CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOMEWARD BOUND.

Having now accomplished the most difficult part of our labors, namely, that of transporting three thousand wild animals across a rising stream by such primitive means, we took advantage of the few canoes at our disposal to transfer ourselves and chattels to the other side of the river. This was not so easily done, as the creciente was rapidly gaining upon us, with no small risk to our ponderous equipment, which had to be landed on the sandy beach; and unless quickly removed, while waiting for another canoe-load, our traps were in constant danger of being carried off by the boisterous waves of the river. I had thus the misfortune of being deprived of my hammock, which circumstance compelled me to seek repose at night on the stiff hide covers of the baggage—not a very comfortable couch after a hard ride in the hot sun.

Our long train of baggage-mules and wild beasts necessitated many stoppages by the way in order to incorporate stragglers, but more frequently to hunt anew the runaways among the latter—not an easy task.

Image unavailable: HOMEWARD BOUND.
HOMEWARD BOUND.

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The bulls especially showed a marked reluctance to leave behind their bellowing harems in the everglades across the river. Such was their love of home in this respect, that we were assured that most of those which succeeded in evading our pursuit, made their way back to their savannas in spite of the broad expanse of water which separated them. Much valuable time and patience were lost in this way, while the increasing inundation was following fast on our steps, so much so, that long after we had left the banks of the river on our rear, we had to wade through a continuous sheet of water, which was every moment rising above the fetlocks of our beasts. We also had to ford several smaller streams, already swollen by the rapid rise of the Apure; but, as no canoes could be had amidst those wilds, for love or money, we availed ourselves of the primitive contrivance devised on such occasions by means of a raw hide fashioned into a lighter. The trunks and boxes were carefully piled inside the skin, and if a person chose to avail himself of this frail barge, he had only to sit steadily on the top of the baggage; the load was then carefully launched on the water, the other end of the rope intrusted to the swimmer and towed in safety to the other side. In this manner our ponderous Doctor and a few others who were unwilling to expose their own skin to the tender mercies of the caribes, were successfully ferried across, although it required a steady nerve not to stir an inch and thus upset the whole concern.

Our march across the prairies presented a splendid sight and was suggestive of a long file of prisoners{450} after a well-contested field of battle. At the head of the column, which extended for upward of a mile, marched a strong picket of horsemen, the Punteros, guiding the caravan; and on the sides and rear was another file of men with lazos ready to unfold after deserters. Lively tunes and whistling were kept up by the men for the diversion of the cattle, which appeared quite delighted with the music and in consequence became less restive on the march.

When near San Jaime, I, together with a party of young companions, having separated ourselves from the rest and taken another route, lost ourselves in the intricate passes leading to the village. This circumstance, although it delayed us for some time from reaching the camp, led us to an abundant field of rich honey, the production of a small wasp called matajey, which builds its nest on the branches of the trees, in the shape of a large ball. The sting of this insect is so distressing, that persons affected by it become feverish and benumbed; therefore, in order to possess ourselves of its delicious honey-combs, we took the precaution to smoke out the wasps by means of a burning rag at the end of a long pole applied to the mouth of the nest, when the whole swarm abandoned it to the hunters without molestation.

It was almost dark when we arrived at San Jaime, having hit accidentally upon the right path, after wandering the whole day through the woods; but, being well supplied with honey and water, we did not regret as much the loss of our dinner, as the fact of its having been prepared by another kind of swarm, but this time of pretty girls, who had assembled for{451} the purpose at the cottage of our hospitable host. We enjoyed, however, the pleasure of their unsophisticated society for some time before retiring to our hammocks where, fatigued by the toils of our previous adventure, we speedily lost ourselves again in “sweet, balmy sleep.”

Being rather in a hurry to reach the pass before a sudden rise of the creeks connected with the river Portuguesa, we were up long before sunrise, and had barely time to partake of a substantial breakfast, prepared by our charming entertainers.

Immediately upon our arrival at the pass, we proceeded to force our cattle across the river, which being less wide than the Apure, and our herds having become more manageable after the long march, we were enabled to execute it in better order and less time than at the former river. Still we contrived somehow or other to tarry here longer than was necessary, having wasted three days in accomplishing what might have been the work of one. The fact is, that we were rather taken up with our former feminine acquaintances, especially at the close of day, when the party assembled in the barracoon, destined for the fandango, which was usually kept up the whole night.

Fitful accompaniment to these nocturnal revelries was the deafening croaking of the toads and frogs, now abounding by myriads in the marshes and quagmires of the vicinity. The shrill, metallic notes of the frogs, and the hoarse croaking of their milky brethren, are a feature which never fails to excite the astonishment of strangers in those regions. The former especially are so striking, that were an Englishman{452} or American suddenly transported there, without knowledge of these sounds, he would imagine himself at home, in the neighborhood of ten thousand steam whistles. I was assured by our friend B., with reference to the toads of Guadarrama, a village on the banks of the Portuguese, that one night he was thrown down in the street by coming in contact with one of these creatures, which he mistook for a boy in a stooping posture. Indignant at, what he supposed, the indiscretion of the fellow, B. was in the act of kicking him away when, to his surprise, he perceived the seeming boy slowly moving off in the shape of a big toad!

This, of course, is another of B.’s great yarns, which he endeavored to pass on us as veritable facts occurring to him during his wandering peregrinations; but really, putting aside his extravagant stories, such is the volume of voice and long-sustained sopranos, bassos, and contraltos of the toads and frogs of South America, that one would suppose they had lungs as big as those of a manatí. And as regards the size that these creatures attain here, I may quote a passage from a recent book of travels in those countries which, had it not appeared in London simultaneously with the first edition of the Wild Scenes in South America,[65] any one might be inclined to think—after reading the preceding remarks—that they had been suggested by the perusal of the following paragraphs:{453}

“In soft, dripping weather, the country roads become almost impassable, and my favorite resource was to sit still and read Tennyson or Longfellow; but the studies of a novice in Brazil, on a wet evening, are strangely interrupted by the extraordinary proceedings of frogs and toads of all sorts and sizes, which testify their exuberant joy by the most discordant noises. Croaking is no name for it. Some of the milder and quieter kinds may perhaps be said to croak, but these are soon silenced by another tribe, whose name is Legion, grunting, snorting, and shrieking like a railway train at full speed; and when they stop for want of breath, the ‘wondrous song’ is taken up by larger numbers of other detestable batrachyans, which keep up a frantic revel of rattling and clattering, such as I have never heard equalled, except by an intoxicated chorus of May sweeps.

“Some of the toads are enormous. In one of my mountain rambles I suddenly spied a very beautiful lycopodium growing in large quantities on a moist bank, and, without looking at my feet, sprang across the path to gather a specimen. I stumbled over something very hard and immovable, and nearly measured my length in the mud; but I seized the lycopodium, and then turned round to look at the obstacle. It was a monstrous toad, nearly a foot long, with great yellow pits around its spiteful eyes, and as ugly a brute as ever I saw. He did not make the least attempt to move, and seemed to be chuckling over the fact of nearly upsetting a traveller. A friend of mine, however, told me that he had been offered a still larger{454} specimen as a present, which he declined to accept on the ground of ferocity. He said it was as big as a hat, it opened its mouth like an oyster, barked like a dog, and flew at his legs! A nice pet to keep in a strawberry-bed!”[66]

But I never was so struck with the power which frogs alone can exert “in congress assembled,” as one night that I accompanied—soon after our return from the Llanos—a military expedition to surprise a band of revolutionists, who had been committing all sorts of depredations on the plantations across the lake, and were preparing to attack the town of Villa de Cura on the road to the plains. We started from Maracay in the early part of a rainy night, and had to take a circuitous route—it hardly deserved the name of road—around the eastern end of the lake to reach the village of Magdaleno (headquarters of the marauders) before daylight. As the expedition had to be conducted with much precaution, neither drums nor bugles were allowed; consequently all orders had to be given viva-voce. But when we reached the nearest point to the swampy borders of the lake, I do not believe that even Stentor could have made himself heard in the midst of that hellish uproar. To add to our “confusion worse confounded,” the soil was so spongy and drenched with the vernal deluge, that infantry and cavalry—we had no artillery—were nearly swallowed up by the mud before firing a shot at the{455} enemy; fortunately we extricated ourselves before the latter were apprized of our approach by a volley fired at our vanguard by one of their advanced posts near the village, which, had they exhibited the least judgment in military tactics, they might have stationed a little further off, where we encountered a turbulent stream which only a portion of our force with the utmost difficulty could cross. As it turned out, we entered the village pell-mell with their advanced guard, and soon scattered them over the neighboring mountains, where further pursuit was utterly impossible.

What a glorious chance these swampy realms of Venezuela would offer some French gourmand desirous of migrating to South America! And yet, strange to say, our people will not touch that epicurean bonne-bouche, which has conferred a name upon a whole civilized nation: les sauvages!

Another noisy creature that makes its appearance about this time also, is the chicharra, an insect of the locust tribe, with which the woods are literally filled, and whose sharp, shrill, and continuous chant almost surpasses that of the frogs themselves. Fortunately, they are only heard in the day-time; and our route being mostly over open prairies, we were not so constantly tormented by them, except whenever we had to pass through the woods infested by these noisy insects. It seemed to me that for every leaf of those truly gigantic trees there were twenty chicharras, all singing at the top of their voices, without the least intermission. What they live upon—for I did not{456} perceive any damage to the foliage of the trees—and when do they get their meals, my observations could not discover. Sullivan tells us of two other insects of the tropics, which joined to the above, might rival the nocturnal concerts of ma?tre crapeau.

“During our ride, I was startled by hearing what I fully imagined was the whistle of a steam-engine; but I was informed it was a noise caused by a beetle that is peculiar to Tobago. It is near the size of a man’s hand; and fixing itself against a branch commences a kind of drumming noise, which by degrees quickens to a whistle. It was so loud that, when standing fully twenty yards from the tree where it was in operation, the sound was so shrill that you had to raise your voice considerably to address your neighbor. The entomological productions of the tropics struck me as being quite as astonishing in size and nature as the botanical or zoological wonders. There is another beetle, called the razor-grinder, that imitates the sound of a knife-grinding machine so exactly, that it is impossible to divest oneself of the belief that one is in reality listening to ‘some needy knife-grinder’ who has wandered out to the tropical wilds on spec.”[67]

Some kinds of trees were also alive with another, though quite harmless tenant, the iguana, a green lizard measuring nearly four feet in length, and thick in proportion round the body, whose flesh is said to surpass that of the tenderest chicken, and, I imagine—never having tasted it—even that of the celebrated{457} French bonne-bouche referred to above. The eggs which it lays in great profusion, I know from personal experience, are quite sweet, and can be taken out of the animal, without injury to the harmless creature, by cutting it open and sewing it up again. While at San Jaime I heard a story in connection with this reptile, which is very characteristic of the Spanish commanders during the war of Independence, and whose memory is still fresh throughout the country they overran with their exactions. It appears that one of these gentlemen newly arrived from Spain, had established his headquarters at San Jaime, which was by this time pretty well cleaned out of everything that moved upon the earth. One day, the soi-disant commander was going his rounds about the town, when he met an Indian boy carrying a brace of iguanas suspended from a stick upon his shoulders; these lizards, by virtue of their aerial prerogative, or perhaps on account of their inexhaustible numbers, having escaped the general onslaught upon other living creatures, not excepting the inhabitants. The Spaniard, who had never seen iguanas in his country, naturally had his curiosity aroused, and at once instituted as close an interrogatory respecting these, as if a doomed “insurgent” had been brought to him. “Say, boy, are they good to eat?”—“Si, Se?or,” replied the boy, who probably had never tasted in his life any other kind of food.—“What will you take for them?” (quite considerate).—“Una peseta, Se?or” (a quarter of a dollar). A bargain was at once made to the satisfaction of both parties, and the iguanas were handed over to{458} the orderly beside the commander, who gave the proper directions to have them served for dinner; and so delighted was His Excellency with the dish, that he published at once a bando offering a reward of twenty-five cents for every brace of iguanas brought to him. Three days afterwards he had to countermand the order through another bando, threatening with capital punishment any one who would dare to bring him another brace of the horrid-looking creatures, with which the juvenile portion of the town had by this time filled his headquarters.

The favorite haunts of the iguana are the Ceiba, and the Sand-box trees—Ura crepitans—both bristling with sharp thorns, a good protection against the persecution of predatory boys; otherwise these lizards fall an easy prey, when perched upon more accessible localities, by merely “whistling for them;” for being, as it appears, very fond of musical sounds, they are readily lulled to sleep by that means, while the captors prepare a noose at the end of a long rod with which they secure their victim. They do not always fare badly, however, for being easily domesticated, they are kept as pets by the female portion of the household, where they become very useful in ridding the cottage of cockroaches and other vermin. Their bitterest enemies, however, are roving, lazy Indians, who not only consider them a dainty morsel, but take particular delight in tormenting these inoffensive creatures by quartering them alive, and teazing them in various ways; thus, when any person is in a bad plight his troubles are compared to those of the iguana{459} in that predicament, as will be seen in the following popular ditty:
Los trabajos de la iguana
Cuando los Indios la cojen,
Le quitan los cuatro patas
Y le dicen, iguana, corre!
——
When Indians seize the iguana
Her sorrows are begun,
They cut off her four feet,
And cry, “Iguana, run!”

How different the case would have been if, instead of the puny, harmless creatures that iguanas are at the present day, their cruel tormentors had lived in the times of their prototype, the Iguanodon, the most colossal of the saurian reptiles, sixty feet in length, with a horn on its snout as formidable as that of the rhinoceros, and teeth sharp enough to munch to a jelly the most stately Ceiba or Sand-box tree. “It is difficult to resist the feeling of astonishment, not to say incredulity”—observes Figuier—“which creeps over one while contemplating the disproportion so striking between this being of the ancient world and its congener of the new.”[68] The Iguanodon was in fact an iguana of huge dimensions, enjoying the freedom of the jungle with the Hyl?osaurus and the Megalosaurus—two other saurian monsters of the cretaceous period. The latter is represented as possessing teeth in perfect accord with the destructive functions developed in this formidable creature, for they partake at once of the knife, the sabre, and the saw.