After the rain ceased, the next morning about seven, we paddled up stream in the cayuco. I have never seen rocks so curiously corroded; in some places they were like fossil bones of mammoth size, then like battered capitals and fluted columns, always of rather smooth surface, sometimes quite perforated. In the hollows were ferns, selaginellas, and sometimes curious spiders; one rock was just like some monster crawling into the river. On the right bank several small springs trickled in, and on the other side a swift-flowing creek added materially to the volume of the river. Still we were getting into shallower water, and after passing in one way and another fifteen rapids or corrientes, we came to a huge tree that completely blocked our way. With a satisfied feeling, we declined to drag our heavy cayuco over, but beached her on a sand-spit, and waited for the return through the forest of part of our men whom we had sent to explore inland. Wild figs of good size came tumbling into the stream from the trees above; but they were not to our taste, although Guillermo said they were eaten when ripe. While we waited, a large canoe came down from the mahogany region miles above, and the three Caribs in it dragged it over the log with great labor. Besides their petácas, they had mahogany mortars for rice-hulling, and mahogany platters. In the forest their work is task-work, and they often have half the day to themselves; in this leisure time they carve the rejected butts into various useful articles, which they sell at the Boca, or mouth of the river. As we returned, we saw another use to which the ever-present machete is put; it is in turn knife, axe, adze, hammer, spoon, back-scratcher, shovel, pump-handle, door-bolt, blind-fastener,—and now a fishing-rod! Guillermo actually split the head of a large fish that was in the shadow of a rock,—a fish weighing some five pounds!
In the afternoon we inspected the champa our men had been building. The building process was certainly a novel one. On receiving our orders, the Caribs held a brief consultation, chattering in their very unattractive language; while we knew no more of their talk than we knew of the intelligent ants, who are equally black, and hold their consultations unbeknown to us. The result was, however, that they separated and disappeared in the forest. Soon we heard the blows of the machetes; and then they came straggling back, two with the aucones or main posts of the house, others with side-posts, rafters, coils of vejucos, and bundles of manàca-leaves. In an incredibly short time the frame was tied together. The thatching with the palm-leaves took longer, as it was necessary to split each of the immense leaves, which were quite thirty feet long. These were tied on to the rafters closely, like clapboards, and formed an excellent roof, only surpassed by that made of another palm, called confra, found nearer the sea, which is so durable as to last eight or ten years. Butts of the manàca formed the sides of the champa; and then we had a house large enough for twenty men, with the labor of five men a day and a half, at a cost of $3.75. For our purpose it was better than the Palace of the Cæsars.
One morning I explored the tree to which we were moored. A fine balloon-vine (Cardiospermum) hung in festoons of fragrant flowers from the branches; among them was a humming-bird’s nest fashioned as daintily as usual of the golden down of tree-ferns, and shingled with bits of lichens. It was not the season for eggs; but I have at other times found many nests, with never more than two white eggs of the size of a small bean. The young birds, I may add, are, when first hatched, most amusing little things, all heads and eyes, and without the long bill of maturer days. I found also a green grasshopper (Tropideres), five inches long, and very handsome of his kind. I wondered if he ate sugar-cane, and other things one might want to grow if living in the champa.
One day, going ashore to cut some sticks for an awning on the canoa, I hacked with my machete at a tall, slim tree very common along the banks, and which had often bothered me by its curled, dried leaves, clinging to the tree and looking very much like the doves (qualm) which were so often on the tree that it is named for them. This tree, which is botanically known as a cecropia, one of the nettle family, had a hollow trunk divided transversely by thin partitions, and from this cavity came a swarm of ants. I had here a chance to verify the interesting description given by Mr. Belt[7] of the habits of these remarkable creatures. As he says, they get into the tree by boring a small hole, and then eat their way through the many floors of this vegetable tower; they do not, however, eat the tree directly for sustenance, but import with great care numbers of coccidæ, or scale-insects, to feed on the tree-juices and elaborate a honey-like matter, which the ants eagerly suck from a pore on the back of these little cows. I tried in vain to find the queen ant; but while every cecropia that I touched was tenanted by ants, never a single female came to light. There are several small outer doors, for the disturbed stem is dotted with the pugnacious little ants in a very short time. What first taught the ants to farm these dull, inert coccidæ? Other vegetables are ant-inhabited, but none that I know of afford such spacious accommodations.
Pleasant as this life on the river and in the forest was, the time came when we must return; and it was startling how many things we saw on our way down which we had passed unnoticed coming up,—tall reeds with feathery blossoms more graceful than the pampas-grass; palms with bluish green foliage; flowers of the arum family more beautiful than a calla; blue herons; butterflies of the most attractive colors; fish like glass, that is as transparent, and about a foot long. Frank shot a beautiful grossbeak with scarlet breast and metallic green back, and brought me a fine purple passion-flower; another of the party shot an alligator, who turned over, exposing his yellow belly as he died. Altogether, the voyage down was more agreeable than the hard run up. Trees that were bare a few days before were now covered with white feathery flowers, and others presented masses of greenish flowers on their flat tops. We sailed and floated down the Rio Dulce by moonlight, and at early dawn anchored at Livingston.
San Gil, from Author’s House in Livingston.
Opposite the town are lands fertile and capable of producing fine crops to an enterprising owner. Frank and I rowed over several times, once exploring a neglected finca, where cane, sapotes, cassava, bananas, plantains, rose-apples, and coconuts were all jumbled together; at another time visiting a cacao-plantation farther up the stream. There is certainly room for a wise investment of capital on these lands on the eastern slope of San Gil as far as Santo Tomas. And here let me write of this port, Puerto Barrios, and the Northern Railroad, although I did not visit them until the spring of 1885.
Santo Tomas is beautifully situated; but since the sad failure of the Belgian colony established there by a legislative decree of April, 1843, it has borne a bad reputation, and its inhabitants diminished to the insignificant number of a hundred and twenty-nine by the last census. Its harbor, into which no large river empties, is an exceedingly good one, and a wharf might be constructed on deep water; but the authorities, in selecting a terminus for the projected railway which is to connect Guatemala City with the Atlantic coast, and so unite the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, chose a place some three miles eastward from Santo Tomas, where they must construct a wharf some three hundred feet in length to reach twenty feet of water, and where often ships cannot lie, but must run for Santo Tomas in bad weather. Add to this that the site of the fine city of Puerto Barrios is a swamp at present uninhabitable, although laid out (on paper) in a very attractive way, with castle, theatre, hippodrome, and all the elements of a Centro-American city of the first rank. The splendid mango-trees, with their dark, dense foliage, are abundant in the old village, while here even the palms are dwarfed.
