John Prebble

by The Darien Disaster (v1. 1) (epub)

  By the rivers, by the shoreward swamps, bamboos grew in trembling clusters, and mangroves stood high on naked roots that were grey where the earth was dry, or red where they were washed by tidal floods. Cinnamon and tamarind, sugar-cane and prickly-pear, locusts and peppers, all were there. The Directors must have thought that a man need do no more than harvest, leaving the planting to the prodigality of God. Sweetly-flowered tobacco, and plantains that could be cut from their green and sappy stems by one blow of an axe. White and purple yams, and two kinds of cassavas, one that could be eaten like a potato, and another that gave flour for bread once its poisonous juice had been squeezed from it. Wafer had gathered pine-apples as large as a man's head, weighing six pounds or more, without stone or kernel, ripening all the year round and so joyous to the taste that he thought it was like all the most delicious fruits he could imagine mixed together.

  In this waiting Eden there were also wondrous birds and beasts, many to support a man and few he need fear. The flesh of the wild hog, black and nimble on its short legs, kept well for several days, even in that climate, "and is very good, wholesome meat, nourishing and well-tasted." Timid red deer moved like shadows among the cedars, and although the Indians would not eat them, the buccaneers barbecued them at great triumphant feasts. Rabbits as large as English hares lived under the roots of trees, and their flesh was sweeter, moister than any cony Wafer had tasted in England. There were wild dogs, rough, wild- haired, snarling beasts which the Indians tamed for hunting, and coursed in packs of two or three hundreds. The tall trees were full of noisy monkeys, some white but mostly black, bearded like old men, fat with fruit and good to eat. There were snakes, but no rattle-snakes that Wafer had seen, and although the leaves, the roots and the grass swarmed with spiders none were poisonous. In the rivers were alligators and thick-tongued iguanas, both of which could be eaten, and Wafer particularly recommended the tail of the alligator. On the shore were land-crabs, larger than anything he had seen in the booths of London, and turtles that were rich, sweet and easily caught. "They have frogs and toads, and other smaller insects, but I took no particular notice of them."

  The dark green of the forest groves flamed with the bright colours of incredible birds. Parrots and parakeets in Joseph coats of glistening feathers. Macaws with hook-bills and streaming tails of red and blue. They could be tamed like magpies and they called their own reveille at dawn, a hoarse, deep cry "like men who speak much in the throat." He saw pied woodpeckers climbing up and down the trees on strong claws, and although their flesh was unpleasant and earthy to the taste he had eaten it without harm when hungry. The strange chicaly-chicaly, carrying its bright tail upright like a banner, reminded him of an arrogant dung-hill cock. The quam was a fat, fruit-eating bird, as pleasing to the palate as partridge, and the black curassow had a fine comb of yellow and a sweet and delightful voice. By the sea were web- footed, grey-feathered pelicans which the buccaneers clubbed to death after a floundering chase along the shore, making tobacco- bags from their leathery pouches. Black cormorants fished from the rocks, and surprised Wafer by perching on trees and shrubs inshore. Wheeling gulls were shot in flight by the buccaneers and then buried in hot sand for eight or ten hours, to roast them and to make them palatable. So many birds, remarkable for their beauty and the good relish of their flesh.

  There were bats as large as pigeons, mosquitoes, wasps, beetles, and fireflies like rising sparks in the thickets at night. Wafer marvelled at the bees, some red and fat, others that were long, black and slender. They made sweet honey and fine wax, and a man could thrust his arm into their tree-hives without any fear. "I have had many of them at a time upon my naked body without being stung; so that I have been inclined to think they have no stings, but that's a thing I never examined." The ants, however, could sting, and a wise man did not hang his hammock too close to their fortress hills.

  In the sea were sharks, dogfish and barracudas, swordfish with sapphire scales, and pike with mouths like a rabbit's. On the rocks were periwinkles and limpets, and in the pools were crayfish as large as small lobsters, conch-shells shimmering with mother-of-pearl. "And many others, probably, that I have neither seen nor heard of, for 'tis a sea very well stored with fish."

  The Cuna and Choco Indians who lived on the Isthmus were a dark-skinned, black-haired and friendly people, little changed in the hundred and eighty years since they were first seen by Balboa (climbing that Pacific peak upon which Keats would later place stout Cortes). Wafer admired them, respected them and, one suspects, loved them in a wistful way, though he thought them a poor and naked people too content with their lot.

  The size of the men is usually about five or six foot. They are straight and clean-limbed, big-boned, full-breasted, and handsomely shaped. I never saw among them a crooked or deformed person. They are very nimble and active, running very well. But the women are very plump and fat, well- shaped, and have a brisk eye. The elder women are very ordinary; their bellies and breasts being pensile and wrinkled. Both men and women are of a round visage, with short bottle noses, their eyes large, generally grey, yet lively and sparkling when young. They have a high forehead, white even teeth, thin lips, and a mouth moderately large. Their cheeks and chin are well proportioned; and in general they are handsomely featured, but the men more than the women.

  They were a clean and sober people, and if they ate noisily, all dipping their fingers into one gourd, they had their own delicacies of behaviour that were as obligatory as any European's modish manners. Everything about them was simple and expedient, their sparse clothing, their habits, their weapons and their ornaments. They were vainly proud of their lank, long hair, combing it for hours, rarely cutting that which grew on their heads but allowing their women to pluck other parts of their bodies with two sticks. Sometimes a warrior would cut off his hair, or paint himself black, as a mark of honour, and this after he had killed an enemy or a Spaniard, the two being synonymous. Wafer was entranced by the sheen of their oiled, unblemished skins, tawny orange in the sun and rich copper by firelight. Among them were a few albinos who were sluggish and dull during the day, but at nights they would run in the woods like wild bucks. They were not pink, but "rather a milk-white, and much like that of a white horse." These sad, ostracised mutations were ridiculed by the buccaneers, and regarded as monsters by other Indians.

  Both these and the copper-coloured Indians use painting their bodies, even of the sucking children sometimes. They make figures of birds, beasts, men, trees or the like, up and down in every part of the body, more especially the face, but the figures are not extraordinary like what they represent, and are of differing dimensions, as their fancies lead them. The women are the painters, and take a great delight in it. The colours they like and use most are red, yellow and blue, very bright and lovely. They temper them with some kind of oil, and keep them in calabashes for use; and ordinarily lay them on the surface of the skin with pencils of wood, gnaw'd at the end to the softness of a brush. So laid on, they will last some weeks, and are renewed constantly.

  Wafer idly indulged his own vanity, and pleased the Indians, by sitting cross-legged and patient while his body was so painted. The women wore aprons of cloth or leaves, tied about the waist and hanging to their knees or ankles. The cloth they got from the buccaneers or Spaniards, and they were childishly excited by fine colours. Wafer and Dampier once "prevailed with a morose Indian" by giving his wife a sky-blue petticoat. The men, too, were delighted by an old coat or a discarded shirt, but they were usually naked except for one extravagant ornament which amused all Europeans who had forgotten the cod-pieces of their own ancestors. This was a curving cone like a candle- extinguisher, worn over the penis and held to the waist by a cord, and no man removed it without first turning his back. It was cunningly made from leaves, or from gold and silver if the wearer was rich and important.

  Both metals were rare, and obviously prized by the Indians. They hammered out thin, crescent plates and hung them from their nostrils over their mouths.
"Such a one I wore among them," said Wafer proudly, "was of gold". Each man might have several, varying the size of them according to the importance of the day or the event, a council, a hunt, or a war-party. The women wore circular rings in their noses, the thickness of a goose quill. "Neither the plates nor rings hinder much their speaking, tho' they lie bobbing upon their lips." But when they ate, the Indians removed both plates and rings, polishing the metal before restoring it to their noses. They also hung themselves with necklaces of shells and beads, sometimes three or four hundred strings, and it was a poor woman who did not carry twenty pounds weight in this manner, the men much more.

  The Indian kings and captains, as Europeans called the tribal leaders and village headmen, wore gold at their mouths and ears, heart-shaped plates of gold, richly painted, on their chests and backs. Wafer thought that one called Lacenta was the most powerful on the Isthmus, and remembered how he once came to a great council in the forest. In addition to his nose-plate, his ear-rings and his cuirass of gold, he wore a diadem of the same metal, eight or nine inches broad and mounted on a framework of cane. His armed bodyguard also wore crowns, but of cane only, painted scarlet and decorated with the feathers of parrots, parakeets and macaws.

  Their villages were simple, the huts no more than roofs of plantain leaves. In the centre of each village was a long war- house where young and unmarried men were trained in the use of weapons and the duties of manhood. More than a hundred feet long, ten high, and twenty-five broad, this house was also the defensive fort of every village, its walls pierced for arrows, its doors held by club and lance. Though an armoured man could have pushed his way through the plaintain leaves, the Spaniards never attacked a long-house by assault. They set fire to it. And they shot down the Indians who ran from the flames.

  The round, bright-eyed faces of the Cunas peered at the Directors from the simple framework of Wafer's prose, their guttural voices clacked in the words and sentences he wrote down phonetically. He said that his knowledge of Gaelic had helped him to learn the language. Pa poonah eetah caupah? Woman, have you got the hammock?... Cotcha caupah? Will you go sleep in the hammock?... Aupah eenah? What do you call this?... As well as painting his body and wearing a nose- plate, he got drunk at their weddings, filled his lungs with the smoke of their great cigars, danced with them, and sang their strange songs. After their feasts he lay helpless in his hammock like other men, while women sprinkled him with water to cool his over-indulged body. He respected their uncomplicated religion. He said that although the women were drudges, he never blew an Indian to beat his wife, or speak harshly to her. Even when drunk and quarrelling, the men were always gentle to their women and their children. He admired their love of noise, the music they made by humming or by fingering slender flutes made from reeds. They were able to dance from dawn until sunset, and would then plunge into a river to wash the dust and sweat from their bodies. They walked from the water with naked dignity, drying their hair and skins by long, caressing strokes of then- hands.

  They gave directions by the simple method of pointing, the height of the hand indicating the time of day a man might expect to reach his destination. They kept no hours of the clock, made no particular distinction of days and weeks, and took their months from the moon. They could count up to a hundred and no further, for numbers beyond that they shook a lock of their hair. Their laws were short and expedient. They killed adulterers and thieves, and recognised no other crimes. They swore upon their eye-teeth, and were faithful to the oath. They indulged their children until the age of puberty, when a girl put on the clout and a boy the funnel and both began the long training to be an adult.

  They hated and feared the Spaniards, though many of them had worked in the mines or served as native levies of Spain against other tribes. But they rarely opposed the buccaneers and repaid the rough kindnesses of these men with love and loyalty. When one of Lacenta's wives was ill, Wafer was allowed to bleed her, drawing off twelve ounces until the fever was gone. Lacenta bent on his knee and kissed the surgeon's hand.

  Then the rest came thick about me, and some kissed my hand, others my knee, and some my foot, after which I was taken up into a hammock and carried on men's shoulders ... and lived in great splendour and repute, administering physic and phlebotomy to those that wanted.

  The Directors of the Company did not ask themselves why, if Darien were such a paradise, Spain had not already settled there, having occupied and planted lands to the east, west and south of it for nearly two centuries. They chose, instead, to regard this as a stupid oversight by the Dons, and to believe that the country could be rightfully claimed by any nation. They had heard of Pope Borgia's bull, of course, but it had been ignored by Protestants and Catholics alike for two hundred years, and was only taken seriously by the Spanish and the Portuguese. Wafer did not dispute that Darien was a province of Spain, though he could not see why someone should not take it from her if possible. The Spaniards had garrisons, forts, towns and villges all along the Isthmus of Panama, but they were wise enough, and had been in America long enough not to waste time and men on the swamps of Darien. There were three thousand men, said Wafer, in the forts above the narrow streets and fine harbour of Portobello, with outposts at Nombre de Dios. To the east, on the coast of South America, was the powerful garrison and naval base of Carthagena. On the southern side of the isthmus the stockaded town of Santa Maria was held by two hundred infantrymen, and thousands more were stationed in the great city of Panama, the seat of the provincial governor. Since 1671, when Henry Morgan's bloody cut-throats sacked and burnt the old city of Panama, taking gold, silver, slaves and women, the Spaniards had built a new one, and made it virtually impregnable. Northward from its white walls ran the road to Portobello, the jugular vein of the Spanish empire, the mountain track for mule-trains loaded with the wealth of Peru, and for this reason alone Spain could tolerate no other European nation on the Isthmus. She kept two fleets of warships in American waters, one off the Main and the other in the South Sea, and there was not a bay or an inlet on the Darien coast that had not been visited and named by a galleon or pinnace from the northern fleet. The Indians of Darien were the reluctant vassals of His Catholic Majesty, their chiefs were given Spanish names, were forced to supply levies or mine-workers when needed, and were paid for their loyalty with an old musket or a rusty hauberk.

  If the Scots did not understand this, and if they did not see that there was more to Darien than rich meat and sweet honey, it was not Wafer's fault, for he was honest about the risks, the dangers and the discomforts. But they were blinded by the startling colours of his narrative, and excited by their own greed. They heard the sound of axes in groves of fragrant wood, they saw strong forts and green plantations, great merchantmen anchored in broad bays. What they should have read again, and again, and yet again, was what Wafer had to say about the weather. So much rich vegetation, so many forests, swamps and marshes, bright brooks and rivers, so abundant a life growing on its own putrefaction, could mean one thing only. The land wept more than it smiled.

  It rained. Wafer remembered how it rained, how he had lain in an Indian hut with a burning knee and listened to the unending sound of water. The rains began in April or May and continued with increasing violence until September. "It is very hot also about this time, wherever the sun breaks out of a cloud, for the air is then very sultry, because then usually there are no breezes to fan and cool it, but 'tis all glowing hot." In October the storms slackened, but it was sometimes January before they stopped, and thus a third of the year, perhaps only a quarter, was entirely free from rain. The season began with brief and sudden showers that reminded Wafer of Spring in England, a cooling rustle on leather leaves and the earth running with singing streams. Then, in one day, there would be two or three violent storms, a rolling cannonade of thunder, a black sky stabbed with lightning and a smell of sulphur beneath the trees.

  After this variable weather, for about four or six weeks, there will be settled, continued rains of sever
al days or nights, without thunder or lightning but exceeding vehement considering the length of them. Yet at certain intervals between these, even in the wettest of the season, there will be several fair days intermixed, with only tornadoes or thunder- showers; and that sometimes for a week together. These thunder-showers cause usually a sensible wind, by the clouds pressing the atmosphere, which is very refreshing and moderates the heat.

  Cooling though these powerful winds were, they also pulled down trees, dammed rivers, and turned the swamps and westward savannahs into green and stinking lakes. In the brief intervals between the storms there was no compassionate silence. "You shall hear for a great way together the croaking of frogs and toads, the humming of mosquitoes or gnats, and the hissing or shrieking of snakes and other insects, loud and unpleasant; some like the quacking of ducks." Fairer weather came with Christmas, but from the swamps at night, the rotting shores of the floodwater, there rose throbbing clouds of newly-hatched mosquitoes. Wafer called them "uneasy vermin". That they were also lethal would be unsuspected for another two hundred years.

  '"Tis a very wet country," said Wafer. Yet there is no indication—in the minutes of their meetings, the inventories of their ships, their lists of clothing, equipment and trade goods—that the Directors gave serious thought to his warning that Darien was one of the wettest parts of the torrid zone, or concluded from it that Europeans who settled there might suffer terribly from fevers, ague, and the rotting of the spirit that comes from wretched idleness.

  "I must bear these as I have done the rest of my troubles" Edinburgh and Hamburg, July 1696 to June 1697