CHAPTER III.

A WOMAN’S EXPERIENCES IN VENEZUELA.

(_By Mary Blair Beebe._)

The doings of the creatures in fur, feathers and scales kept us keenly interested from morning to night, yet in our wilderness search there were many unnatural history experiences—some disagreeable, others thrilling—but all so wholly delightful in their charm of strangeness to the woman who enjoyed them that the picture of our wilderness seems incomplete without them.

Life on board a Venezuelan sloop is quite unlike any other experience in the world. Neither the woman who sits under the awning of a luxurious yacht nor her more adventurous sister who sails her own catboat over turbulent waters can form any idea of the daily life aboard such a craft.

The night we set forth in our tiny sloop from the Island of Trinidad, headed for an unexplored part of the Orinoco delta, it was hard to realize that we were at last bound for South America, the land of our dreams. As you know we were, for the present, owners of a sloop flying the Venezuelan flag and manned by five men, of whom only the Captain knew a word of English. The charm of exploration and adventure laid a spell upon us both—El Señor Naturalista and me—and we watched in silence the sunset sky and the dim receding shores of Trinidad.

But there was a certain stern reality about that first night aboard the “Josefa Jacinta” that soon broke in upon our reveries. When we descended to the tiny cabin to unpack, the sloop had begun to pitch heavily and we set ourselves to solve the problems of unstable equilibrium, which constantly shifting angles of 30° to 40° presented in both floor and walls. By courtesy we called our domicile a cabin, and we found that it would hold two people—at a pinch!

[Illustration: FIG. 40. OUR SLOOP AT GUANOCO.]

We unearthed our unused pneumatic mattresses and rigged up our gilded foot pump. For fifteen minutes W—— worked, then the mate was called and took a hand. Were we on a sinking ship and manning the pumps for our lives, greater exertions could not have been made, and the reward was a thin film of air within the rubber bed. Then we unscrewed the decorative but useless contrivance, and W—— began to blow. This proved effective, and in a few minutes we had placed the soft, air-filled cushions in our respective bunks. We dubbed these bunks catacombs at once, for the tiny niches into which we later crept were more like the vaults of a tomb than aught else.

I doubt if either of us will ever forget that first night. Beneath the flooring and behind the planked sides of the vessel was a mysterious underworld, densely populated by rats of most sportive disposition. How they managed to live there we never discovered, for we neither caught sight of one throughout the voyage, nor were we ever troubled by raids on biscuits or other edibles.

There seemed to be some kind of a running track extending around the hidden depths of the sloop. A race would start near the stern, the contestants tearing around W——’s bunk; then the footfalls would die out toward the bow to become audible almost at once on my side—a medley of sound indicating a mob of invisible rushing creatures, galloping down a mysterious homestretch. For some time we expected the goal of each race to be some part of ourselves or our luggage, but the “heat” would invariably end on the under side of the partition within a few inches of my ear, and then would follow a general mêlée and fight, punctuated with shrill squeaks and squeals and vicious blows and sounds of tumbling, rolling bodies. Were we in the mood we might have learned much of rat vocabulary. But we did not then know that these strenuous rodents never penetrated to the upper portions of the sloop and this uncertainty kept alive our interest in their manœuvers throughout the night.

Silence was unknown during this first night, and while the rats were resting, other things occupied our minds and kept away _ennui_—and sleep. The gurgle and splash of bilge water was a steady accompaniment of the pitch and toss of the sloop, while now and then a sinister trickling came to our ears. We called up to the captain and inquired about it, and were assured that it was “only a leak!” He had looked for it many times, but could not locate it. This gave us food for thought, besides adding decidedly to the slowness of the ticking of the watch marking the passage of the hours of darkness. I lay in my berth as long as I could endure it; dreaming now and then of being buried alive, then rising with a start and striking my head against the coffin lid of my catacomb. At last I abandoned it for the floor of the cabin, sloping and under five feet in total length though it was. I found it was better to be huddled in a forlorn little bundle on the floor than in that hole which by no stretch of the imagination could be called a berth.

Overhead the crew worked fitfully all night long. I could move the hatch curtain, look up and see the sturdy old Captain with his hand on the rudder—a picture which was to become familiar to us through many nights. What a picturesque old figure he was—rugged and stern, yet as gentle and courteous as any gentleman of the old school—and bearing his three-score and eight years with wonderful vigor. Now and then his deep voice would rise above the roar of wind and waves in hoarse commands in Spanish to the crew. Then he would push the rudder hard up, the boom would swing over with a jerk which made the whole sloop tremble and a wave would wash over the deck and send a trickle of cold drops down upon my face. Smothered exclamations from the crew and the sound of their bare feet splashing along the deck would end the audible part of the manœuvre. Then I would shift to meet the new angle of the floor and wait for the next race of the rats.

Now and then the Captain would reach behind the hatch curtain for his watch and examine its dripping face by the light of the candle in the compass box. “_Faltan las cinco á la una_,” he would mutter, and I knew that midnight had passed and that somewhere in our wake, morning was on its way to end this night of nights. The tempest increased and tossed our sloop like a flying leaf. Sometimes it seemed as if we never would right ourselves after heeling far over into the depths. But the calm face of our helmsman dispelled all uneasiness, and I lay staring into the darkness, feeling myself the veriest atom amid this fierce tumult.

To this moment I cannot tell how long it took us to get from Trinidad to Venezuela across that awful Gulf of Paria. To me it seemed an endless space of time—day succeeding night—with choppy seas, ominous noises in the pitching cabin, hot sleepy hours on deck in the shade of the sail, with the great green waves forever rolling after and breaking partly over us. By the Captain’s reckoning, however, it was the noon of only the second day which revealed the distant shore, and soon we forgot all the discomforts of the past hours in the wonderful beauty of the scene before us—the still, brassy waters and the rich green mangroves.

Entering the wide Caño San Juan we dropped anchor in the lee of a solitary guard ship, a poor derelict, a rusty and worn-out freighter, whose last days were to be spent here in the calm waters at the edge of the mangrove forest. Our little sloop was soon over-run with young custom-house officials from the guard ship, curious but courteous, and far more appreciative of the stiff rounds of rum which our Captain willingly served to them under our direction, than of our gilt-sealed letters of introduction.

If we would but take their photographs on board the “Pontón,” they would row us close along the shore while we waited for the “fulling tide,” as the Captain called it. Of course we agreed. Shouldering their rusty muskets they stood in a row to be photographed,—young inexperienced boys, whose idle days on the derelict were spent in drinking, smoking cigarettes and lying in hammocks playing the mandolin, watching for the rare sloop or schooner which might enter Venezuela by this desolate and unfrequented caño.

We promised to send them the pictures; but Captain Truxillo said afterwards with a sad shake of his head that they would have lost their positions long before the pictures could reach them. No one ever stayed long; there was always someone to carry reports to Castro of treachery and plotting, and there would be new faces on the “Pontón,” to stay a little while and then to disappear like their predecessors.

[Illustration: FIG. 41. VENEZUELAN SOLDIERS ON THE “PONTÓN” GUARD SHIP.]

Now for many days the sloop was our home, and the innumerable gleaming _caños_ of the delta our highways. By day we explored the mangroves in our _curiara_ or dug-out, and by night we slept the dreamless sleep of healthful outdoor life, safe from the persecution of the humming _Anopheles_ outside our netting on the after deck. When midday heat or sudden rain drove the wild creatures from our view I studied our motley crew and found them a never-failing source of entertainment.

The tally of the crew must begin with Filo, the mate, a huge black creole, speaking Spanish besides his own strange vernacular; then there were two sailors from the Island of Margarita, and Antonio, cook by profession, admitting some Dutch blood, but of unknown extraction and decidedly uncertain disposition. The cook on board a Venezuelan craft is always given the respectful title of Maestro (_Mai’stro_), so Maestro he always was to us. Maestro as an individual was an interesting psychological study. Although he probably never heard of such a thing as a labor union, yet he was the embodied spirit of one. He declared, in terms that left no possibility of misunderstanding, that he was cook, not sailor, and that he would do nothing _but_ cook. He would cook cheerfully over a stove that smoked like Dante’s Inferno, but when called upon in an emergency to help hoist a sail, he would fly into a violent torrent of angry Spanish. Later when the temper had spent itself he would often go and do what was asked of him. I have seen many high tempers, but never one that quite equalled Maestro’s. There were times when he would draw his huge cutlass or machete on the Captain. For a long time these were all false alarms, but at last Maestro threatened once too often and so seriously that he was discharged on the spot, and left marooned in a little Indian village with no means of returning to Trinidad. But this was at the end of our voyage.

Maestro in his patched and faded shirt, with sleeves rolled to the elbow, still more patched trousers rolled to the knee, bare as to feet, a crownless hat on one side of his head, an ancient and odoriferous pipe hanging from his mouth, a big machete at his side, in the capacity of cook would make the most shiftless housekeeper gasp with horror. I often wondered why he so persistently declared himself _cocinero_, not _marinero_, for he could hardly have been a greater failure in any calling than he was in that of chef. Among the most valued of my memories are some mental pictures of Maestro, which, while I live, I can never manage to forget.

[Illustration: FIG. 42. CAPTAIN TRUXILLO PADDLING US UP THE GUARAPICHE PAST CAÑO COLORADO.]

I often shut my eyes and see him with streaming eyes stirring some fearful concoction over the little stove; or again on his knees mixing dough for the leaden dumplings to be boiled in the pig-tail stew which appeared at every meal. We so often wished we had brought graham flour. White flour does show the dirt so! Still another picture is Maestro washing the table-cloth. This was a piece of oilcloth, originally white, and Maestro’s method of washing it was to spread it on the deck, pour water over it, dance upon it in his bare feet, to the accompaniment of some weird chant, and finally hang it on the rail to dry! No doubt after this proceeding he felt as self satisfied as the most pompous and well-trained English butler.

In justice, I must say that Maestro did make one or two edible dishes; he could boil the native vegetables, yam, tania and kuch-kuch and he made very good cornmeal mush. Then after a long, happy day on the caños we were always hungry, and happiness and honest hunger overlook a multitude of sins. Besides, whatever was lacking in Maestro’s bill of fare was compensated by the dried soups, cocoa, crackers and preserves from our own stores. So we managed one way or another to keep the wolf from the door, or perhaps more appropriately I should say, the crocodile from the companionway.

As in two weeks the crew had consumed provisions planned by the Captain to last a month, the Captain purchased a hundred pounds of beef from a dug-out full of Indians which passed us one day on the river. This Maestro salted plentifully and then hung up in the sun to cure. Long strips of it were suspended from the rigging, from the boom, and over the railing, and whole entomological collections buzzed noisily about them. For a few days we felt as though we were living in a butcher’s shop; and a butcher’s shop in a tropical climate is a thing to be avoided. At first we were inclined to resent this impromptu meat market. It was not only disagreeable but it was in the way. Then came the thought—suppose it were fish; and we were so grateful to be spared that, that we cheerfully submitted to a sloop draped with strips of meat, as a house is festooned with smilax at Christmas. As long as the larder was low the Captain had known no peace of mind for fear his crew would desert us and the sloop. So the purchase of such a delicacy as meat was a successful piece of strategy.

With all their faults, there is among the Venezuelans, as among the Mexicans, a certain chivalry toward women; and so I never felt the least alarm at being left alone on the sloop with the crew, while the Captain and my husband went off up the river. The great dusky Creole mate would put my stool in a shady spot, and, figuratively, lay himself at my feet to serve me, and Maestro—even pugnacious Maestro—would weave wonderful baskets for me of the roots of the mangrove; baskets in nests of twelve, each fitting snugly within the other and all gayly dyed with the Venezuelan colors, the pigments being extracted from the leaves or stems of unknown wild plants.

[Illustration: FIG. 43. SUNSET IN THE MANGROVE WILDERNESS.]

The time passed all too quickly with each day spent on the Guarapiche river—a gleaming stage, with a setting of green trees, brilliant flowers and fragrant orchids, and an ever-changing plot with ever-changing actors. Of them all, man was the least important. There were populous villages of Hoatzins and great wandering tribes of Scarlet Ibises and Plovers; Herons, much occupied with their unsocial and taciturn calling as fishermen, stood silent and solitary in secluded pools. With all this wild life the river teemed. It was only with the rising and falling of the tide that man entered upon the scene; and so quietly, so much a part of nature, that one hardly felt any difference between him and the forest folk. In a silently, swiftly moving _curiara_ he would glide under the shadows of the overhanging mangroves. Sometimes the _curiara_ would be a merchant vessel, laden with ollas, fruit, etc., with its destination Maturin, many miles away in the interior. Again its only occupant was a fisherman, as silent as the Herons themselves. Like a Heron also he would station himself near a shady pool, and sit all day, motionless save for the changing of bait or the pulling in of a fish. With the turning of the tide the line would be drawn up, the fish covered with cool green leaves and the _curiara_ would move away, the bronze figure of its owner skilfully guiding it up the winding river.

[Illustration: FIG. 44. THE SILENT SAVAGES.]

Occasionally the fisherman was accompanied by his squaw, hardly to be distinguished from him, and in the bow there was often the little naked figure of a child playing with a mite of a tame monkey, or both sound asleep with their arms wrapped about each other. All that these simple folk ask of life is one fish to eat, another with which to buy cassava and a yard of cotton cloth.

In the brief tropical twilight we would hastily make preparations for the night, spreading our air-beds on deck, hanging over them a white mosquito canopy and putting our electric flashlight and revolver at hand. After the first two nights we had abandoned the cabin, which had added to its other discomforts the fact that all the mosquitoes of the caño had selected it as their abode. Never were nights more beautiful than those which we spent on the deck of that little sloop, and never was sleep more dreamless and peaceful.

In the darkness of early evening, before the moon rose, we would sit on deck munching sugar-cane while the Captain told us many a tale of his young days, when he was the prosperous owner of a schooner twice the size of the “Josefa Jacinta” and when smuggling brought adventure and yellow gold in abundance. He was full of legend and superstition. He told us of aged men and women, both among the Indians and the Spaniards, who he declared can by a peculiar whistle call together all the snakes in the vicinity and then by incantations so hypnotize them that they can be handled with impunity. The owner of a hacienda will sometimes employ one of these charmers to call together the snakes, which can then be killed. The performers themselves, however, will never harm a snake. He told many a story of black magic arts, in which he firmly believed, of sending to one’s enemies scourges of rats or deadly diseases or departed spirits to make life unendurable.

[Illustration: FIG. 45. GUARAUNO INDIANS COMING TO TRADE AT CAÑO COLORADO.]

Finally the crew would roll up in their blankets in the bow, the Captain would disappear beneath his _mosquitaro_, which would tremble and quake in the moonlight until he lay quiet in his hammock. We would creep beneath our tent of netting to write up the last notes of the day or to listen to the sounds of the night. From the bow would come a low murmur of voices in some weird chanting song until the Captain roared out for all hands to go to sleep. But he would not practice what he preached for he always talked himself to sleep, sometimes in English, or in Spanish or again in Creole, while now and then he would mingle all three.

By day one would not have suspected Filo, the mate, of being a person of romance; but under the spell of the tropical moonlight he would often tell stories to the crew; stories in which the heroine was always “_Muy preciosa, muy joven, muy linda_,”—very charming, very young and very beautiful. She would set difficult tasks for her many lovers, and her favored suitor would be the one who most bravely bore himself under the tests. I remember one tale to which the crew listened with awe; in which one of the lovers was to lie all night in the cathedral, stiff and still like a corpse; another was to go to the same cathedral on the same night dressed in winding sheets like a ghost; another was to represent the angel of death, while a fourth impersonated the devil; and a fifth was sent as an ordinary man. Of course none of them were to know of the others having been sent by the fair heroine of the story; and of course the fortunate lover was the one who showed no terror and passed the night quietly in the church, returning in the morning to claim his bride.

The story had its dramatic situations and Filo made the most of them. Even Maestro was moved to utter a low “_Dios mio!_” at the description of the entrance of the ghost, the angel of death and finally the devil; at which the poor corpse, who had been shaking with fear through it all, started up and fled in terror.

Filo’s story lost nothing in his telling and the superstitious crew went very soberly to rest that night. W—— and I lay, as we so often did, staring wonderingly out into the night,—the marvellous tropical night.

It was all like a dream; the shining water of the _caño_, the deep, mysterious forest growing down to the water’s edge, the cries of unknown birds and beasts, the impressive southern cross and the extraordinary brilliancy of the moonlight shining down upon the tiny deck of the “Josefa Jacinta,” and upon us and the sleeping forms of its dusky crew.

We were sometimes awakened in the night by a sudden bright light in our faces. It was Maestro making a fire, in which operation he used alarming quantities of kerosene, to prepare the midnight repast for the crew, who whenever they woke in the night would call loudly “_Maestro—café!_”

[Illustration: FIG. 46. GUARAUNO SQUAWS AND CHILD WITH MONKEY.]

Again the sound of an unusually heavy downpour of tropical rain on the tarpaulin overhead would waken us, and I would occasionally discover that my feet were in a puddle of water. A shifting of beds to prevent our being drowned while we slept would invariably result in our feet being higher than our heads, and because of the horde of mosquitoes which found their way in while the beds were being moved, the rest of that night would be sleepless.

With the dawn came the roar of the howling monkeys; a dainty _Tigana_[24] picked its way among the mud-flats; a flock of _Hervidores_[80]—which being translated means “boilers,” an appellation perhaps suggested by the notes of these black Cuckoos—bubbled away as cheerily as a bright kettle on a breakfast table. And with these sounds of the dawn all our troubles of the night were forgotten.

After weeks of solitude in the mangrove jungles our prow was headed inland and a long night of silent drifting with the tide brought us to the mouth of the Guanoco River. Here the Captain and the unruly crew at dawn had their usual heated argument as to the management of the boat, with the result that they nearly ran her aground—one of the many narrow escapes which had happened so often as to create but little interest on our part.

Guanoco was a river of bends, around each one of which the Captain assured us we would see the village. But it was twilight before we turned the final bend and saw picturesque Guanoco at the hour of _vespertino_—a hill rising steep and blue, with the silvery river at its foot and a cluster of little thatched huts perched one above another on the hillside.

It was delightful to feel solid ground under one’s feet again and we could hardly get over our accustomed walk of “three steps and over-board.”

Here in our wilderness we found an unexpected home. Through the kindness of our cordial friends in Trinidad—Mr. Eugene André and Mr. Ellis Grell—we had letters to the men in charge of the pitch lake at Guanoco and it was to this great lake that the tiny settlement of Guanoco owed its being.

As soon as we reached the wharf, a young Venezuelan came on board, introducing himself as Señor Bernardo Lugo y Escobar,—one of the officials of the Pitch Lake Company, and explaining that Mr. Grell had written him that we might possibly come to Guanoco and that we were to be entertained at the headquarters for as long as we chose to stay. Mr. Lugo was most urgent in his hospitality and I knew well of what the sloop dinner would consist. Maestro and I would hold a perfectly futile consultation in which we would decide upon the only possible menu—_funche_ (which is the Venezuelan name for cornmeal mush), dried pea soup and cocoa. I must explain that the lack of variety in our larder was due to the fact that we had expected to be able to supplement our canned goods with fresh fish and game, both of which proved difficult to obtain, the latter because of the impossibility in this vast swamp of ever finding the game after it was shot. The experience taught us the useful lesson which every camper and explorer learns sooner or later, sometimes alas! _too_ late—never to depend upon the game of the country, but always to plan your provisions as if game did not exist. Then when one gets it, it comes as an unexpected luxury.

But to return to my visions of a good dinner in the preparation of which I had no part or responsibility. Perhaps there would also be the luxury of a real bath. I was roused from these attractive reflections by the voice of the Captain politely refusing Mr. Lugo’s invitation for the night, and saying that we would not go ashore until the next day. Whereupon I diplomatically remarked in English,—that Mr. Lugo might not understand,—that I thought Mr. Lugo’s feelings would be hurt if we refused, and as long as we were to go the next day and there was nothing to be gained by spending the night on the sloop, why not gratify him by going at once.

And so it came about that in a few minutes more we were at “Headquarters.” As the house was quite invisible from the water, we had imagined that we were to go to one of the thatched huts which we had seen from the river.

To our surprise, around the base of the hill we found ourselves going up a pretty palm bordered walk which led to a low, massive, fort-like building.

[Illustration: FIG. 47. PITCH LAKE, SHOWING FRESHLY DUG PIT FILLED WITH WATER; AN OLDER PIT FILLED WITH SOFT PITCH, BOTH SURROUNDED BY THE HARD SURFACE PITCH.]

In the broad open hall were comfortable rocking chairs, in striking contrast to the sloop on which we had taken turns sitting on the one stool which the little craft possessed. In the _patio_ was a table laid for dinner—with a big black Trinidad negro bringing in steaming dishes.

There is no hospitality anywhere quite equal to that of the wilderness. Your host does not arrange your visit from the Saturday to the Monday, fitting you in between a multitude of other engagements. A wilderness welcome is as genial and inevitable as the tropical sunshine. Your visit is an event—a mile-stone in the long road of lonely months of exile—months which sometimes lengthen into years. Our very interesting friend Mr. Eugene André of Trinidad told us that on one of his many orchid-hunting expeditions he had chanced to land at a certain God-forsaken little port on the west coast of Colombia. Mr. André had wondered why the fare to this port from Panama should be $30—while the return passage was $100. The problem was solved after he had seen the port—desolate, barren, inaccessible and fever and insect ridden—one might be induced to pay $30 to get there provided one knew not what manner of place it was. But to get away—one would pay any sum and gladly. So it is that the little coastwise steamboat company calmly demands $100 to return the unfortunate traveller to Panama—and _gets_ it.

At this forlorn spot there were stationed two young men, I forget now in what capacity, who for many months had not seen an intelligent human being. Into the empty monotony of their lives, Mr. André appeared. It mattered not to those lonely young men who he was, nor where he came from. His welcome was—“Stay with us. Stay a year—or ten years. We know all about each other. We’ve talked about everything until there is nothing left to say—we even know how much sugar we each like in our tea and who our great grandmothers were, and who we think wrote Shakespeare’s plays;—and we are so bored and so glad to see a new face.”

Thus it is that everywhere in the South American wilderness the English-speaking stranger is made welcome by his kind, and we found Guanoco no exception to this rule.

The pretty Spanish greeting is—“The house is yours” and during our stay at the Pitch Lake, the headquarters became really ours. We were given the best room; the servants were put at our disposal: and best of all we were perfectly free to come and go as we pleased; and with everything done to facilitate our work. All this we owed also to the instructions of Mr. Ellis Grell, who was then financing the Pitch Lake Company and to the kindness of Mr. Lynch and Mr. Stoute, two young West Indians employed by the company.

[Illustration: FIG. 48. DIGGING OUT THE BLACK, WAXLIKE PITCH.]

We were tired that first night at Guanoco. The night before had been a hard one—sailing all night long, with the boom swinging back and forth and making impossible the hanging of our mosquito nets. All through the night the Captain and his crew worked. Down the narrow river the Captain skilfully guided the sloop in the darkness of a moonless night, following the line of the trees against the sky to mark the channel. His commanding old voice rang from stern to bow, the orders being there repeated by the mate to the sailors who were towing us, and who paused in the wild melody which they chanted through that wonderful night, to listen and obey. It was a difficult and dangerous task—the guiding of that sloop down so narrow and winding a river: and even the unruly crew were obedient that night, rendering the homage which in time of danger the ignorant unconsciously yield to a superior intelligence.

When we wondered at the Captain’s confidence, he replied in his deep voice, “Ah yes!—but I am old here and I know these caños as I do my house.” And indeed here the curtain had risen upon his life and here it was likely to fall at the end of the last act.

When finally quite exhausted we had laid down upon the deck to sleep, it was to fall into so profound a slumber that the mosquitoes devoured us unmolested, in spite of our head nets which proved insufficient protection.

So it was that on that first night at Guanoco we were very tired. I sat lazily rocking in the cool evening breeze, anointing my irritating bites with Tango, a preparation dependent upon faith cure for its healing properties—and listening to the desultory talk of the young men. The conversation was desultory, however, only so long as the Venezuelan element of the household was present. On this occasion that element was represented by the young Mr. Lugo who had met us at the wharf. After he had gone out on some errand the story of Pitch Lake was poured into our interested ears. It was a story of intrigue and revolution and treason quite worthy of some mediæval court. First there was the passive Venezuelan possession; then the active, enterprising, money-making reign of the North American; having as its natural result the jealousy of Castro, his oppression and injustice to the American Company; their rebellion, in which they aided a great revolution against Castro; his revenge being to seize the property and put it in charge of Venezuelans. Then came the departure of the American Company, which had done so much to develop the Pitch Lake, followed by the arrival of the Venezuelans appointed by the Government—men who knew just about as much about managing a great Pitch Lake as they did about guiding an aëroplane. We were told of the time long before the advent of the Lugo family—when for weeks it was necessary to live always on the alert, with revolver ever ready for defence; when the very men with whom one sat down at table were capable of attempting to poison the food, in order to free themselves of English-speaking men, who might perhaps witness some ugly deed of treachery or defalcation.

This is the very long story in a nutshell. We began then to understand why the house was so fort-like in structure. It had been built to withstand assault. Only a few months before our visit it had been attacked by a party of Revolutionists who hoped to find money in the company safe; and five men had been killed and several injured.

This thrilling tale was told in the emotionless matter-of-fact way in which one might describe the moves in a game of chess.

From the moment our sloop sailed out of the harbor of Port of Spain the memory of the old familiar every-day world had seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer. Was it possible that there really was such a place as New York City, with its clanging street-cars, its trains and subways and elevated roads thronged with people, _en masse_ all as much alike as an army of ants? At that very hour the New York Theatres were pouring their gay crowds into the brilliantly lighted streets. How far away it all seemed, down there in the great primeval forest of another continent! We walked out under the stars to the edge of the forest, black and mysterious, teeming with the hidden life, which we were so eager to study. Our world, for the present, was this forest wilderness, stretching unbroken for mile upon mile, with only the twinkling lights of Guanoco to remind us of human habitations. I dreamed that night of being stabbed in the back by a howling monkey, while the safe of the Pitch Lake Company was broken into by a band of shrieking Macaws!

On the morning after our arrival at Guanoco we sorrowfully said good-by to the “Josefa Jacinta.” As we watched her sail away we consoled ourselves by planning another and a longer trip on her—a trip which never took place. Looking back after almost two years I realize that life can bring me few experiences more full of interest and charm than those days on a little Venezuelan sloop exploring the mysterious untrodden mangroves! “How _could_ you enjoy it?” I am often asked: but the trifling discomforts were all in the day’s work and more than compensated by the beauty and freedom and wonder of it all. They served to make us know that it was not all a dream.

[Illustration: FIG. 49. LOADING PITCH ON THE HAND CARS.]

Our days at Guanoco began early and were full to overflowing of interest and of work. In the heat of midday we pressed flowers, skinned birds and wrote up our journals, but in spite of being so busy, we found time to get a little into the atmosphere of the human life.

Here is the daily program at the lake of pitch,—this little outpost of humanity, deep hidden in the tropical jungle. At daybreak the group of sheds and thatched huts gives up a horde of Trinidadian negroes; great black fellows, giants in strength, children in mind. Amid a perfect medley of excitement and uproar, breakfast is prepared. We hear sounds which _must_ mean at least the violent death of several, and as one listens to the shrieks and groans, the imagination easily supplies the terrible blows and struggles. But a closer look only shows one of these great children down on his knees, calling on everything which occurs to him or enters his vision to witness that he did _not_ steal the sixpence from _Napoleon_, of which some one has accused him, perhaps in jest.

Yet all this is calmness compared to the later rush for the best cars to use in the day’s work. It would delight a Sophomore’s heart to see the mêlée. But somehow all is straightened out and off go the hand trucks, crawling along the rickety rails out over the lake, like beads sliding along a string. Here a car has reached the end of the line. The negro selects a place fairly clear of vegetation, takes his broad adze, and shears away the upper few inches of roots and mould. Then with deep swift strokes he outlines a big chunk of the shiny black gum, cuts it loose, and carries it on his head to his car. So malleable is the pitch that by the time he has half filled the little iron truck the pitch has settled down and filled all interstices. He trundles back the car and dumps it into one of the larger wooden trucks which will take it to Guanoco. He now receives a check which is redeemable for fifteen cents and the first link in the commercialization of the pitch is finished. Along the wavering line of temporary rails over which the hand-cars are pushed back and forth, are dozens of grave-like holes. Those nearer the railroad end are smooth-edged and filled with soft pitch on which as yet no vegetation has taken root. Farther along they are filled with water, and still farther we find them in the process of being excavated.

[Illustration: FIG. 50. MANGROVE WILDERNESS FROM THE HIGH LAND AT GUANOCO.]

The men dig down until they have reached a depth of five or six feet, and then start in a new place. The hole is filled by the first rain; water-bugs fly to the little pool, frogs lay their eggs in it, queer fish wriggle their way to it and for a brief space it supports a considerable aquatic life. Then new soft pitch begins to ooze up and in a few more weeks the plug of viscid black gum has reached the level of the ground and the scar is soon healed over by a thin growth of grass.

In the rainy season the holes fill at once with water, and indeed the whole plain is immersed to the depth of a foot or more; then the men have to work up to their waists in water, chopping beneath the surface, prying the pieces loose with their toes and tearing the chunks off by taking long breaths and reaching far down for a few seconds at a time.

When we cross our asphalt streets and smell the tarry odor and feel its softness under a mid-summer’s sun, let us think of the strange lake in the tropical wilderness.

The table talk at “Headquarters,” was often most amusing. Torrents of Spanish eloquence and gesticulations kept our English ears ever on the alert to follow the meaning, and our sense of humor ever under strict control to preserve well-bred gravity when such statements were made as “Venezuela leads not only all the South American countries, but all those of North America as well, in literature, art, science and commerce. When our General Blank went to New York the greatest ovation ever paid any general in the world was given him. New York remained amazed!”

Once only did I look amused and I have never quite recovered from my mortification at thus disgracing myself. Whatever the faults of the Spaniard may be, he never smiles when he is not intended to; not even at the laughable mistakes which we foreigners make when we are learning his beautiful language. I try to say in extenuation of my unseemly mirth that the Spaniard has no sense of humor and that we should very much prefer having him laugh at our mistakes and letting us correct them. But all to no purpose. I know that I did not behave like a well conducted _Venezolana_, and nothing can alter that fact.

The three Venezuelans had been put in charge of the Pitch Lake,—because their “Sister’s husband’s niece” had power in the court of Castro. Among their regular duties they included singing airs from the operas, reading Don Quixote and the Caracas newspapers and playing dominos.

[Illustration: FIG. 51. INHABITANTS OF GUANOCO ASSEMBLED FOR A DANCE.]

They had provided themselves with elaborate costumes for the rôle; they carried big revolvers and wore huge green and white cork helmets, khaki riding clothes, puttees, spurs, and carried riding whips. There was not a horse within fifty miles! No horse, even had there been one, could penetrate the tiny forest trails about Guanoco.

In the dancing sunlight and shadows and the orchid-fragrant air it was hard to picture spilt blood and intrigue and treachery, and harder still to prophesy the sad times that were to come upon Guanoco. Yet while we were there the air teemed with revolutionary rumors. The _Jefe civil_, as the chief magistrate was called, was off day after day investigating first one suspicion and then another, returning utterly spent with the exhaustion of unresting days and nights upon the trail. Revolutionists had attempted to land guns on the near-by coast. There had been a skirmish and several men had been killed.

All the available guns and ammunition were gotten together and every night the doors were barred securely; for what the revolutionists chiefly needed was money, and should there be an uprising in northeastern Venezuela, the Pitch Lake headquarters would be the first point of attack. It was in charge of Castro sympathizers, there might be large sums of money in the Company’s safe and it was practically unprotected.

In the meantime diplomatic relations between our United States and Venezuela had been severed and one morning a United States battleship was discovered lying quietly in the harbor of La Guayra. The numbers of _la Constitucional_—a month old when they reached us—were beginning to talk of war and to boast of the ease with which Venezuela would erase the United States of America from the face of the globe. Bitter things were said about the sister republic in the north. And there we were living on the bone of contention itself.

It was about this time that I began to see the advisability of being more than ordinarily civil; and so it happened that I was led into playing cards for the first and only time for money and that on a Sunday! We had been working almost incessantly and I had begun to feel that, even if it was to Mr. Grell that we were indebted for the hospitality, it was not quite nice for us to appear only at “feeding time,” particularly as our long days out of doors gave us such appalling appetites. So on this occasion when I was asked to make a fourth at cards, I saw no way out of it. Moreover, the battleship lay in the harbor of La Guayra, and my countrymen were in sad disfavor in Venezuela. W—— had ignominiously deserted and gone to bed, so there was only one sleepy little woman left to uphold the honor of a great nation!

The game was “_Siete y media_,”—“seven and a half.” I forget the rules now. I only remember that they seemed very intricate as explained to me in Spanish. Fortunately for me, the stakes were low, for I steadily lost all the time. “_Grano por grano la gallina come_,” quoted Mr. Lugo,—“grain by grain the hen eats.”

Later he remarked how he hated to win from the señorita—but the señorita observed that he hated it much as the famous walrus wept for the oysters while—

“... he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.”

I was wofully tired and sleepy. I did not at all know the etiquette of gambling! And I thought the loser must not be a “quitter”—even if the extent of her losses was only “_dos reales_,” or twenty-five cents. So I played on until at midnight the game was declared over.

It is well that virtue is its own reward, as it has no other, for I was told the next morning by a husband who had had a perfectly good night’s sleep—that I was a very foolish person indeed to sit up playing cards with those men, and that the loser could always stop: it was the winner who must not propose it.

[Illustration: FIG. 52. A PALM-SHEATH ROCKING TOY.]

The negroes from the Pitch Lake always came down on Saturday nights and serenaded us with wild Creole airs, and at the sound of the quaterns and violins huge hairy tarantulas would come forth from their hiding-places in our rooms and creep briskly here and there over walls and floor. We were greatly interested in this effect of the vibrations of sound, but we never bothered the great creatures in their strange “tarentelles,” and they paid no attention to us. The venomous effect of the bites of all these eight or hundred-legged beings is greatly exaggerated, and there is absolutely no serious danger to a healthy person with good red blood in his veins; in some of the half-starved, rum-drinking natives the scratch of a pin would induce blood-poisoning.

Labor was easily secured in Guanoco. The morning after our arrival we expressed a wish to employ a boy to act as attendant, carrying camera, gun, butterfly net, etc., when we went on our long tramps. One of the young men at headquarters went to the door and called “_muchacho_,” and at once a small boy appeared. I should have judged his age to be between eleven and twelve; but he himself did not know. He said his grandmother was “keeping his age.” A charming idea is that Venezuelan custom of having some responsible member of the family keep all the ages. Think of being able to say truthfully that you really do not know how old you are! But then a Venezuelan woman never confesses to more than twenty-seven, no matter what may have been the flight of time.

Our small servant’s name proved to be Maximiliano Romero, and with supreme self possession, boldly spitting to the right and left, he professed himself willing to enter our service. Like a true Venezuelan he used expectoration to punctuate all his remarks. What a quaint little figure he was, topped by a huge straw hat with a high peaked crown; the hat the work of the little brown hands of Max himself, for he was a hat-maker by profession. His face was alert but very grave. He rarely smiled, but when he did it was in no half-hearted way, but with an abandon of childish glee. I found myself devoting a good deal of valuable time to trying to bring into being that charming smile of Maximiliano’s. One never knew just what would touch the right chord. Once he went off into gales of merriment at the escape of a lizard which we were trying to photograph. He always saw the funny side of our mishaps.

[Illustration: FIG. 53. SHEATH IN FIG. 52, COVERING THE FLOWER OF A PALM.]

Max showed plainly in what esteem he held naturalists. The first day he went out with us he was neatly dressed in dark blue jeans. When he appeared on the second morning we did not recognize him. A small ragamuffin stood before us, stamping like a pony to drive away the flies, which hovered about his ankles. His clothes were a mass of rags—it was impossible to say what had been the original color or material. Max had taken our measure and decided that people who tramped through the “bush” as we did were not worthy of anything better than rags.

Sometimes in the jungle we would meet Indian women who, living far in the interior, were on their way to Guanoco to buy machetes, fish-hooks and other articles of civilization. They would always stop and make friends with us, with child-like curiosity asking where we came from, and why we wanted birds and lizards and butterflies, and murmuring the words dear to every woman’s heart in all lands, “_Que jovencita!_” which literally translated is “What a young little thing!” Very simple-hearted are these poor Indian women and so hard are their lives that at a very early age do they cease to be _jovencita_.

We would often meet the wandering tribes of Guarauno Indians, who live nearly always upon the march, carrying all their worldly possessions upon their backs and sleeping wherever night happens to find them. They very rarely knew even a word of Spanish and shunned any intercourse with strangers, scorning the inventions of civilization and using the poisoned arrows of their ancestors.

One Sunday morning one of the laborers at the near-by Pitch Lake, bearing the pious name of José de Jesus Zamoro, came into headquarters to invite us to a dance that afternoon at his house. The house of Zamoro had nothing particularly to recommend it as a ballroom; for the floor was of dirt, the ceiling low and the walls windowless. But it was crowded; the air stifling and the dancers dripping with perspiration. The music was wild and strange, the man who shook the _maracas_—an instrument consisting of two gourds filled with dried seeds which is shaken in time to the music—often breaking into a weird song, making up the words as he went along, with some joke about each dancer. As the songster’s zeal waxed high he described himself as being so great that “where he stood the earth trembled.”

Between dances the ladies’ last partners were supposed to take them into the next room where drinks were for sale. This was the explanation of Zamoro’s zeal for dances: music and dance hall were free, but a substantial profit came from the drinks.

The ball gowns had but one beauty—that of originality. There was always an unfortunate hiatus between bodices and skirts, which was partly concealed by the long straight black hair which hung down the backs of the women. The shoes were in a piteous condition, never the right size, very seldom mates and not infrequently both were for the same foot. But all the skirts had trains and all ears bore ear-rings. We were told that these women often danced all day and all night, until they became perfectly dazed, their feet moving mechanically in time to the music of the national dance—the _joropa_, which is a cross between a clog dance and a waltz.

We saw dancing the women whose _curiara_ had so narrowly escaped a fatal collision with our sloop in the Guarapiche. The Captain had said they were leaving Maturin “to operate some speculation in Guanoco—perhaps even to find husbands.” And here among so many men, for the population of Guanoco was chiefly composed of men employed at the lake, surely there was hope, even for adventuresses so black and uncouth as these. Here also we met one of Guanoco’s most amusing characters, a big black Trinidad negro. He was full of the superiority of one who had seen the world; for he had once been to England as stateroom steward on one of the big steamers. He now dropped his h’s, called his wife “Lady Mackáy” and on Sundays wore a monocle.

It was twilight as we walked home through the little settlement. At one of the huts two little naked babies were playing “rock-a-by” in the great curved sheaths which protect the blossom of the moriche, or eta palm. At another a child came out and sang a little Spanish song for us—all about her sins and the confession she must make to the priest, the refrain being “_Mi penetencia! mi penetencia!_” and she sang it with her small hands clasped and her head devoutly bowed. A few coins made the wee penitent superlatively happy. Her mother must have taught her the song, for in Guanoco there was no priest, no school, no doctor. The two young West Indians at headquarters (neither much more than twenty years old) officiated at all funerals, being Catholic or Protestant, in Spanish or English, as the case demanded. They prescribed for all diseases, from the prevalent fever to the woman who was suffering greatly but could give no more definite description of her trouble than that she had a “pain that walked.”

[Illustration: FIG. 54. PRIESTLESS CHAPEL AT GUANOCO.]

I could never understand the fever so common at Guanoco: for I never knew a place more free from mosquitoes and from insects of every description. We were continually in the sun and often in the rain, yet we both kept in perfect health.

The women of the village had converted a small open shed into a chapel, with an altar, on which were all the offerings they could make, a few candles, some bits of gilt paper and tinsel, a rude wooden cross and a wretched little chromo of the Virgin. Here, as we passed, we saw the women kneeling, for where else could they take their troubles!

At last our Venezuelan experiences were a thing of the past, and we were homeward bound, leaving behind us the dear delightful never-know-what’s-going-to-happen life; and realizing, as our ship cut her way through the countless “knots” of dashing waves, that as Maximiliano had said with a shake of his head, when we laughingly asked him if he did not want to go with us, “_esta tan léjos_”—it is so far!

* * * * *

Much has happened at Guanoco since the days of our visit.

Very soon after our departure, Castro fearing the smouldering revolutionary plots in Trinidad, ordered all the ports of eastern Venezuela closed. Later came the deadly bubonic plague sealing for many months all the ports of the unfortunate country. Then indeed trouble descended upon poor little Guanoco. It was an essentially non-agricultural part of the country. The one industry had been the digging of pitch, the company’s boat plying between Guanoco and Trinidad having brought all necessary supplies. Now with all communication cut off the people were in a piteous condition.

[Illustration: FIG. 55. GUARAUNO INDIAN PAPOOSE.]

In the revolution of the Wheel of Fate—which whirls so rapidly in Venezuela,—the Lugo family had been deposed and a new Venezuelan administrator appointed in their place. Having known the Lugos, I like to think that they would have been less heartless than their successor, who, so the report goes, sold what supplies there were to the starving people at cruelly exorbitant prices.

No matter how much one may love Nature, one cannot help feeling how unmoved she is in the face of suffering. Human beings might starve and sicken and die at Guanoco, but the sunshine would be just as warm and glowing and the wind in the palm trees just as musical as ever.

With the cutting off of communication between Venezuela and Trinidad, Captain Truxillo’s occupation was gone. The “Josefa Jacinta” no longer plied busily back and forth between Port of Spain and Maturin, driving a brisk trade in hammocks, groceries and hides; and so at last she passed from the possession of Captain Truxillo to that of some more prosperous trader who could afford to wait for the reopening of commerce.

For a year our old Captain watched his little vessel guided out of the harbor of Port of Spain, with a strange hand at the helm, and a strange voice in command. Then one day she sailed away never to return—but to be run aground and lost on a desolate and lonely part of the Venezuelan coast.

What became of her new Captain and crew we never heard. We knew only that the “Josefa Jacinta” was lost, and that we could never sail her again, except on dream caños in a phantom wilderness.

PART II

OUR SECOND SEARCH

BRITISH GUIANA

[Illustration: FIG. 56. MAP OF OUR THREE EXPEDITIONS INTO BRITISH GUIANA.]