MR. WATERTON AND THE INDIAN IN THE CANOE.
MR. WATERTON IN GUIANA.
No man, perhaps, in recent times has seen more remarkable adventures than Mr. Charles Waterton, the eccentric naturalist, whose narratives of his "Wanderings" in the wild and unfrequented forests of South America, were published about forty years since. As with Bruce and other travellers, many of Mr. Waterton's stories of adventure were at first received with incredulity and ridicule; but the public have since become better acquainted with this original observer of nature; and few now doubt that his narratives are fully entitled to credit.
Though an English gentleman of fortune, Mr. Waterton in pursuit of his favourite studies of birds, animals, and other natural objects, determined to encounter the perils of travel in the forests of Guiana, that pestilential region of South America, whose name, in the traveller's ear, carries associations of fever and death. His first journey was undertaken in 1812, and its chief object was to collect specimens of the famous Wourali poison, with which the native Indians tip their arrows, and the nature of which was of some interest to science. To travel through the wilds of Demarara and Essequibo on foot, would have been impossible. The tour would exhaust the wayfarer in his attempts to wade through the swamps, and the mosquitoes at night would entirely deprive him of sleep. The only way was by canoe up the river, on which he soon found himself moving through an unbroken range of forest, covering each shore, save here and there where a hut discovered itself inhabited by free people of colour, with a rood or two of bared ground about it, or where the wood-cutter had made himself a dwelling, and cleared a few acres for pasturage. After a time even these traces of life disappeared for a while. This country had been but little explored, and afforded a rich field for the naturalist's observations; leopard, sloths, vultures, snakes, vampires, lizards, besides innumerable varieties of insects were among the inhabitants of the dense forests in which the singular vine, called the bush-rope by the wood-cutters, on account of its use in hauling out heavy timber, twisted itself sometimes as thick as a man's body round the tallest trees, rearing its head high above their tops.
It was a relief to him when he came near the habitation of an Indian, named Simon, situated on the summit of a hill. The Indians who frequented this habitation, though living in the midst of woods, bore evident marks of attention to their persons. Their hair was neatly collected, and tied up in a knot; their bodies fancifully painted red, in numerous devices. This gave them a gay and animated appearance. Some of them had on necklaces composed of the teeth of wild boars slain in the chase, many wore rings, and others had an ornament on the left arm, midway between the shoulder and the elbow. At the close of day, they regularly bathed in the river below, and the next morning seemed busy in renewing the faded colours of their faces. One day there came into the hut a form which literally might be called the wild man of the woods. On entering, he laid down a ball of wax which he had collected in the forest. His hammock was all ragged and torn, and his bow, though of good wood, was without any ornament or polish. His face was extremely meagre, his looks forbidding, and his whole appearance neglected. His long black hair hung from his head in matted confusion; nor had his body, to all appearance, ever been painted. They gave him some cassava bread and boiled fish, which he ate voraciously, and soon after left the hut. As he went out, they could observe no traces in his countenance or demeanour which indicated that he was in the least mindful of having been benefited by the society he was just leaving. The Indians said that he had neither wife, nor child, nor friend. They had often tried to persuade him to come and live amongst them; but all was of no avail. He went roving on, plundering the wild bees of their honey and picking up the fallen nuts and fruits of the forest. When he fell in with game, he procured fire from two sticks, and cooked it on the spot. When a hut happened to be in his way, he stepped in, and asked for something to eat, and then months elapsed ere they saw him again. They did not know, they said, what had caused him to be thus unsettled, he had been so for years; nor did they believe that even age itself, would change the habits of this poor, harmless, solitary wanderer.
Continuing his journey, falls and rapids on the river increased the difficulties of the navigation; and coming soon afterwards to the higher lands, Waterton was enabled to pursue his way through the forest on foot; sleeping at night in a hammock slung to the trees, and by days depending for food upon the game with which the forests abounded. He had always entertained the belief, that savage animals are rarely inclined to molest human beings unless provoked; and the immunity which he enjoyed from the attacks certainly confirmed his views. After long wandering in this way, he was fortunate in finding some Indians and soldiers whom the Portuguese commander had sent into a space in the forest to build a canoe. They had just finished it; but the soldier who commanded the rest said he dared not on any account convey a stranger to the fort; but he added as there were two canoes, one of them might be dispatched with a letter, and then the stranger could proceed slowly on in the other. In this way they travelled for four days, when the first canoe which had gone on with the letter met them with the commander's answer. During its absence, the nights had been cold and stormy, the rain had fallen in torrents, the days were cloudy, and there had been no sun to dry the wet hammocks. Exposed thus day and night to the chilling blast and pelting shower, Mr. Waterton's health gave way, and a severe fever came on. The commander's answer was a refusal to allow any stranger to cross the frontier; but upon a second message being taken to him, informing him of the traveller's dangerous condition, he ordered him to be removed to the fort, where the stranger was eventually treated with much kindness.
This journey was successful in procuring samples of the singular poison called Wourali, of which so many half fabulous stories were told, Mr. Waterton found it a preparation from a kind of vine, growing in those wilds, with the addition of pounded fangs of the Labarri snake, and other strange ingredients mingled together by a slow and tedious process; with this poison, the Indians tipped their arrows in hunting for all game, which never failed to die if wounded with it.
Having had a return of his fever, and being aware that the further he advanced into these lonely regions the less would be his chance of regaining health, Mr. Waterton finally gave up all idea of proceeding, and went slowly back towards Demarara by nearly the same route by which he had come. As before, an Indian steered the canoe; and the traveller has given a graphic description of this part of his journey. On descending the falls in the Essequibo, it was resolved to push through them, the downward stream being in the canoe's favour. At a little distance from the place, a large tree had fallen into the river, and in the meantime the canoe was lashed to one of its branches. The roaring of the water was dreadful; it foamed and dashed over the rocks with a tremendous spray, like breakers on a lee-shore, threatening destruction to whatever approached it. The channel was barely twelve feet wide, and the torrent in rushing down formed transverse furrows, which showed how near the rocks were to the surface. Nothing could surpass the skill of the Indian who steered the canoe. He looked steadfastly at it, then at the rocks, then cast an eye on the channel, and then looked at the canoe again. It was in vain to speak. The sound was lost in the roar of waters; but his eye showed that he had already passed it in imagination. He held up his paddle in a position, as much as to say that he would keep exactly amid channel; and then made a sign to cut the bush-rope that held the canoe to the fallen tree. The canoe drove down, the torrent with inconceivable rapidity. It did not touch the rocks once all the way.
Soon after this, Mr. Waterton returned to England, and settled again at his seat of Walton Hall, in Yorkshire, where his remarkable collections of stuffed birds and other animals and natural objects are well known. The tertian ague had unfortunately seized him, and three years passed before it finally took leave of him. "For three revolving autumns," says this enthuiastic writer, "the ague-beaten wanderer never saw, without a sigh, the swallow bend her flight towards warmer regions. He wished to go too, but could not, for sickness had enfeebled him, and prudence pointed out the folly of roving again too soon across the Northern tropic." But the old passion finally prevailed, and again he set sail, his destination being Pernambuco on the coast of Brazil. From Pernambuco he proceeded to Cayenne in Guiana, whence he started again into the interior, encountering hardships similar to those of his first journey; and noting in his own brilliant language, the habits and appearance of the birds and other wild animals which came under his observation. Fevers more than once attacked him, and on one occasion the hardwood stump of a tree wounded the hollow of his foot, in a way which caused him some weeks of suffering, though his habit of going without shoes generally caused him little inconvenience. A traveller in those regions, he says, must be content to leave behind his high-seasoned dishes, his wines and delicacies, carry nothing but what is necessary for his own comfort and the object in view, and depend on the skill of an Indian, or his own, for fish and game. "A sheet," he adds, "of about twelve feet long, ten wide, painted and with loop-holes on each side, will be of great service. In a few minutes you can suspend it between two trees in the shape of a roof. Under this, in your hammock, you may defy the pelting shower, and sleep heedless of the dews of night." In another portion of his narrative he says, "Should you ever wander through these remote and dreary wilds, forget not to carry with thee, bark laudanum, calomel, and jalap, and the lancet. There are no druggist shops here, nor sons of Galen to apply to in time of need. I never go encumbered with many clothes. A thin flannel waiscoat under a check shirt, a pair of trowsers, and a hat, were all my wardrobe; shoes and stockings I seldom had on. In dry weather they would have irritated the feet, and retarded me in the chase of wild beasts; and in the rainy season they would have kept me in a perpetual state of damp and moisture. I eat moderately, and never drink wine, spirits, or fermented liquors in any climate. This abstemiousness has ever proved a faithful friend; it carried me triumphant through the epidemia at Malaga, where death made such havoc about the beginning of the present century; and it has since befriended me in many a fit of sickness, brought on by exposure to the noonday sun, to the dews of night, to the pelting shower, and unwholesome food."
Mr. Waterton subsequently made a third journey in Guiana, besides a tour in remote parts of the United States, the narratives of which are equally interesting. Notwithstanding his attacks of fever, he is of opinion that the dangers of travelling in these countries have been greatly exaggerated, and are mostly dreaded, because unknown to those who remain at home. In prefaces to the volumes of essays on natural history, published by him since his final return to England, he has given an interesting sketch of his strange adventurous life.