The Naturalist on the River Amazons quotes

In the course of the afternoon a heavy shower fell, and in the evening, the atmosphere having been cooled by the rain, we walked about a mile out of town to the residence of an American gentleman to whom our host wished to introduce us.

The impressions received during this first walk can never wholly fade from my mind.

After traversing the few streets of tall, gloomy, convent-looking buildings near the port, inhabited chiefly by merchants and shopkeepers, along which idle soldiers, dressed in shabby uniforms carrying their muskets carelessly over their arms, priests, negresses with red water-jars on their heads, sad-looking Indian women …

Amongst them were several handsome women dressed in a slovenly manner, barefoot or shod in loose slippers, but wearing richly-decorated earrings, and around their necks strings of very large gold beads. They had dark expressive eyes, and remarkably rich heads of hair.

It was a mere fancy, but I thought the mingled squalor, luxuriance and beauty of these women were pointedly in harmony with the rest of the scene—so striking, in the view, was the mixture of natural riches and human poverty.

The houses were mostly in a dilapidated condition, and signs of indolence and neglect were visible everywhere. The wooden palings which surrounded the weed-grown gardens were strewn about and broken; hogs, goats, and ill-fed poultry wandered in and out through the gaps.

This habit of the Saüba ant, of clipping and carrying away immense quantities of leaves, has long been recorded in books on natural history.

When employed on this work, their processions look like a multitude of animated leaves on the march.

In some places I found an accumulation of such leaves, all circular pieces, about the size of a sixpence, lying on the pathway, unattended by ants, and at some distance from any colony.

This frontal eye is totally wanting in the other workers, and is not known in any other kind of ant.

The apparition of these strange creatures from the cavernous depths of the mine reminded me, when I first observed them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable.

They were not very pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no difficulty in securing a few with my fingers. I never saw them under any other circumstances than those here related, and what their special functions may be I cannot divine.

The activity of birds and insects proceeds without interruption, each species having its own separate times; the colonies of wasps, for instance, do not die off annually, leaving only the queens, as in cold climates; but the succession of generations and colonies goes on incessantly.

It is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is a combination of all three.

With the day and night always of equal length, the atmospheric disturbances of each day neutralising themselves before each succeeding morn;

But to this subject, and to the natural history of the monkeys, of which thirty-eight species inhabit the Amazon region, I shall have to return.

We often read, in books of travels, of the silence and gloom of the Brazilian forests. They are realities, and the impression deepens on a longer acquaintance.

The few sounds of birds are of that pensive or mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes, in the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one;

these are not repeated, and the succeeding silence tends to heighten the unpleasant impression which they make on the mind. With the native it is always the Curupíra, the wild man or spirit of the forest, which produces all noises they are unable to explain.

For myths are the rude theories which mankind, in the infancy of knowledge, invent to explain natural phenomena.

The Curupíra is a mysterious being, whose attributes are uncertain, for they vary according to locality. Sometimes he is described as a kind of orang-otang, being covered with long, shaggy hair, and living in trees.

The negroes themselves behaved with great propriety, but seemed moved more particularly by the pomp, the gilding, the dresses, and the general display. Young Brazilians laughed. Several aborigines were there, coolly looking on.

One old Indian, who was standing near me, said, in a derisive manner, when the sermon was over: “It’s all very good; better it could not be”

(Está todo bom; melhor nao pude ser).

The crowns were formed of enormous clusters of fan-shaped leaves, the stalks alone of which measured seven to ten feet in length.

Nothing in the vegetable world could be more imposing than this grove of palms.

There was no underwood to obstruct the view of the long perspective of towering columns. The crowns, which were densely packed together at an immense height overhead, shut out the rays of the sun;

They generally answered in the negative when we asked, money in hand, whether they had fowls, turtles, or eggs to sell. “Nao ha, sinto que nao posso lhe ser bom;” or,

“Nao ha, men coracao.” “We have none; I am sorry I cannot oblige you;” or, “There is none, my heart.”

Sept. 3rd to 7th.—At half-past eight a.m. we arrived at Baiao, which is built on a very high bank, and contains about 400 inhabitants.

The wildness of the whole scene was very impressive. As far as the eye could see, stretched range after range of wooded hills and scores of miles of beautiful wilderness, inhabited only by scanty tribes of wild Indians.

In the midst of such a solitude, the roar of the cataract seemed fitting music.

September 17th.—We commenced early in the morning our downward voyage. Arroyos is situated in about 4° 10′ S. lat.; and lies, therefore, about 130 miles from the mouth of the Tocantins. Fifteen miles above Guaribas, another similar cataract called Tabocas lies across the river.

The men had made a fire in the galley to make tea of an acid herb, called erva cidreira, a quantity of which they had gathered at the last landing-place, and the flames sparkled cheerily upwards.

It is at such times as these that Amazon travelling is enjoyable, and one no longer wonders at the love which many, both natives and strangers, have for this wandering life.

The little schooner sped rapidly on with booms bent and sails stretched to the utmost; just as day dawned, we ran with scarcely slackened speed into the port of Cameta, and cast anchor.

It dipped itself, then fluttered its wings and pruned its feathers, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy itself alone in the shady nook which it had chosen—a place overshadowed by broad leaves of ferns and Heliconiæ.

I thought, as I watched it, that there was no need for poets to invent elves and gnomes whilst Nature furnishes us with such marvellous little sprites ready at hand.

My return-journey to Pará afforded many incidents characteristic of Amazonian travelling. I left Cametá on the 16th of July. My luggage was embarked in the morning in the Santa Rosa, a vessel of the kind called cuberta, or covered canoe.

At Burujúba, there is a large monastery in a state of ruin; part of the edifice, however, was still inhabited by a Brazilian family. The walls are four feet in thickness.

The long dark corridors and gloomy cloisters struck me as very inappropriate in the midst of this young and radiant nature.

They would be better if placed on some barren moor in Northern Europe than here in the midst of perpetual summer. The next turn in the river below Burujúba brought the city of Pará into view.

Petzell told me that his Indian neighbours treated him very kindly; one or other of them called almost every day to see how he was getting on, and they had helped him in many ways. He had a high opinion of the Tapuyos, and said,

“If you treat them well, they will go through fire to serve you.”

Petzell and his family were expert insect-collectors, so I employed them at this work during my stay at Caripí. The daily occurrences here were after a uniform fashion. I rose with the dawn, took a cup of coffee, and then sallied forth after birds.

The first night I slept soundly and did not perceive anything unusual, but on the next I was aroused about midnight by the rushing noise made by vast hosts of bats sweeping about the room.

The air was alive with them; they had put out the lamp, and when I relighted it the place appeared blackened with the impish multitudes that were whirling round and round.

After I had laid about well with a stick for a few minutes, they disappeared amongst the tiles, but when all was still again they returned, and once more extinguished the light. I took no further notice of them, and went to sleep.

It was only after many days’ experience that I learned to distinguish one from the other when on the wing. This resemblance has attracted the notice of the natives, all of whom, even educated whites, firmly believe that one is transmutable into the other.

They have observed the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies, and think it not at all more wonderful that a moth should change into a humming-bird.

The resemblance between this hawk-moth and a humming-bird is certainly very curious, and strikes one even when both are examined in the hand.

This land-law has since been repealed, and a new one adopted founded on that of the United States. Raimundo spoke of his race as the redskins, “pelle vermelho;” they meant well to the whites, and only begged to be let alone.

“God,” he said, “had given room enough for us all.”

It was pleasant to hear the shrewd good-natured fellow talk in this strain. Our companion, Joaquim, had fallen asleep; the night air was cool, and the moonlight lit up the features of Raimundo, revealing a more animated expression than is usually observable in Indian countenances.

Raimundo exclaimed “Clareia o dia!”—“The day brightens!” The change was rapid: the sky in the east assumed suddenly the loveliest azure colour, across which streaks of thin white clouds were painted.

It is at such moments as this when one feels how beautiful our earth truly is!

The channel on whose waters our little boat was floating was about two hundred yards wide; others branched off right and left, surrounding the group of lonely islands which terminate the land of Carnapijó.

It has more than 6000 islands.

God knows how we came out of this fearful sea!

” Many expeditions were undertaken in the course of the eighteenth century; in fact, the crossing of the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, by way of the Amazons, seems to have become by this time a common occurrence.

Although this is a river of great extent—1000 miles in length, and, for the last eighty miles of its course, four to ten in breadth—its contribution to the Amazons is not perceptible in the middle of the stream.

The white turbid current of the main river flows disdainfully by, occupying nearly the whole breadth of the channel, whilst the darker water of its tributary seems to creep along the shore

, and is no longer distinguishable four or five miles from its mouth.

for this was its habit when excited, and the front of the head was worn quite bald in consequence. At length its master altered his tone.

“It’s all a lie, my old woman; you’re an angel, a flower, a good affectionate old creature,”

and so forth. Immediately the poor monkey ceased its wailing, and soon after came over to where the man sat. The disposition of the Coaitá is mild in the extreme:

The class of Portuguese who emigrate to Brazil seem to prefer petty trading to the honourable pursuit of agriculture.

If the English are a nation of shopkeepers, what are we to say of the Portuguese?

I counted in Barra one store for every five dwelling-houses.

… not arise, as might be supposed, from a desire for accurate topographical knowledge of the Seine, but from the idea, that all the world was a great river, and that the different places he had heard of must lie on one shore or the other.

The fact of the Amazons being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have passed their whole lives on its banks.

Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are no insect pests, mosquito, pium, sand-fly, or motuca. The climate is glorious;

the wind then gradually abates, and the rain subsides into a steady drizzle, which continues often for the greater part of the succeeding day. After a week or two of showery weather, the aspect of the country is completely changed.

The parched ground in the neighbourhood of Santarem breaks out, so to speak, in a rash of greenery;

the dusty, languishing trees gain, without having shed their old leaves, a new clothing of tender green foliage; a wonderful variety of quick-growing leguminous plants springs up; and leafy creepers overrun the ground, the bushes, and the trunks of trees.

My monkeys lasted me about a fortnight, the last joint being an arm with the clenched fist, which I used with great economy, hanging it in the intervals, between my frugal meals, on a nail in the cabin.

Nothing but the hardest necessity could have driven me so near to cannibalism as this, but we had the greatest difficulty in obtaining here a sufficient supply of animal food.

About every three days the work on the montaria had to be suspended, and all hands turned out for the day to hunt and fish, in which they were often unsuccessful, for although there was plenty of game in the forest, it was too widely …

but he increased his speed, and I was unable to get near enough for the purpose. There was very little of the serpentine movement in his course.

The rapidly moving and shining body looked like a stream of brown liquid flowing over the thick bed of fallen leaves, rather than a serpent with skin of varied colours.

He descended towards the lower and moister parts of the Ygapó. The huge trunk of an uprooted tree here lay across the road;

The members of each family live together, and seem to be much attached to each other; and the authority of the chief is exercised in the mildest manner.

Perpetual summer reigns around them; the land is of the highest fertility, and a moderate amount of light work produces them all the necessaries of their simple life.

It is difficult to get at their notions on subjects that require a little abstract thought; but the mind of the Indian is in a very primitive condition. I believe he thinks of nothing except the matters that immediately concern his daily material wants.

The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilised man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the cultivated ground from the Rio Negro to the Andes amounting only to a few score acres.

Man, indeed, in any condition, from his small numbers, makes but an insignificant figure in these vast solitudes.

It may be mentioned that the Solimoens is 2130 miles in length, if we reckon from the source of what is usually considered the main stream (Lake Lauricocha, near Lima);

The want of intellectual society, and of the varied excitement of European life, was also felt most acutely, and this, instead of becoming deadened by time, increased until it became almost insupportable.

I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of Nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind.

I got on pretty well when I received a parcel from England by the steamer, once in two or four months.

the soil is of marvellous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths of channels teem with fish and turtle, a fleet of steamers might anchor at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water communication straight to the Atlantic.

What a future is in store for the sleepy little tropical village!

After speaking of Ega as a city, it will have a ludicrous effect to mention that the total number of its inhabitants is only about 1200. It contains just 107 houses, about half of which are miserably built mud-walled cottages, thatched with palm-leaves.

just as I have known lumpish labouring men in England do, when half-fuddled.

One cannot help reflecting, when witnessing these traits of manners, on the similarity of human nature everywhere, when classes are compared whose state of culture and conditions of life are pretty nearly the same.

The Indians play a conspicuous part in the amusements at St. John’s eve, and at one or two other holidays which happen about that time of the year—the end of June.

many had also entered the service of whites at Ega, and, of late years, intermarriages with whites, half-castes, and civilised Indians had been frequent. The old man bewailed the fate of his race to Cardozo with tears in his eyes.

“The people of my nation,” he said, “have always been good friends to the Caríwas (whites), but before my grandchildren are old like me the name of Passé will be forgotten.”

In so far as the Passés have amalgamated with European immigrants or their descendants, and become civilised Brazilian citizens, there can scarcely be ground for lamenting their extinction as a nation;

Footsore and wearied, burthened with our guns, and walking for miles through the tepid shallow water under the brain-scorching vertical sun, we had, as may be imagined, anything but a pleasant time of it. I did not, however, feel any inconvenience afterwards.

Everyone enjoys the most lusty health whilst living this free and wild life on the rivers.

The other hunting trip which I have alluded to was undertaken in company with three friendly young half-castes. Two of them were brothers, namely, Joao (John) and Zephyrino Jabutí:

I met, in the course of my daily rambles in the woods, many Jararácas, and once or twice narrowly very escaped treading on them, but never saw them attempt to spring.

On some subjects the testimony of the natives of a wild country is utterly worthless.

The bite of the Jararácas is generally fatal. I knew of four or five instances of death from it, and only of one clear case of recovery after being bitten; but in that case the person was lamed for life.

The whole of this level land, instead of being covered with unwholesome swamps emitting malaria, forms in the dry season (and in the wet also) a most healthy country.

How elaborate must be the natural processes of self-purification in these teeming waters!

On our fresh route we were obliged to cut our way through a long belt of bamboo underwood, and not being so careful of my steps as my companions, I trod repeatedly on the flinty thorns which had fallen from the bushes, finishing by becoming …

He went about his work in a very gentle way and with much skill, but was so sparing of speech that I could scarcely get answers to the questions I put to him. When he had done I was able to limp about pretty nimbly.

An Indian when he performs a service of this kind never thinks of a reward.

I did not find so much disinterestedness in negro slaves or half-castes. We had to wait two hours for the return of our companions;

I was surprised, on my return to England, to learn from specimens in the British Museum, that the pigmy Marmoset was found also in Mexico, no other Amazonian monkey being known to wander far from the great river plain.

Thus, the smallest and apparently the feeblest, species of the whole order, is one which has, by some means, become the most widely dispersed.

The Jupurá.—A curious animal, known to naturalists as the Kinkajou, but called Jupurá by the Indians of the Amazons, and considered by them as a kind of monkey, may be mentioned in this place.

These expansions are clothed with minute feathers or scales, coloured in regular patterns, which vary in accordance with the slightest change in the conditions to which the species are exposed.

It may be said, therefore, that on these expanded membranes Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon.

Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species.

butterfly by-and-by).

Thus I found that the metamorphoses of insects were known to these savages

; but being unable to talk with my new friend, I could not ascertain what ideas such a phenomenon had given rise to in his mind. The good fellow did not leave my side during the remainder of our stay;

The only information I could get out of Manoel was, that large flocks of richly-coloured birds came down in the fruit season and despoiled his trees.

The sun set over the tree-tops before we left this little Eden, and the remainder of our journey was made slowly and pleasantly, under the chequered shades of the river banks, by the light of the moon.

December 7th.—Arrived at Fonte Boa; a wretched, muddy, and dilapidated village situated two or three miles within the mouth of a narrow by-stream called the Cayhiar-hy, which runs almost as straight as an artificial canal between the village and the main Amazons.

A fortnight afterwards, on going to request him to return them, I found the engravings had been cut out, and stuck all over the newly whitewashed walls of his chamber, many of them upside down.

He thought a room thus decorated with foreign views would increase his importance amongst his neighbours, and when I yielded to his wish to keep them, was boundless in demonstrations of gratitude, ending by shipping a boat-load of turtles for my use at Ega.

These neglected and rude villagers still retained many religious practices which former missionaries or priests had taught them.