The inhabitants are of a tribe called Cholones, which was once large and powerful. I like their character better than that of any Indians whom I afterwards met with. They are good tempered, cheerful, and sober, and by far the largest and finest-looking of the aborigines that I have encountered. They are obedient to the church and attentive to her ceremonies; and are more advanced than common in civilization, using no paint as an ornament, but only staining their arms and legs with the juice of a fruit called huitoc, that gives a dark, blue dye, as a protection against the sand-flies, which are abundant, and a great nuisance. The place is generally very healthy. The common diseases are lymphatic swellings of the body and limbs, (supposed to be caused by exposure to the great humidity of the atmosphere while fishing at night,) and sarna, (a cutaneous affection, which covers the body with sores, making the patient a loathsome object.) These sores dry up and come off in scabs, leaving blotches on the skin, so that an Indian is frequently seen quite mottled. I imagine it is caused by want of cleanliness, and the bites of the sand-flies. They take, as a remedy, the dried root of a small tree called sárnango, grated and mixed with water. It is said to have a powerfully-intoxicating and stupefying effect, and to cause the skin to peel off.
The huitoc is a nut-like fruit, about the size of a common black walnut with its outer covering. It is, when ripe, soft, of a russet color outside, and filled with a dark purple pulp and small seeds. The tree is slender, and some fifteen or twenty feet high, shooting out broad leaves, with the fruit growing at their base and underneath, like the bread fruit. There is also here a small tree called añil, or indigo, with a leaf narrow at its base and broad near the extremity, which yields as deep a dye as the plant. There are also gay and fragrant flowers in the gardens of the Indians.
Ijurra shot a large bat, of the vampire species, measuring about two feet across the extended wings. This is a very disgusting-looking animal, though its fur is very delicate, and of a glossy, rich maroon color. Its mouth is amply provided with teeth, looking like that of a miniature tiger. It has two long and sharp tusks in the front part of each jaw, with two smaller teeth, like those of a hare or sheep, between the tusks of the upper jaw, and four (much smaller) between those of the lower. There are also teeth back of the tusks, extending far back into the mouth. The nostrils seem fitted as a suction apparatus. Above them is a triangular, cartilaginous snout, nearly half an inch long, and a quarter broad at the base; and below them is a semi-circular flap, of nearly the same breadth, but not so long. I suppose these might be placed over the puncture made by the teeth, and the air underneath exhausted by the nostrils, thus making them a very perfect cupping-glass. I never heard it doubted, until my return home, that these animals were blood-suckers; but the distinguished naturalist, Mr. T. R. Peale, tells me that no one has ever seen them engaged in the operation, and that he has made repeated attempts for that purpose, but without success. On one occasion, when a companion had lost a good deal of blood, the doors and windows of the house in which his party was lying were closed, and a number of these bats, that were clinging to the roof, killed; but none of them were found gorged, or with any signs of having been engaged in blood-sucking. I also observed no apparatus proper for making a delicate puncture. The tusks are quite as large as those of a rat, and, if used in the ordinary manner, would make four wounds at once, producing, I should think, quite sufficient pain to awaken the most profound sleeper. Never having heard this doubt, it did not occur to me to ask the Indians if they had ever seen the bat sucking, or to examine the wounds of the horses that I had seen bleeding from this supposed cause. On one occasion I found my blanket spotted with blood, and supposed that the bat (having gorged himself on the horses outside) had flown into the house, and, fastening himself to the thatch over me, had disgorged upon my covering and then flown out. There was no great quantity of blood, there being but five or six stains on the blanket, such as would have been made by large drops. I presumed, likewise, from the fact of the drops being scattered irregularly over a small surface, that the bat had been hanging by his feet to the thatch, and swinging about. The discovery of the drops produced a sensation of deep disgust; and I have frequently been unable to sleep for fear of the filthy beast. Every traveller in these countries should learn to sleep with body and head enveloped in a blanket, as the Indians do.
I saw here, for the first time, the blow-gun of the Indians, called, by the Spaniards, cerbatana; by the Portuguese of the river, gravatana, (a corruption, I imagine, of the former, as I find no such Portuguese word;) and by the Indians, pucuna. It is made of any long, straight piece of wood, generally of a species of palm called chonta—a heavy, elastic wood, of which bows, clubs, and spears are also made. The pole or staff, about eight feet in length, and two inches diameter near the mouth end, (tapering down to half an inch at the extremity,) is divided longitudinally; a canal is hollowed out along the centre of each part, which is well smoothed and polished by rubbing with fine sand and wood. The two parts are then brought together; nicely woolded with twine; and the whole covered with wax, mixed with some resin of the forest, to make it hard. A couple of boar's teeth are fitted on each side of the mouth end, and one of the curved front teeth of a small animal resembling a cross between a squirrel and a hare, is placed on top for a sight. The arrow is made of any light wood, generally the wild cane, or the middle fibre of a species of palm-leaf, which is about a foot in length, and of the thickness of an ordinary lucifer match. The end of the arrow, which is placed next to the mouth, is wrapped with a light, delicate sort of wild cotton, which grows in a pod upon a large tree, and is called huimba; and the other end, very sharply pointed, is dipped in a vegetable poison prepared from the juice of the creeper, called bejuco de ambihuasca, mixed with aji, or strong red pepper, barbasco, sarnango, and whatever substances the Indians know to be deleterious. The marksman, when using his pucuna, instead of stretching out the left hand along the body of the tube, places it to his mouth by grasping it, with both hands together, close to the mouth-piece, in such a manner that it requires considerable strength in the arms to hold it out at all, much less steadily. If a practised marksman, he will kill a small bird at thirty or forty paces. In an experiment that I saw, the Indian held the pucuna horizontally, and the arrow blown from it stuck in the ground at thirty-eight paces. Commonly the Indian has quite an affection for his gun, and many superstitious notions about it. I could not persuade one to shoot a very pretty black and yellow bird for me because it was a carrion bird; and the Indian said that it would deteriorate and make useless all the poison in his gourd. Neither will he discharge his pucuna at a snake, for fear of the gun being made crooked like the reptile; and a fowling-piece or rifle that has once been discharged at an alligator is considered entirely worthless. A round gourd, with a hole in it for the huimba, and a joint of the caña brava as a quiver, completes the hunting apparatus.
August 3.—Went to church. The congregation—men, women, and children—numbered about fifty; the service was conducted by the governor, assisted by the alcalde. A little naked, bow legged Indian child, of two or three years, and Ijurra's pointer puppy, which he had brought all the way from Lima on his saddle-bow, worried the congregation with their tricks and gambols; but altogether they were attentive to their prayers, and devout. I enjoyed exceedingly the public worship of God with these rude children of the forest; and, although they probably understood little of what they were about, I thought I could see its humanizing and fraternizing effect upon all.
At night we had a ball at the governor's house. The alcalde, who was a trump, produced his fiddle; another had a rude sort of guitar, or banjo; and under the excitement of his music, and the aguadiente of the governor, who had had his cane ground in anticipation of our arrival, we danced till eleven o'clock. The custom of the dance requires that a gentleman should choose a lady and dance with her, in the middle of the floor, till she gives over, (the company around clapping their hands in time to the music, and cheering the dancers with vivas at any particular display of agility or spirit in the dance.) He then presents his partner with a glass of grog, leads her to a seat, and chooses another. When he tires there is a general drink, and the lady has the choice. The Señor Commandante was in considerable request; and a fat old lady, who would not dance with anybody else, nearly killed me. The governor discharged our guns several times, and let off some rockets that we had brought from Huanuco; and doubt if Tingo Maria had ever witnessed such a brilliant affair before.
August 4.—I waked up with pain in the legs and headache from dancing, and found our men and canoes ready for embarkation. After breakfast the governor and his wife, (though I greviously fear that there had been no intervention of the priest in the matter of the union,) together with several of our partners of the previous night, accompanied us to the port. After loading the canoes the governor made a short address to the canoe-men, telling them that we "were no common persons; that they were to have a special care of us: to be very obedient, &c., and that he would put up daily prayers for their safe return;" whereupon, after a glass all round, from a bottle brought down specially by our hostess, and a hearty embrace of the governor, his lady, and my fat friend of the night before, we embarked and shoved off; the boatmen blowing their horns as we drifted rapidly down with the current of the river, and the party on shore waving their hats and shouting their adieus.
We had two canoes; the largest about forty feet long, by two and a half broad; hollowed out from a single log, and manned each by five men and a boy. They are conducted by a puntero, or bowman, who looks out for rocks or sunken trees ahead; a popero, or steersman, who stands on a little platform at the stern of the boat and guides her motions; and the bogas or rowers, who stand up to paddle, having one foot in the bottom of the boat and the other on the gunwale. When the river was smooth and free from obstructions, we drifted with the current; the men sitting on the trunks and boxes, chatting and laughing with each other; but, as we approached a mal-paso, their serious looks, and the firm position in which each one planted himself at his post, showed that work was to be done. I felt a little nervous at first; but when we had fairly entered the pass, the rapid gesture of the puntero, indicating the channel; the elegant and graceful position of the popero, giving the boat a broad sheer with the sweep of his long paddle; the desperate exertions of the bogas; the railroad rush of the canoe; and the wild, triumphant, screaming laugh of the Indians, as we shot past the danger, made a scene that was much too exciting to admit of any other emotion than that of admiration.
We passed many of these to-day, and were well soaked by the canoes taking in water on each side; some of them were mere smooth declivities—inclined planes of gravel, with only three or four inches of water on them, so that the men had to get overboard, keep the canoes head on and drag them down. The average velocity of the river here is three and a half miles to the hour; but when it dashes down one of these declivities, it must be much more. The breadth of the river is a constantly varying quantity, probably never over one hundred and fifty yards, and never under thirty; banks low, and covered with trees, bushes, and wild cane. There were hills on each side, some distance from the bank, but now and then coming down to it. It is almost impossible to estimate the distance travelled with any degree of accuracy. The force of the current is very variable, and the Indians very irregular in their manner of rowing—sometimes paddling half an hour with great vigor, and then suffering the boat to drift with the tide. Averaging the current at three and a half miles the hour, and the rowing at one and a half, with nine hours of actual travel, we have forty-five miles for a day's journey at this season. I have estimated the number of travelling hours at nine, for we get off generally at 5 a. m., and stop at 5 p. m. We spend two hours for breakfast, in the middle of the day, and another hour is lost at the shallows of the river, or stopping to get a shot at an animal or bird.
At half-past five we camped on the beach. The first business of the boatmen when the canoe is secured, is to go off to the woods and cut stakes and palm branches to make a house for the patron. By sticking long poles in the sand, chopping them half in two, about five feet above the ground, and bending the upper parts together, they make, in a few minutes, the frame of a little shanty, which, thickly thatched with palm leaves, will keep off the dew or an ordinary rain. Some bring the drift-wood that is lying about the beach and make a fire; the provisions are cooked and eaten; the bedding laid down upon the leaves that cover the floor of the shanty; the mosquito nettings spread; and, after a cup of coffee, a glass of grog, and a cigar, (if they are to be had,) everybody retires for the night by eight o'clock. The Indians sleep around the hut, each under his narrow cotton mosquito curtain, which glisten in the moon-light like so many tomb-stones. This was pleasant enough when provisions were plenty and the weather good; but when there was no coffee or brandy, the cigars had given out, and there was a slim allowance of only salt fish and plantains, with one of those nights of heavy rain that are frequent upon the Marañon, I could not help calling to mind, with some bitterness of spirit, the comforts of the ship-of-war that I had left, to say nothing of the luxuries of home.