Down the Orinoco in a Canoe

CHAPTER XIV

Friend Valiente turned up at Santa Catalina, his canoes laden with maÑoc and casabe, two days after our arrival.

Though the ranch had been abandoned for some time, stray cattle, more or less wild, roamed about the neighbourhood. Leal and Valiente soon lassoed a fine heifer, which, slaughtered without delay, replenished our commissariat. We celebrated a banquet like that held on New Year’s Day at San Pedro del Tua. We still had a little coffee, but of rum, which had then formed such an attraction, only the fragrant memory remained. Its place was supplied with what was left of our last demijohn of aniseed aguardiente.

As Valiente intended following the same route, we decided to wait for him. He knew that part of the Vichada and the Orinoco well. There were several small rapids which it was not advisable to cross without a pilot.

Two days after leaving Santa Catalina we struck the Orinoco, with a feeling of boundless joy. It seemed to us as if we had reached the open ocean, and the air itself appeared purer, more charged with invigorating oxygen.

After a short spin from the mouth of the Vichada, we reached Maipures, where Venezuelan authorities were stationed. Knowing that Venezuelans, as a rule, are inclined to be less reverent and respectful towards the Church and its servants than the average Colombian, we abandoned our ecclesiastical character, dropping it, as Elias dropped his mantle upon earth, on the waters of the Vichada, where it had done us such good service.

It was indispensable that we should find a pilot for the rapids. It seems that in former days the Venezuelan Government kept two or three pilots at Maipures, but we found to our sorrow that they had disappeared long since. However, not far from Maipures we were told that we should find a man named GatiÑo, one of the best pilots on the river. We at once started in quest of him, and found him in the thick of the forest about a mile from the shore. He was gathering tonga beans, and had formed a little camp, accompanied by his family, which consisted of his wife, two children, a boy and girl of fourteen and twelve respectively, and two smaller children of five and six. He agreed to take us across the rapids, provided we would wait at Maipures until he could pack his beans and gather some india-rubber extracted by himself. As there was no help for it, we agreed to wait. Maipures turned out to be nothing but a group of some fifteen or twenty tumble-down, rickety houses, inhabited by about a score of people, amongst them the prefect or political representative of the Government. He received us most cordially, and placed one of the buildings at our service. I believe both Valiente and Leal gave him to understand that we were high and mighty personages representing the Colombian Government on a tour of inspection through the lands awarded to Colombia by a recent decision in a case of arbitration between the two republics, handed down by the Queen of Spain. Maipures, where the functionary in question was supreme, came within the new jurisdiction, and possibly the belief that we might exercise some influence in maintaining him in his important office may have had to do with his courtesy and goodwill towards us. It was lucky, however, that such an impression was created. Shortly after our arrival he informed us that the Governor of the Amazon territory had just communicated to him orders to prevent all travellers on the river from ascending or descending the stream—in a word, to keep them as prisoners at Maipures. On reading the Governor’s note to us, he argued, ‘This cannot apply to you, for, being Colombians, you are outside the Governor’s jurisdiction.’ Here, again, as when conferring ecclesiastical dignity upon us, Leal had acted with prudence and foresight.

At Maipures we felt, as we never felt before or after during the journey, the presence of the numerous insects, and noticed that these winged creatures worked with method and discipline. The puyon sounded the charge shortly after sunset, attacking without haste and without rest during the whole night. At dawn it would retire to camp, sated with our gore. The post of honour was taken by the sand-flies, which would remain on duty during the earlier part of the forenoon. In their turn they were replaced by some other arm of the service during the hot hours of the day, and so on till nightfall, when the puyon, refreshed and eager, would again fall upon his prey. There is no greater regularity in the change of guards at a fortress than is observed by these insects in their war upon men and animals.

The mosquito-net was the only real protection. Some relief is obtained by filling the room with smoke from smouldering horse or cattle manure, but the nauseous smell and the ammonia fumes made the remedy worse than the evil. We also feared to share the fate of herrings and other fish subject to the process, and preferred the seclusion of our mosquito-bars.

These, however, were all minor troubles, mentioned here as a matter of record. From our temporary abode we could hear the distant thunder of the rapids, as of batteries of cannon in a great artillery duel. The waters of the Orinoco, suddenly twisted into a narrow bed, wrestle with the boulders of granite scattered in the channel, which they have frayed through the very heart of the huge basaltic mountains.

Life in those regions, from what we gathered, is as wild, as untamed, and irresponsible as the rivers or forests, and as the animals that roam in them. Violence and force are the only law, greed is the sole guiding principle, amongst men. The functionaries in most cases are only authorized robbers and slayers. The Indians, being the most helpless victims, are plundered and murdered, as best suits the fancy of those representatives of organized Governments, whose crimes remain hidden behind the dense veil of interminable forests.

When news of any of these misdeeds does chance to reach the official ear, the facts are so distorted on the one hand, and there is so little desire to investigate on the other, that no redress is ever obtained.

Whilst at Maipures there came in a man from San Carlos, the capital of one of the Amazon territories. He told a gruesome story. The Governor of that province, whom he represented as a prototype of the official robbers just mentioned, had exasperated his companions by his all-absorbing greed. The Governor seized all the tonga beans and india-rubber extracted by the poor Indians, who were forced to work without any pay, unfed, whip-driven. His companions, who expected a share in the plunder, conspired to murder him. He was known to be fearless and an admirable shot. One night, however, his house was surrounded by a score or so of his followers; a regular siege ensued; the young Governor kept his assailants at bay for several hours. He was accompanied by a young Spanish ballet-dancer, who had followed his fortunes undaunted by the dangers of that wild land. She would reload the guns whilst he scanned the ground from the only window of the room. One of the assailants crept upon the roof of the house and shot him from behind. He died in a few hours. The canoes laden with all kinds of produce despatched by him—not down the Orinoco, for he feared they might be seized on the long journey through Venezuelan territory, but through the Casiquiare to the Amazon—were said to be worth £40,000 or £50,000. Even if not accurate in all its details, which I repeat from the statement of the new arrival at Maipures, this instance gives an idea of the conditions that prevail in those localities.

True to his word, GatiÑo turned up at Maipures on the third day, and we continued our journey at once.

The rapids of the Orinoco break the open current of the river for a distance of some forty or fifty miles. The Maipures rapids are from five to six miles in length. The river then continues its quiet flow for about twenty or twenty-five miles down to the rapids of Atures; thence it flows to the ocean without any further obstacle of importance.

GatiÑo had his own canoe of a special type, much larger than ours, very deep, heavy, capacious, and comfortable. It was the real home of his family.

I asked him why he did not settle somewhere on the banks of those rivers. He told me that both on the Orinoco and on the affluents there were numberless spots on high ground, free from all floods, abundant in game, within easy reach of good fishing, healthy and cool, where he would fain settle. ‘But we poor wretches,’ he added, ‘have no rights. When we least expect it, up turns a fine gentleman sent by some Government or other with a few soldiers; they lift our cattle and steal our chickens, destroy what they do not take away, and compel us to accompany them, paddling their canoes or serving them as they may want without any pay. Whenever I hear,’ he went on to say, ‘that white men in authority are coming along the river, I start immediately in my canoe through the caÑos as far inland as I can. The wild Indians and the savages are kind and generous; it is the whites and the whites in authority who are to be dreaded.’

GatiÑo was himself a full-blooded Indian, but, having been brought up on some settlement, he considered himself a civilized man, and in truth it was strange to see how he practised the highest virtues of an honest man. He loved his wife and family tenderly; he worked day and night for their welfare. He longed for a better lot for his children, the eldest of whom ‘studied’ at the city of San Fernando de Atabapo, the only city which he knew of by personal experience. As it consists of eighty or a hundred thatch-roofed houses, one may well imagine what the word ‘city’ implied in his case; yet his thoughts were constantly centred on the learning which that child was storing to the greater honour and happiness of his wandering family. Reading and writing formed the curriculum of that university, possibly because they marked the limit of the teacher’s attainments; but let us be ashamed of mocking the humble annals of so good a man.

I cannot forbear mentioning an incident, a parallel to which it would be difficult to find amongst nominally civilized folk. One of our men who had accompanied us from San Pedro de Arimena, knowing our plight and our dependence on GatiÑo, took him aside, informing him that we had plenty of gold, and that as one of us was ill, and we desired to reach the open river as soon as possible, it would be easy for him to name his price. He suggested that GatiÑo should charge one or two thousand dollars for the job, which we would be bound to pay. GatiÑo not only did not improve that wonderful opportunity, but he forbore from telling us of the advice given to him. He charged us 100 dollars, a moderate price for the work, and it was only when on the other side of the rapids that Leal learned the incident from the other men.

Here was a test which not many men brought up in the midst of civilized life could have withstood.

GatiÑo and his family will ever remain in my mind as a bright, cheerful group. Alas for them, lost in those solitudes amongst wild beasts and wild Indians, and subject to the voracity of the white men, who become more ferocious than the worst tiger when their unbridled greed has no responsibility and no punishment to dread!

We had three canoes (including GatiÑo’s) to take down. We were obliged to empty them completely. The men carried everything on their backs along the shore, whilst the canoes shot the rapids.

When I saw GatiÑo on the first rapids, I believed him to be bent on suicide. At that point the river, cut and divided by the rocks, left a narrow channel of about 300 feet in length close in to the shore. Thus far the canoes had been dragged by the current and held by means of ropes. On reaching the channel, GatiÑo manned the canoe with four men at the prow, and sat at the stern. The canoe, still tied by the rope, which was held by four men, was kept back as much as possible from the current, which increased in speed at every inch. At the end of the channel the whole river poured its foaming volume into a huge, cup-like basin, studded with rocks, where the water seethed as if boiling. From the basin the river flowed on placidly for several miles. This was the end of the first rapids.

Halfway down the channel the men let go the ropes, and the canoe, with its crew, seemed like a huge black feather upon a sea of foam, and the whole length of the channel, white and frothy, appeared like the arched neck of a gigantic horse curved to drink from the waters below. The waters, before entering the basin, formed a small cataract shooting over the protruding ledge. The canoe fell into the basin, and seemed about to be dashed against a rock that stood in its way. On again striking the waters, GatiÑo gave the word of command, and the four men began to paddle steadily and with great force, as if to increase the impetus. GatiÑo remained quiet and motionless in his place, holding his paddle out of the water ready to strike. At a given moment he uplifted it, thrust it deeply into the waves, and moved it dexterously, so that the canoe turned as if on a pivot, and quietly glided along the rock upon which it would have been dashed into a thousand pieces.

GatiÑo explained to me that it was necessary for the men to paddle so as to give the canoe her own share in the impetus, and make it more responsive to his steering.

Though he assured me that there was no danger, and though the journey along the shore was tiresome and slow, I did not venture to accompany him when shooting the other rapids before reaching the open river.

The Orinoco has drilled an open passage-way through a spur of the mountains at Maipures. The struggle between the waters and the rocks must have lasted centuries.

‘Here shalt thou halt,’ said the rock.

‘Further will I go,’ replied the river.

Like the spoils of battle on a stricken field, the shattered rocks stud the current, which sweeps roaring and foaming around and over them. They resemble the ruins in the breach of a battered bastion. The river is the victor, but, as will happen when two great forces counteract each other, the result is a compromise, and the course of the stream is deviated. The difference of level from the beginning to the end of the rapids is in itself not sufficient to cause the violence with which the waters run. It arises from the sudden compression of the powerful volume of waters into a narrow space. The waters rush through the openings made in the rock with a deafening sound, torn by the remnants of pillars in the bed through which they pass. They fill the air with the tumult of their advance; one would say an army was entering a conquered city, quivering with the rapture of triumph, lifting up the thunder of battle, Titanic bugle-calls, and the pÆans of victory. After each one of these narrow breaches in the wall of granite the river plunges into deep basins, where the foaming waters soon sink into their former quiet flow. The soldiers have crossed the first entrenchments, and collect their forces before the next assault. Soon the margins on either side begin to hem in, the waters stir more rapidly, and soon again the mad rush, the desperate plunge, the wild, roaring, irresistible onslaught, and again through the very heart of the mountain into the next basin. Finally, after storming the last redoubt, the river, like a lion freed from the toils which imprisoned him, leaps upon the bosom of the plain, bounding forward in solemn flow towards the ocean. The clear tropical sun reflects itself on its ever-moving bosom, even as the clouds and the forests, the mountains and the birds on wing. The wandering mirror keeps on its course, being, as Longfellow has it, like unto the life of a good man ‘darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven.’

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