For someone with Humboldt’s scientific training and relentless curiosity, the rain forest must have held an irresistible attraction. At last he would see for himself the exotic plants and animals that he had dreamed about since boyhood. Surely amid this living profusion he and Bonpland would discover many species never before recorded by naturalists—an incalculable scientific booty just waiting to be harvested. And where better but in the most prolific environment on earth to explore the myriad interconnected strands forming the great web of life itself? Where better to study the effects of soil and precipitation on plants, the interdependence of the plant and animal kingdoms, the myriad ways in which the physical environment shapes human culture? If the rain forest had nothing to teach about the unity of nature, then he would have to admit that the concept was pure fantasy.
In addition to his biological researches, Humboldt was determined to test La Condamine’s hearsay report that the Orinoco connects with the Amazon through the Casiquiare River and the Río Negro, forming an extensive natural highway into the interior of the continent. Toward this end, though still a neophyte in the tropics, he mapped out an arduous itinerary through some extraordinarily demanding terrain. His party would sail down the Río Apure to its mouth in the Orinoco, then upstream on that great river, past the notorious cataracts at Ature and Maipures, and up its tributaries the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Tuamini in turn. From there they would make the five-day portage to the Caño Pimichin, which emptied into the Río Negro, part of the vast watershed drained by the Amazon. They wouldn’t follow the Negro as far as the Amazon itself, but only to its junction with the Casiquiare, which (assuming La Condamine were correct) they would trace back to the Orinoco. Then they would descend the Orinoco to Angostura (present-day Ciudad de Bolívar), the capital of Spanish Guiana, located in the river’s massive delta. Thus Humboldt hoped to prove once and for all the existence of the so-called Casiquiare Canal, the only natural connection on the planet between two great river systems.
On March 30, at four P.M., the explorers pushed their boat into the Apure and let the current carry it downstream. The craft was one of the long canoes known as lanchas. A cabin thatched with palm fronds had been constructed in the stern, fitted with a table and chairs made of stretched oxhides, and the canoe had been stocked with provisions for a month, including eggs, plantains, cassava, cacao, sherry, oranges, and tamarinds (the pulp of which was mixed with water and sugar to make a refreshing drink). Preferring to put their trust in the bounty of the river, the Indian guides had also brought fishhooks and nets. Some guns for hunting small game were shipped as well, along with extra fishing tackle, firearms, and casks of brandy for trading en route. In addition to their Indian pilot and crew of four, Humboldt and Bonpland were joined by a large stray mastiff they had adopted. Completing the party was a Spaniard named Nicolás Soto, brother-in-law of the provincial governor, who had recently arrived from Cádiz and was eager to see the interior of the country.
Soto was notable as the first in a series of young European men to attach themselves to the party for weeks or months at a time. Though Humboldt was circumspect about these companions, from his few comments in the Personal Narrative we can infer that he enjoyed their company. One, in fact, would remain his fast companion for years to come, long after his return to Europe. It seems likely that Humboldt—loquacious, sociable, and the financial sponsor of the expedition—would have been the one to extend these invitations. Did Bonpland, the junior partner, find these supernumeraries a welcome diversion from Humboldt’s exclusive company? (For that matter, can any two men, however compatible, be content to spend virtually every day and night together for five long years?) Or did Bonpland see them as interlopers who fulfilled no purpose except to occupy precious space and to consume limited provisions? Humboldt said nothing to suggest the latter, but this is not the type of personal information he would have divulged in any case. And since Bonpland didn’t write his own record of the journey, we will never know his point of view.
Their first night on the river, the travelers slept at a sugar plantation called Diamante (Diamond). The next morning a contrary wind kept them ashore until noon, but when they pushed off, they quickly passed into a wild, exhilarating territory. In some places, the forest came right down to the water’s edge, while in others the river’s periodic flooding had created a sandy beach. Low bushes called sausos formed a natural hedge along the bank, broken only by the paths made by forest animals coming down to the water to drink.
Humboldt’s sense of wonder and excitement are palpable. “You find yourself in a new world,” he wrote, “in the midst of untamed and savage nature. Now the jaguar . . . appears upon the shore; and now the hocco [peacock pheasant], with its black plumage and tufted head, moves slowly along the sausos. . . .We saw flocks of birds, crowded so closely together as to appear against the sky like a dark cloud which every instant changes its form.” Not that Humboldt imagined a real-life Peaceable Kingdom in the passing tableau. While the pilot, an old Indian of the missions, commented that the river was “just as it was in Paradise,” the naturalist showed that from the outset he was aware of the dangers to be found in the forest. “In carefully observing the manners of animals among themselves, we see that they mutually avoid and fear each other,” Humboldt responded. “The golden age has ceased; and in this Paradise of the American forests, as well as everywhere else, sad and long experience has taught all beings that benignity is seldom found in alliance with strength.” Nature is “red in tooth and claw,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson, would later write. And later still Charles Darwin would posit such competition as an integral component of “natural selection,” the amoral, unforgiving means by which species improve and perpetuate themselves.
Everywhere, it seemed, crocodiles basked onshore, sometimes in groups of eight or ten, and so numerous that half a dozen individuals were nearly always in view. When excited by prey onshore, the huge reptiles—sometimes over twenty feet long—would raise themselves up on all fours and dart after it with astonishing swiftness. Though their diet generally consisted of chiguires (the local name for capybaras, the world’s largest rodents), they would attack other animals when given the opportunity. Once Humboldt’s mastiff went for a swim, and as the men watched helplessly from shore, a crocodile slithered straight at it. But just as the creature came within striking distance, the canny dog made a tight turn and began to paddle upriver. Though a much faster swimmer, the crocodile was far less maneuverable, and while it was momentarily swept downstream by the current, the mastiff was able to gain dry land.
On occasion, the crocodiles also went after larger prey, each year taking two or three people living along the river. But the inhabitants, Humboldt says, had “marked the manners of the crocodile, as the torero has studied the manners of the bull. When they are assailed, they put in practice . . . the counsels they have heard from their infancy.” The Indians told the story of a young girl who successfully fought off one of the creatures and, despite having lost the lower part of her left arm and a great deal of blood, managed to swim to shore. “I knew,” she explained coolly, “that the cayman lets go his hold, if you push your fingers into his eyes.”
Jaguars were also very common along the riverbank, where they came to drink and to prey on other creatures, including chiguires, birds, snakes, deer, fish, turtles, and even crocodiles. Taking its common name from the Indian word for it, yaguar, magnificent Felis onca is the largest cat in the New World and the third largest on earth (after the lion and the tiger), reaching a length of up to six feet and a weight of up to four hundred pounds. Near a bend in the Río Apure, Humboldt spied one of the big cats, lying in the shade of a huge zamang tree (a type of mimosa), its paw resting on a fresh-killed chiguire to guard it from querulous vultures gathering nearby. Humboldt and Bonpland climbed into the lancha’s small skiff to get their first close look at the magnificent predator, on the assurance of the crew that jaguars rarely attack boats—at least not unless they’re exceedingly hungry.
As the humans approached, the jaguar rose reluctantly and crouched behind the sauso bushes. But when the vultures ventured too close to the chiguire, the great cat “leaped into the midst of them, and in a fit of rage . . . carried off his prey to the forest.” At night the explorers had to be constantly on guard against jaguars, lighting fires on the perimeter of camp to keep them at bay. Despite these precautions, they would often hear the creatures circling in the darkness.
In the middle of the day, as the temperature rose, the rain forest would assume an unnatural quiet. As famed British naturalist Henry Walter Bates wrote, “When the paddlers rested for a time, the stillness and gloom of the place became almost painful; our voices waked dull echoes as we conversed, and the noise made by fishes occasionally whipping the surface of the water was quite startling. . . . The few sounds of the birds are of the pensive or mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness.”
Humboldt noted this paradoxical quiet too. But always sensitive to the entire scene before him, he also detected the nearly subliminal buzz of tropical life: “How vivid is the impression produced by the calm of nature, at noon, in these burning climates! The beasts of the forests retire to the thickets; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of the trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amidst this apparent silence, when we lend an attentive ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted through the air, we hear a dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, filling . . . all the lower strata of the air. Nothing is better fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life,” he found. “Myriad insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants parched by the heat of the sun. A confused noise issues from every bush, from the decayed trunks of trees, from the clefts of the rocks, and from the ground undermined by lizards, millipedes, and cecilias [wormlike amphibians]. There are so many voices proclaiming to us that all nature breathes; and that, under a thousand different forms, life is diffused throughout the cracked and dusty soil, as well as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air that circulates around us.”
A little downriver from the jaguar guarding its prey, the lancha passed a herd of chiguires.The animals watched unconcernedly as the canoe landed, their upper lips quivering like rabbits’, until the mastiff finally scattered them. Though Humboldt found the creatures’ smell disagreeable, the Indians made hams from them, which the missionaries ate during Lent, conveniently classifying the chiguire as an amphibian and not proper meat at all. Humboldt never acquired a taste for the animal, finding that the odor justified the traditional name for it, “water hog.” Still, food was scarce on the river, and lacking anything more appetizing, that evening the travelers planned to roast a chiguire they had killed.
However, when they beached the lancha at a ramshackle riverside farm for the night, the proprietor had another idea. “Don” Ignacio, as he styled himself, using the traditional title of respect, claimed to be of pure Spanish blood despite his dark complexion. Insisting that chiguires were not fit food for “nosotros caballeros blancos” (“white gentlemen like ourselves”), he feasted the travelers on venison that he had killed with his bow and arrow the day before. Despite his airs, the man and his wife, “Doña” Isabella and his daughter, “Doña” Manuela, lived virtually naked and out of doors, with no roof whatsoever. Slinging their hammocks under the trees, Humboldt and the other travelers “soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life.”
After midnight, a furious thunderstorm broke, soaking them all without regard to skin color. The fierce wind carried Doña Isabella’s cat into the hammock of one of the Indians, who awoke screaming that he was being attacked by a jungle animal—much to the others’ amusement. Their host, meanwhile, congratulated the travelers on their luck in being able to weather the storm “in his domain among whites and persons of respectability.” But the irony was not lost on Humboldt: “Wet as we were, we could not easily persuade ourselves of the advantages of our situation. . . . We were struck with the singularity of finding in that vast solitude a man believing himself to be of European race and knowing no other shelter than the shade of a tree, and yet having all the vain pretensions, hereditary prejudices, and error of long-standing civilization!”
By sunrise the next day, April 1, the rain was gone. The explorers bid farewell to Don Ignacio and Doña Isabella and steered the lancha through the perilous maze of floating trees uprooted in the storm. Later, after passing a low island called Isla de Ayes (Bird Island), so densely packed with flamingos, rose-colored spoonbills, herons, and moorhens that the birds seemed unable to move, the canoe pulled into a wide beach for the evening. “The night was calm and serene,” Humboldt wrote, “and there was a beautiful moonlight.” The tracks of three jaguars were visible in the sand, and the crocodiles positioned themselves along the shore so as to be able to see the campfire. With no trees nearby, the men stuck their oars in the beach and tied hammocks to them. “Everything passed tranquilly till eleven at night,” Humboldt related, “and then a noise so terrific arose in the neighboring forest, that it was almost impossible to close our eyes. Amid the cries of so many wild beasts howling at once, the Indians discriminated such only as were at intervals heard separately. These were the little soft cries of the sapajous [spider monkeys], the moans of the alouate apes [howler monkeys], the howlings of the jaguar and cougar, the peccary, and the sloth, and the cries of the curassow, the parraka, and other . . . birds.” When a jaguar approached the camp, the mastiff, “which till then had never ceased barking, began to howl and seek for shelter beneath our hammocks. . . . We heard the same noises repeated, during the course of whole months, whenever the forest approached the bed of the river.” When the Indians were quizzed as to the cause of the tremendous racket issuing from the forest, they explained that the animals were “keeping the feast of the full moon.”
The next day, the party was on the river before dawn. The air was cool, and freshwater dolphins frolicked alongside the lancha. Water birds perched on shore and on the snags, watching for unsuspecting fish. The canoe hung up several times on submerged trees, any of which had the potential to stave in the craft’s delicate hull; but each time the Indians managed to extricate the boat without apparent damage. That night, after a supper of roasted iguana (which Humboldt found, along with armadillo, one of the more palatable foods of the region) the men slept, as usual, in the open air. There were some Indian huts nearby, and the guides assured the Europeans that there would be no trouble with jaguars that night, since the cats avoided areas inhabited by humans—or as the Indians put it, “Men always put the jaguar out of humor.”
Since their departure from San Fernando, the travelers hadn’t encountered a single other boat on the river. In fact, human presence seemed beside the point in these vast solitudes. “In that interior part of the New Continent one may almost accustom oneself to regard men as not being essential to the order of nature,” Humboldt considered. These desolate surroundings couldn’t help but accentuate the travelers’ sense of isolation from the wider world. Recognizing the uncertainty of his correspondence reaching Europe, Humboldt made a practice of repeating the same information in several different letters, in the hope that at least one would survive.
In fact, by the summer of 1801, Wilhelm, then in Paris, would still have received no word of his brother. Over the first three years of his journey, Alexander would receive only six letters from his family. He must have yearned to know how they were faring, and how Europe was surviving the years of almost continual warfare. Yet the people the explorers encountered along the river depended on the travelers for information of the outside world; they had no news to share. And even in the cities, in this pretelegraphic era, the newspaper reports were likely to be months out of date. No wonder Humboldt was so sensitive to the forlorn aspects of the passing landscape. “The earth is loaded with plants,” he wrote, “and nothing i
mpedes their free development. . . . Crocodiles and boas are masters of the river; the jaguar, the peccary, the dante [tapir], and the monkeys traverse the forest without fear and without danger; where they swell as in an ancient inheritance. This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad. . . . Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.”
The next morning the Indians dropped their hooks in the water and caught some tasty little fish the Spanish called caribes, or “cannibals”—piranhas. Related to the carp and the catfish, the piranha was dreaded by the Indians for the vicious damage it could inflict with its razorlike teeth. Sometimes only a few inches long, the fish would congregate unseen at the bottom of streams, swarming at the barest trace of blood and stripping a carcass in minutes. Several of the Indian guides bore deep scars on their legs left by encounters with the voracious fish.
Humboldt was the first naturalist to describe the caribe, concluding that “no other fish has such a thirst for blood.” A century later, when Theodore Roosevelt ventured into the Amazon, piranha was—and still is—synonymous with “rapacious.” Roosevelt considered them “the most ferocious fish in the world. Even the most formidable fish, the sharks or the barracudas, usually attack things smaller than themselves. But the piranhas habitually attack things much larger than themselves. They will snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water; they mutilate swimmers—in every river town in Paraguay there are men who have been thus mutilated; they will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness,” he wrote. “They will tear wounded wild fowl to pieces; and bite off the tails of big fish as they grow exhausted when fighting after being hooked. . . . The rabid, furious snaps drive the teeth through flesh and bone. The head with its short muzzle, staring, malignant eyes, and gaping, cruelly armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity; and the actions of the fish exactly match its looks. . . . They are the pests of the waters. . . . The only redeeming feature about them is that they are themselves fairly good to eat, although with too many bones.”
Humboldt's Cosmos Page 15
