Charles Waterton
Wanderings in South America
Four other species of the goatsucker articulate some words so distinctly, that they have received their names from the sentences they utter, and absolutely bewilder the stranger on his arrival in these parts. The most common one sits down close by your door, and flies and alights three or four yards before yon, as you walk along the road, crying, “Who-are-you, who-who-who-are-you?” Another bids you, “Work-away, work—work-work-away.” A third cries mournfully, “Willy-come-go. Willy-Willy-Willy-come-go.” And high up in the country, a fourth tells you to “Whip-poor-Will. Whip-whip-whip-poor-Will.”
You will never persuade the negro to destroy these birds, or get the Indian to let fly his arrow at them. They are birds of omen and reverential dread. Jumbo, the demon of Africa, has them under his command; and they equally obey the Yabahou, or Demerara Indian devil. They are the receptacles for departed souls, who come back again to earth, unable to rest for crimes done in their days of nature; or they are expressly sent by Jumbo, or Yabahou, to haunt cruel and hard-hearted masters, and retaliate injuries received from them. If the largest goatsucker chance to cry near the white man’s door, sorrow and grief will soon be inside; and they expect to see the master waste away with a slow consuming sickness. If it be heard close to the negro’s or Indian’s hut, from that night misfortune sits brooding over it; and they await the event in terrible suspense.
You will forgive the poor Indian of Guiana for this. He knows no better; he has nobody to teach him. But shame it is that, in our own civilised country, the black cat and broomstaff should be considered as conductors to and from the regions of departed spirits.
Many years ago I knew poor harmless Mary; old age had marked her strongly, just as he will mark you and me, should we arrive at her years and carry the weight of grief which bent her double. The old men of the village said she had been very pretty in her youth; and nothing could be seen more comely than Mary when she danced on the green. He who had gained her heart left her for another, less fair, though richer than Mary. From that time she became sad and pensive; the rose left her cheek, and she was never more seen to dance round the May-pole on the green: her expectations were blighted; she became quite indifferent to everything around her, and seemed to think of nothing but how she could best attend her mother, who was lame, and not long for this life. Her mother had begged a black kitten from some boys who were going to drown it, and in her last illness she told Mary to be kind to it for her sake.
When age and want had destroyed the symmetry of Mary’s fine form, the village began to consider her as one who had dealings with spirits; her cat confirmed the suspicion. If a cow died, or a villager wasted away with an unknown complaint, Mary and her cat had it to answer for. Her broom sometimes served her for a walking-stick; and if over she supported her tottering frame with it as far as the May-pole, where once, in youthful bloom and beauty, she had attracted the eyes of all, the boys would surround her and make sport of her, while her cat had neither friend nor safety beyond the cottage wall. Nobody considered it cruel or uncharitable to torment a witch; and it is probable, long before this, that cruelty, old age, and want have worn her out, and that both poor Mary and her cat have ceased to be.
Would you wish to pursue the different species of game, well stored and boundless is your range in Demerara. Here no one dogs you, and afterwards clandestinely inquires if you have a hundred a year in land to entitle you to enjoy such patrician sport. Here no saucy intruder asks if you have taken out a licence, by virtue of which you are allowed to kill the birds which have bred upon your own property. Here
“You are as free as when God first made man,
Ere the vile laws of servitude began,
And wild in woods the noble savage ran.”
Before the morning’s dawn you hear a noise in the forest, which sounds like “duraquaura” often repeated. This is the partridge, a little smaller, and differing somewhat in colour from the English partridge; it lives entirely in the forest, and probably the young brood very soon leave their parents, as you never flush more than two birds in the same place, and in general only one.
About the same hour, and sometimes even at midnight, you hear two species of maam, or tinamou, send forth their long and plaintive whistle from the depth of the forest. The flesh of both is delicious. The largest is plumper, and almost equals in size the black cock of Northumberland. The quail is said to be here, though rare.
The hannaquoi, which some have compared to the pheasant, though with little reason, is very common.
Here are also two species of the powise, or hocco, and two of the small wild turkeys called maroudi; they feed on the ripe fruits of the forest, and are found in all directions in these extensive wilds. You will admire the horned screamer as a stately and majestic bird: he is almost the size of the turkey cock; on his head is a long slender horn, and each wing is armed with a strong, sharp, triangular spur, an inch long.
Sometimes you will fall in with flocks of two or three hundred waracabas, or trumpeters, called so from the singular noise they produce. Their breast is adorned with beautiful changing blue and purple feathers; their head and neck like velvet; their wings and back grey, and belly black. They run with great swiftness, and, when domesticated, attend their master in his walks with as much apparent affection as his dog. They have no spurs, but still, such is their high spirit and activity, that they browbeat every dunghill fowl in the yard, and force the Guinea birds, dogs, and turkeys to own their superiority.
If, kind and gentle reader, thou shouldst ever visit these regions with an intention to examine their productions, perhaps the few observations contained in these Wanderings may be of service to thee; excuse their brevity; more could have been written, and each bird more particularly described, but it would have been pressing too hard upon thy time and patience.
Soon after arriving in these parts, thou wilt find that the species here enumerated are only as a handful from a well-stored granary. Nothing has been said of the eagles, the falcons, the hawks, and shrikes; nothing of the different species of vultures, the king of which is very handsome, and seems to be the only bird which claims regal honours from a surrounding tribe. It is a fact beyond all dispute, that when the scent of carrion has drawn together hundreds of the common vultures, they all retire from the carcase as soon as the king of the vultures makes his appearance. When his majesty has satisfied the cravings of his royal stomach with the choicest bits from the most stinking and corrupted parts, he generally retires to a neighbouring tree, and then the common vultures return in crowds to gobble down his leavings. The Indians, as well as the whites, have observed this, for when one of them, who has learned a little English, sees the king, and wishes you to have a proper notion of the bird, he says, “There is the governor of the carrion crows.”
Now, the Indians have never heard of a personage in Demerara higher than that of governor; and the colonists, through a common mistake, call the vultures carrion crows. Hence the Indian, in order to express the dominion of this bird over the common vultures, tells you he is governor of the carrion crows. The Spaniards have also observed it; for, through all the Spanish Main, he is called “rey de zamuros”—king of the vultures. The many species of owls, too, have not been noticed; and no mention made of the Columbine tribe. The prodigious variety of waterfowl on the sea-shore has been but barely hinted at.
There, and on the borders and surface of the inland waters, in the marshes and creeks, besides the flamingos, scarlet curlew, and spoonbills, already mentioned, will be found greenish-brown curlews, sandpipers, rails, coots, gulls, pelicans, jabirus, nandapoas, crabiers, snipes, plovers, ducks, geese, cranes, and anhingas, most of them in vast abundance; some frequenting only the sea-coast, others only the interior, according to their different natures; all worthy the attention of the naturalist, all worthy of a place in the cabinet of the curious.
Should thy comprehensive genius not confine itself to birds alone, grand is the appearance of other objects all around. Thou art in a land rich in botany and mineralogy, rich in zoology and entomology. Animation will glow in thy looks, and exercise will brace thy frame in vigour. The very time of thy absence from the tables of heterogeneous luxury will be profitable to thy stomach, perhaps already sorely drenched with Londo-Parisian sauces, and a new stock of health will bring thee an appetite to relish the wholesome food of the chase; never-failing sleep will wait on thee at the time she comes to soothe the rest of animated nature; and, ere the sun’s rays appear in the horizon, thou wilt spring from thy hammock fresh as April lark. Be convinced, also, that the dangers and difficulties which are generally supposed to accompany the traveller in his journey through distant regions, are not half so numerous or dreadful as they are commonly thought to be.
The youth who incautiously reels into the lobby of Drury Lane, after leaving the table sacred to the god of wine, is exposed to more certain ruin, sickness, and decay than he who wanders a whole year in the wilds of Demerara. But this will never be believed; because the disasters arising from dissipation are so common and frequent in civilised life, that man becomes quite habituated to them; and sees daily victims sink into the tomb long before their time, without ever once taking alarm at the causes which precipitated them headlong into it.
But the dangers which a traveller exposes himself to in foreign parts are novel, out-of-the-way things to a man at home. The remotest apprehension of meeting a tremendous tiger, of being carried off by a flying dragon, or having his bones picked by a famished cannibal—oh, that makes him shudder. It sounds in his ears like the bursting of a bomb-shell. Thank Heaven, he is safe by his own fireside!
Prudence and resolution ought to be the traveller’s constant companions. The first will cause him to avoid a number of snares which he will find in the path as he journeys on; and the second will always lend a hand to assist him, if he has unavoidably got entangled in them. The little distinctions which have been shown him at his own home ought to be forgotten when he travels over the world at large; for strangers know nothing of his former merits, and it is necessary that they should witness them before they pay him the tribute which he was wont to receive within his own doors. Thus, to be kind and affable to those we meet, to mix in their amusements, to pay a compliment or two to their manners and customs, to respect their elders, to give a little to their distressed and needy, and to feel, as it were, at home amongst them, is the sure way to enable you to pass merrily on, and to find other comforts as sweet and palatable as those which you were accustomed to partake of amongst your friends and acquaintance in your own native land.
We will now ascend in fancy on Icarian wing, and take a view of Guiana in general. See an immense plain, betwixt two of the largest rivers in the world, level as a bowling-green, save at Cayenne, and covered with trees along the coast quite to the Atlantic wave, except where the plantations make a little vacancy amongst the foliage.
Though nearly in the centre of the torrid zone, the sun’s rays are not so intolerable as might be imagined, on account of the perpetual verdure and refreshing north-east breeze. See what numbers of broad and rapid rivers intersect it in their journey to the ocean, and that not a stone or a pebble is to be found on their banks, or in any part of the country, till your eye catches the hills in the interior. How beautiful and magnificent are the lakes in the heart of the forests, and how charming the forests themselves, for miles after miles on each side of the rivers! How extensive appear the savannas, or natural meadows, teeming with innumerable herds of cattle, where the Portuguese and Spaniards are settled, but desert as Sahara where the English and Dutch claim dominion. How gradually the face of the country rises! See the sand-hills all clothed in wood first emerging from the level, then hills a little higher, rugged with bold and craggy rocks, peeping out from amongst the most luxuriant timber. Then come plains, and dells, and far-extending valleys, arrayed in richest foliage; and beyond them, mountains piled on mountains, some bearing prodigious forests, others of bleak and barren aspect. Thus your eye wanders on, over scenes of varied loveliness and grandeur, till it rests on the stupendous pinnacles of the long-continued Cordilleras de los Andes, which rise in towering majesty, and command all America.
How fertile must the lowlands be, from the accumulation of fallen leaves and trees for centuries. How propitious the swamps and slimy beds of the rivers, heated by a downward sun, to the amazing growth of alligators, serpents, and innumerable insects. How inviting the forests to the feathered tribes, where you see buds, blossoms, green and ripe fruit, full-grown and fading leaves, all on the same tree. How secure the wild beasts may rove in endless mazes. Perhaps those mountains, too, which appear so bleak and naked, as if quite neglected, are, like Potosi, full of precious metals.
Let us now return the pinions we borrowed from Icarus, and prepare to bid farewell to the wilds. The time allotted to these Wanderings is drawing fast to a close. Every day for the last six months has been employed in paying close attention to natural history in the forests of Demerara. Above two hundred specimens of the finest birds have been collected, and a pretty just knowledge formed of their haunts and economy. From the time of leaving England, in March, 1816, to the present day, nothing has intervened to arrest a fine flow of health, saving a quartan ague, which did not tarry, but fled as suddenly as it appeared.
And now I take leave of thee, kind and gentle reader. The new mode of preserving birds, heretofore promised thee, shall not be forgotten. The plan is already formed in imagination, and can be penned down during the passage across the Atlantic. If the few remarks in these Wanderings shall have any weight in inciting thee to sally forth and explore the vast and well-stored regions of Demerara, I have gained my end. Adieu.
Charles Waterton.
April 6, 1817.