Up the Mazaruni for Diamonds

by William La Varre

CHAPTER XIX
HOW THE NATIVES HUNT AND FISH

FOR four long, busy months, we were to delve into that pebbly soil, and during that time I would also learn much of hunting and fishing that was strange indeed. I was especially interested in the manner in which the Indians get fish by poisoning them. Of course that seems very unsportsmanlike to us at home, but remember that these natives do not hunt and fish for the sport of it, but to live. And then, bear in mind that while we have telescope steel rods and artificial bait and ball bearing automatic reels and oiled silk lines and transparent gut leaders, floats, spoons, spinners, rubber minnows, hundreds of artificial flies, nets for landing the fish, gaffs, and every sort of fishing tackle, these Indians have not even common hooks and sinkers. Spears and harpoon arrows are their only means of fishing, aside from poison. Consequently one should not say that they were unsportsmanlike, although I felt that way about it at first. Thinking it over I decided differently.

They have several means of catching fish by poison and I must say that it is a far better way than that of some of the game hogs in this country who dynamite lakes and rivers for fish, killing far more than they can get, while with the poison the fish not taken soon recover and are as lively as ever.

Our Indians paddled into a small inlet of the river one day where there is quite a deep pool that back-waters in. Hauling the canoe out on land they proceeded to fill it with haiarry vines and water. With heavy sticks they crushed these vines. As I looked on with interest, one Indian pointed to the liquid and said, “Kill um,” meaning that it was poison.

After the vines were well crushed they tipped the contents of the canoe into the pool and within five minutes a great quantity of fish arose and floated on the surface. They collected the largest and best of these for food and as soon as the poison in the pool had thinned out the other fish recovered and were as well as ever. I was afraid that the poison would render the fish unfit for food but found that it did not affect them at all in that manner. It certainly was an easy way to catch fish and for a party as large as ours, the twenty blacks and the group of Indian hunters, it took a lot of fish and game to feed us.

Probably the most interesting method of catching fish as practiced by these clever Indians was by means of poisoned grasshoppers. They made a paste of the leaves of the quanamia, a strong narcotic plant. Catching large grasshoppers they filled the stomachs of these insects with the paste and tossed them into the water. The fish would leap up and swallow the grasshoppers, only soon after to turn, belly up, and float on the surface where they were picked up.

Here we found the game more abundant than ever, which was natural as we were far out of the haunts of blacks and Dutch, except for the few “pork knockers,” or tramp diamond miners, and there were probably no more than a score all up and down the fields.

Several kinds of animals were shot, but the favorite food was deer and labbas. The tapirs are like great hogs and their meat is rather tough though nourishing. The labbas also belong to the hog family but are about as big as jack rabbits. Small game birds were also plentiful. The maams were the best game birds, about the size of a very small turkey and much like them. The white people call them bush turkeys but scientists say that they do not properly belong to the turkey family. We didn’t care what family they belonged to, we found the meat delicious.

I do not mean that the game was so plentiful that it came down to us and begged to be shot. But our Indian hunters seldom went out without bringing back some meat. It was a cheerful sight to see three or four hunters come marching in, each with a part of a great tapir or deer slung over his back. We were sure of “fresh pork,” as we called it, for days.

One of our Indians had hunted steadily for three days without any success and he was getting decidedly sore about it. He had not seen an animal in any of his wanderings. When he returned empty handed on the third day I tried to cheer him.