we made in our work. Kallolo, who had started as he intended at daybreak, returned in the evening with the materials for his blowpipe, and the ingredients for manufacturing the woorali poison. He had brought several stems of small palms, from which he selected two of different sizes. Outside they appeared rough from the scars of the fallen leaves; but he said that the soft pith within them would soon rot if steeped in water, and being easily extracted would leave a smooth polished bore. The smaller one was very delicate, being scarcely thicker than a finger; the other was an inch and a half in diameter. He explained that the smaller one was to be pushed inside the larger—this was to be done that any curve in the one might counteract that in the other. Having allowed his stems to remain in water two or three days, he was able to remove the pith, which had thus become rotten. He then fastened a cup-shaped wooden mouthpiece to one end, and bound the whole spirally with the long flat strips of the black bark of the climbing palm-tree. Among other materials, he had brought a quantity of wax of a dark hue, with which he smeared the whole of the outside. The tube he had thus formed tapered towards the muzzle, the mouthpiece being fitted to the upper end. Both ends were tightly bound round with a cord of silk grass; the butt being further secured by a nut cut horizontally through the middle, with a hole in the end forming a ring, which, should it strike the ground, would prevent it from splitting. About two feet from the mouth-end he fastened a couple of the teeth of the agouti to serve as sights.

Kallolo having finished his blowpipe hung it up carefully by one end, as should it become in the slightest degree bent, it would be, he explained, completely spoiled. He then commenced manufacturing arrows. They were made out of the leaf of a species of palm-tree, hard, brittle, and pointed as sharp as needles. Having burned the butt end, he fastened round it some wild cotton of just sufficient thickness to fit the hole of the tube. As soon as he had formed an arrow he put it into the blowpipe, and aimed at an unfortunate parrot perched on a tree fifty yards off. The parrot, uttering a cry, flew away, and the arrow fell to the ground; but as no poison had as yet been used, the bird was little the worse for its wound. The case would have been very different had the arrow been dipped in the poison: the bird would have died in thirty or forty seconds, Kallolo told me. He was well-satisfied with his performance, and pronounced his blowpipe a certain killer.

He had now to manufacture the poison. He had already procured all the ingredients, and three large bowls; but he confessed to the captain that all his efforts would be in vain unless he could obtain a vessel in which to boil it, as the wooden bowls would certainly not answer the purpose. His object was to obtain the loan of the saucepan!

“Why, we shall all be poisoned if you use it,” said the captain, starting back with dismay; “you had better go without your blowpipe than allow that to happen.”

Kallolo assured him that the vessel would not in any way be injured; and that should the white people even swallow a small portion of the poison, they would not suffer.

“Ah, my friend, but I would rather not risk it,” observed the captain. “However, if you can undertake to clean the pot thoroughly after you have used it, I will not hinder you, as I am well aware that you could procure more food with your blowpipe than all of us together, with our bows and arrows and fishing-lines.”

Having obtained the loan of the pot, Kallolo immediately commenced operations. He had, I should have said, formed a small hut at a little distance from the camp, in which to concoct the mixture. He had placed there the various ingredients he had collected. The first was composed of several bunches of the woorali vine; another was a root with a sharp, bitter taste. Besides these there were two bulbous plants, which contained a green and glutinous juice. He had also collected two species of ants: one large and black, with a sharp, venomous sting; the other a little red ant, which stings like the nettle. Having scraped the woorali vine and bitter root into thin shavings, he put them into a sieve made of leaves, which he held over a bowl, and poured water on them: a thick liquor came through, having the appearance of coffee. He then produced the bulbous plants, and squeezed a portion of the juice into the pot, adding the dried ants, as well as the pounded fangs of two venomous snakes. Clearing everything away, he made a fire in the centre of the hut, and pouring the mixture into the saucepan, he boiled it slowly for some hours. The scum was then taken off, when the liquid had become reduced to thick syrup of a deep brown colour. He now told me that it was fit for use; and his darts being ready, he dipped them into it, as he did also several large arrows, and the points of some of our spears. The remainder he poured off into some small gourds, which he covered carefully over with leaves, and hung up in the hut.

“Now!” he said, “we are prepared for any enemies who may come near us; and we may be sure that we shall be able to procure as much game as we can desire.”