LA PORTUGUESA.

Again we were under way, and again our eyes encountered only the flat monotonous plain on all sides sweeping to the horizon, varied only in being more barren, rougher, and consequently more exhausting to our horses than any of the preceding. Many of the riders dismounted, that the poor brutes might be relieved as much as possible, and accomplished the remainder of the journey on foot. This occasioned a burning thirst, which the scant supply of water in our gourds was not sufficient to allay; and it was not until noon had long passed, that our guides, pointing to a blue ridge of forest in the distance, informed us it marked the course of the river Portuguesa, our intended halting place, and on the borders of which we purposed spending several days. The cavalcade, inspirited by this view, pressed forward as rapidly as their exhausted condition would permit, and fortunately reached the pass before nightfall.

This beautiful river has its rise in the mountains{100} of Trujillo, and connects the fertile province of Barinas with the sea, through the Apure and Orinoco, being in fact one of the principal tributaries of the former. Its commercial advantages, as may be imagined, are of great importance to the interior of a country so distant from the ocean, and whose principal products consist in the bulky yield of the plantations. It is navigable during a great portion of the year, especially for steam vessels, and I am happy to learn that the great civilizer of the world—steam—has at length been introduced there through the enterprising energy of some Yankee speculators.

The banks of the river, being both high and precipitous, a passage to it can only be accomplished at certain points, where the hand of man and the tramp of animals have cut deep trenches, forming paths to the water’s edge. On this occasion, we sought the pass of San Jaime, where a ferryman is stationed with a canoe to take across any who desire it. Horses, however, being excellent swimmers, are left to ferry themselves over. Our first care on arriving of at the pass was to unload our beasts of burden, and unsaddle our steeds for the purpose of allowing them to cool before entering the water, a precaution which, if neglected, not unfrequently proves fatal to both man and beast. This duty fulfilled, we proceeded to hail the Canoero, whose ranch was perched upon the south bank of the river. The knowledge that he would receive a “real” for every man and beast that crossed, besides various perquisites from passengers whom he supplied with meals during their sojourn at his ranch, so expedited his motions, that in a few moments his frail{101} barge received its first load, each person taking his own chattels with him. A boy of fifteen, naked and sunburnt, paddled the canoe, while the ferryman steered it by means of his canalete. The utmost care was necessary to prevent the overturn of the crazy skiff, which reeled at every stroke of the paddle, threatening to pitch all its contents overboard. As soon as we landed on the opposite shore, the boat returned for a second load, and the trips were repeated until the whole party had crossed. There now only remained the horses, who being extremely shy of deep water, required to be forced to swim across, an operation demanding considerable skill on the part of the drivers. The only way was to give them an example; accordingly two expert swimmers, divesting themselves of clothes, jumped upon the bare back of their horses and plunged incontinently into the stream. Then, sliding off to one side, they allowed the horses to swim without encumbrance, supporting themselves with one hand upon the animal’s haunches, while with the other they guided them by means of a halter. Meanwhile, those that remained on shore set up a tremendous shouting and yelling, at the same time shaking their ponchos violently with the intent to frighten all the rest of the troop down the steep embankment, where, encouraged at the sight of the two ahead, they all entered the stream and followed their leaders without further difficulty. Several large crocodiles, who had watched all these proceedings from the middle of the river, alarmed by the confusion, disappeared from view, and then the heads only of the leaders and their steeds rose, puffing and snorting,{102} above water. In spite, however, of all the uproar, one of these men was instantly attacked by caribes, and very narrowly escaped serious injury from them. I was standing at the time on the opposite side of the river, watching this novel mode of ferrying, and observed that the man, abandoning his horse, endeavored to reach the bank by long strides, occasionally lashing himself with a coiled lazo he carried in his hand. It immediately occurred to me that he might have been attacked by crocodiles, a belief which was strengthened on seeing the poor fellow’s sides streaming blood as he stepped upon the beach. My first apprehension was quickly dispelled by his pointing to a circular wound on his shoulder, about the size of a quarter dollar, and to others as severe on various parts of his body, inflicted by caribes. Had the man been a less expert swimmer, or the water less agitated, the accident would undoubtedly have proved more serious; as it was, we were considerably alarmed for the fate of the other man, who, however, happily escaped unhurt.

The surprising boldness of these diminutive fish, naturally increased my anxiety to examine more minutely into their peculiarities, than I had yet the opportunity of doing. I therefore determined to procure fresh specimens, if possible. On a former occasion I had lost most of my trout hooks, but I still preserved some larger ones, mounted with copper wire, to be used in the rivers of the Apure; these I supposed proof against the teeth of any fish, and no sooner were we established in the ranch of the ferryman, than, taking my lines I hastened to the river accompanied{103} by my English co-laborer, the artist. The hooks were baited with pieces of fresh beef, and dropped with great precaution near the shore. Scarcely did the bait touch the water, when it was seized by caribes. Without allowing them time, as it seemed, to get the whole of it between their jaws, we pulled in the lines, but, alas! minus hooks, as well as bait. On examination, we discovered that one of the hooks had been cut through, while the other was severed from the wire. Still, we persevered, but invariably with the same unfortunate result.

Greatly annoyed, I turned to question a Llanero, who stood near laughing at what he considered my simplicity. Another tapped me gently on the shoulder, and addressed me with “Ni?o, you might as well attempt to catch a rattlesnake by the tail” (a favorite expression among them) “as to think of hooking one of those chaps.” What is to be done, then? for I must have at least a couple of these scoundrels, said I. “Who ever saw a genteel young gentleman like yourself, with a taste for such disgusting creatures?” he replied, imagining that I wanted them for eating. On my explanation that my object was simply to sketch and preserve them in spirits, they advised me to procure a piece of tough skin from the head of an ox which was then being slaughtered, and to suspend it from a strip of the same material. I immediately followed their instructions, and shortly repaired again to the river. Seating myself on the stern of the canoe, which was moored across the stream, I dropped my novel bait into the water, and watched for the result with the utmost interest. In{104} a moment a shoal of caribes collected around the bait and commenced attacking it voraciously. Finding the thick cartilage too tough even for their sharp teeth, and unwilling to give it up, they continued gnawing at it like so many little hyenas. When I imagined them to be fairly “stuck” through the thick skin, I lifted the whole concern over the side of the canoe, and had the satisfaction of seeing about a dozen of the fish dancing at the bottom of my barge. Finding this novel style of fishing rather easy and entertaining, I continued it until I was suddenly apprised into whose company I had thrust myself by feeling the heel of my left foot seized by one of the captives with such violence as caused me to drop my bait, with the vicious creatures that were hanging from it, into the river. My only thought now was how to contrive my escape, having the whole length of the canoe to traverse, and its floor paved with these ravenous little wretches. My first impulse was to spring overboard; but a moment’s reflection convinced me that it would be a jump from the “frying pan into the fire.” Placed thus, as it were, between Scylla and Charybdis, I again appealed to the ingenuity of my former advisers for deliverance. This they readily accomplished by a very simple contrivance, consisting of a gunny bag, which they spread over the gaping draught of fish. In a moment their sharp teeth were again at work, this time among the tough fibres of the bag, to which they clung with the tenacity of bull-dogs, thus enabling us to fish them out again without difficulty.

My biting experience of these little pests left me{105} in no mood to spare them, and I never missed an opportunity of provoking a bloody conflict among them. With this view I made it my daily business to scatter pieces of flesh in the river, which never failed in attracting great numbers to the spot. These devoured the meat in a few moments, after which, being themselves of a red hue, and mistaking each other for the meat, they continued the feast by devouring one another, until few of them remained alive. Thus I accomplished my revenge upon these cannibals of the finny tribe. The pike and the caribe are, I believe, the only fish which devour those of their own species when disabled. “As no one dares to bathe where it is found,” remarks Humboldt in his travels, “it may be considered as one of the greatest scourges of those climates, in which the sting of the mosquitoes and the general irritation of the skin, render the use of baths so necessary.”

Fortunately for mankind, these fish are subject to a yearly mortality during the heats of summer, when the water is deprived of a portion of the air it holds in solution. Their carcasses may then be seen floating on the water by thousands, while the beach is strewn with their bones, especially their bristling jaws, which render walking barefoot on the borders of lagoons extremely dangerous.

To judge from the incessant turmoil in the river at all hours of the night, besides evident proofs of their depredations during the day, I concluded that the havoc they commit on the other denizens of the water must be very great. Even the armor-clad crocodiles are not exempt from their attacks, when{106} wounded in their own quarrels, as they sometimes are, during the season of their loves, for even crocodiles are subject to jealousy, that other “green-eyed monster.”[25]

The Waraun Indians, whom the first tribe of cannibals, the Caribs, compelled years ago to seek a refuge among the flooded lands of the great Delta of the Orinoco river, and who in consequence live in huts raised on posts above the water, without even the allotted space of dry ground to deposit their mortal remains, have adopted the curious custom of preserving the bones of their deceased relations suspended from the roof of their aerial dwellings; but having no skilful anatomists among themselves to strip the body of the more perishable flesh, they avail themselves of the voracious habits of this fish for so essential a performance. For this purpose they tie the corpse with a strong rope, and plunge it in the water, securing the other end of the rope to one of the pillars upon which their dwellings rest: in less than twenty-four hours the skeleton is hauled out of the water perfectly clean, for the teeth of the caribe have stripped it of flesh, arteries, tendons, etc. Now all that the mourners have to do is to separate the bones, which they arrange with much care and nicety in baskets made for the purpose, gaudily ornamented with beads of various colors; and so well have they calculated beforehand the space the bones will occupy in the funereal urn, that the skull, tightly adjusted against the sides of the basket at top, comes to be the lid of it.{107}

During the annual inundation of the savannas, when quadrupeds perish by thousands in the vernal deluge, the caribes have ample field for their voracity; but living animals are not exempted, for they prey with equal fierceness upon the young calves when wading through the marshes, and upon the mothers, whose udders they so mutilate, that the young ones frequently perish from lack of nourishment. The poor cattle lead about this season a truly miserable life. Those that escape the teeth of the caribe, the coil of the anaconda, that great water serpent, or the jaws of the equally dreaded crocodile, are in continual danger of falling a prey to the lion or the jaguar, while congregated upon the bancos and other places left dry amidst the............