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Afloat in the Forest

Chapter Sixty Eight. A Fish-Cow at Pasture

The Irishman was no wiser for Munday’s answer, “The juarouá.”

“But what is it?” he again asked, curious to learn something of the creature. “Is it a fish or a quadruped?”

“A peixe-boi, – a peixe-boi!” hurriedly answered the tapuyo. “That’s how the whites call it. Now you know.”

“But I don’t, though, not a bit betther than before. A pikes-boy! Troth, it don’t look much like a pike at all, at all. If it’s a fish av any kind, I should say it was a sale. O, luk there, Munday! Arrah, see now! If it’s the owld pike’s boy, yandher’s the young wan too. See, it has tuk howlt av the tit, an’ ’s sucking away like a calf! An’ luk! the old wan has got howlt av it with her flipper, an’ ’s kapin’ it up to the breast! Save us! did hever I see such a thing!”

The sight was indeed one to astonish the Irishman, since it has from all time astonished the Amazonian Indians themselves, in spite of its frequency. They cannot understand so unusual a habit as that of a fish suckling its young; for they naturally think that the peixe-boi is a fish, instead of a cetacean, and they therefore continue to regard it with curious feelings, as a creature not to be classified in the ordinary way.

“Hush!” whispered the Indian, with a sign to Tom to keep quiet. “Sit still! make no noise. There’s a chance of our capturing the juarouá, – a good chance, now that I see the juarouá-i (little one) along with it. Don’t wake the others yet. The juarouá can see like a vulture, and hear like an eagle, though it has such little eyes and ears. Hush!”

The peixe-boi had by this time got abreast of the dead-wood, and was swimming slowly past it. A little beyond there was a sort of bay, opening in among the trees, towards which it appeared to be directing its course, suckling the calf as it swam.

“Good,” said Munday, softly. “I guess what it’s going after up there. Don’t you see something lying along the water?”

“Yes; but it’s some sort av wather-grass.”

“That’s just it.”

“An’ what would it want wid the grass? Yez don’t mane to till me it ates grass?”

“Eats nothing else, and this is just the sort it feeds on. Very like that’s its pasturing place. So much the better if it is, because it will stay there till morning, and give me a chance to kill it.”

“But why can’t yez kill it now?” said Tom.

“For want of a proper weapon. My knife is of no use. The juarouá is too cunning to let one come so near. If it come back in the morning, I will take care to be ready for it. From it we can get meat enough for a long voyage. See, it has begun to browse!”

Sure enough it had, just as the Indian said, commenced pasturing upon the long blades of grass that spread horizontally over the surface; and just as a cow gathers the meadow sward into her huge mouth, at intervals protruding her tongue to secure it, so did the great water cow of the Amazon spread her broad lips and extend her rough tongue to take in the floating herbage of the Gapo.

Chapter Sixty Nine. The Pashuba Spear

Munday was now prepared to set out on a little exploring excursion, as he said; so, enjoining upon Tom, who was determined to awake the sleepers that they might share the sight of the feeding fish-cow, to keep them all strictly quiet until his return, he slipped softly into the water and swam noiselessly away.

The enforced silence was tedious enough to the party, who were all eager to talk about the strange spectacle they saw, and it would surely have been soon broken, had not the Indian returned with a new object for their curiosity. He had stolen off, taking with him only his knife. At his reappearance he had the knife still with him, and another weapon as well, which the knife had enabled him to procure. It was a staff of about twelve feet in length, straight as a rush, slightly tapering, and pointed at the end like a spear. In fact, it was a spear, which he had been manufacturing during his hour of absence out of a split stem of the pashuba palm. Not far off he had found one of these trees, a water-loving species, – the Martea exorhuza, – whose stems are supported upon slanting roots, that stand many feet above the surface of the soil. With the skill known only to an Amazonian Indian in the use of a knife-blade, he had split the pashuba, (hard as iron on the outside, but soft at the heart,) and out of one of the split pieces had he hastily fashioned his spear. Its point only needed to be submitted to fire, and then steel itself would not serve better for a spear-head. Fortunately the hearth was not yet cold. A few red cinders smouldered by the wet circle, and, thrusting his spear point among them, the Indian waited for it to become hardened. When done to his satisfaction, he drew it out of the ashes, scraped it to a keen point with the blade of his knife, and then announced himself ready to attack the juarouá.

The amphibious animal was yet there, its head visible above the bed of grass upon which it was still grazing. Munday, while rejoiced at the circumstance, expressed himself also surprised at it. He had not been sanguine of finding it on his return with the spear, and, while fabricating the weapon, he had only been encouraged by the expectation that the peixe-boi, if gone away for the night, would return to its grazing ground in the morning. As it was now, it could not have afforded him a better opportunity for striking it. It was reclining near the surface, its head several inches above it, and directly under a large tree, whose lower limbs, extending horizontally, almost dropped into the water. If he could but get unperceived upon one of those limbs, it would be an easy matter to drive the spear into its body as far as his strength would enable him.

If any man could swim noiselessly through the water, climb silently into the tree, and steal without making sound along its limbs, that man was the Mundurucú. In less time than you could count a thousand, he had successfully accomplished this, and was crouching upon a limb right over the cow. In an instant his spear was seen to descend as the spectators were expecting it to do; but to their astonishment, instead of striking the body of the peixe-boi, it pierced into the water several feet from the snout of the animal! What could it mean? Surely the skilled harpooner of fish-cattle could not have made such a stray stroke. Certainly he had not touched the cow! Had he speared anything?

“He’s killed the calf!” cried Tipperary Tom. “Luk yandher! Don’t yez see its carcass floatin’ in the wather?”

Still the spectators could not understand it. Why should the calf have been killed, which would scarce give them a supper, and the cow spared, that would have provisioned the whole crew for a month? Why had the chance been thrown away? Was it thrown away? They only thought so, while expecting the peixe-boi to escape. But they were quickly undeceived. They had not reckoned upon the strong maternal instincts of that amphibious mother, – instincts that annihilate all sense of danger, and prompt a reckless rushing upon death in the companionship or for the protection of the beloved offspring. It was too late to protect the tiny creature, but the mother recked not of this. Danger deterred her not from approaching it again and again, each time receiving a fresh stab from that terrible stick, until, with a long-drawn sigh, she expired among the sedge.

These animals are extremely tenacious of life, and a single, thrust from such a weapon as he wielded would only have put the peixe-boi to flight, never to be encountered again. The harpoon alone, with its barbed head and floats, can secure them for a second strike; and not being provided with this weapon, nor the means of making it, the old tapuyo knew that his only chance was to act as he had done. Experience had made him a believer in the affection of the animal, and the result proved that he had not mistaken its strength.

Chapter Seventy. Curing the Fish-Cow

Nothing was done for that night. All slept contentedly on the dead-wood, which next day became the scene of a series of curious operations. This did not differ very much from the spectacle that might be witnessed in the midst of the wide ocean, when whalemen have struck one of the great leviathans of the deep, and brought their ship alongside for the purpose of cutting it up.

In like manner as the whale is “flensed,” so was the fish-cow, Munday performing the operation with his knife, by first skinning the creature, and then separating the flesh into broad strips or steaks, which were afterwards make into charqui, by being hung up in the sun.

Previous to this, however, many “griskins” – as Tom called them – had been cut from the carcass, and, broiled over the fire kindled upon the log, had furnished both supper and breakfast to the party. No squeamishness was shown by any one. Hunger forbade it; and, indeed, whether with sharp appetites or not, there was no reason why they should not relish one of the most coveted articles of animal food to be obtained in Amazonia. The taste was that of pork; though there were parts of the flesh of a somewhat coarser grain, and inferior in flavour to the real dairy-fed pig.

The day was occupied in making it ready for curing, which would take several days’ exposure under the hot sun. Before night, however, they had it separated into thin slices, and suspended upon a sort of clothes-line, which, by means of poles and sipos, Munday had rigged upon the log. The lean parts alone were to be preserved, for the fat which lies between these, in thick layers of a greenish colour and fishy flavour, is considered rather strong for the stomach, – even of an Indian not over nice about such matters. When a peixe-boi has been harpooned in the usual manner, this is not thrown away, or wasted. Put into a proper boiling-pot, it yields a very good kind of oil, – ten or twelve gallons being obtained from an individual of the largest and fattest kind.

In the present instance, the fat was disregarded and flung back into the flood, while the bones, as they were laid bare, were served in a similar fashion. The skin, however, varying from an inch in thickness over the back, to half an inch under the abdomen, and which Munday had removed with considerable care, was stowed away in a hollow place upon the log. Why it was kept, none of the others could guess. Perhaps the Indian meant it as something to fall back upon in the event of the charqui giving out.

It was again night by the time the cow-skin was deposited in its place, and of course no journey could be attempted for that day. On the morrow they intended to commence the voyage which it was hoped would bring them to the other side of the lagoa, if not within sight of land. As they ate their second supper of amphibious steaks, they felt in better spirits than for many days. They were not troubled with hunger or thirst; they were not tortured by sitting astride the branches of a tree; and the knowledge that they had now a craft capable of carrying them – however slow might be the rate – inspired them with pleasant expectations. Their conversation was more cheerful than usual, and during the after-supper hour it turned chiefly on the attributes and habits of the strange animal which Munday had so cleverly dissected.

Most of the information about its habits was supplied by the Indian himself, who had learned them by personal experience; though many points in its natural history were given by the patron, who drew his knowledge of it from books. Trevannion told them that a similar creature – though believed to be of a different species – was found in the sea; but generally near to some coast where there was fresh water flowing in by the estuary of a river. One kind in the Indian seas was known by the name of dugong, and another in the West Indies as the manati or manatee, – called by the French lamantin. The Spaniards also know it by the name of vaca marina (sea-cow), the identical name given by the Dutch of the Cape Colony to the hippopotamus, – of course a very different animal.

The manati is supposed to have been so named from its fins, or flippers, bearing some resemblance to the hands of a human being, – in Spanish, manos, – entitling it to the appellation of the “handed” animal. But the learned Humboldt has shown that this derivation would be contrary to the idiom of the Spanish language, which would have made the word manudo or manon, and not manati. It is therefore more likely that this name is the one by which it was known to the aborigines of the southern coast of Cuba, where the creature was first seen by the discoverers of America. Certain it is that the sea species of the West Indies and the Guianian coast is much larger than that found in the Amazon and other South American rivers; the former being sometimes found full twenty feet in length, while the length of the fish-cow of South America rarely reaches ten.

Here Munday took up the thread of the discourse, and informed the circle of listeners that there were several species of juarouá – this was the name he gave it – in the waters of the Amazon. He knew of three kinds, that were distinct, not only in size, but in shape, – the difference being chiefly observable in the fashion of the fins and tail. There was also some difference in their colour, – one species being much lighter in hue than the others, with a pale cream-coloured belly; while the abdomen of the common kind is of a slaty lead, with some pinkish white spots scattered thinly over it.

A peculiar characteristic of the peixe-boi is discovered in if lungs, – no doubt having something to do with its amphibious existence. These, when taken out of the animal and inflated by blowing into them, swell up to the lightness and dimensions of an India-rubber swimming-belt; so that, as young Richard observed while so inflating them, they could spare at least one set of the sapucaya-shells, if once more compelled to take to the water.

Munday gave a very good account of the mode practised in capturing the juarouá, not only by the Indians of his own tribe, but by all others in the Amazon valley. The hunter of the peixe-boi – or fisher, as we should rather call him – provides himself with a montaria (a light canoe) and a harpoon. He rows to the spot where the creature may be expected to appear, – usually some solitary lagoon or quiet spot out of the current, where there is a species of grass forming its favourite food. At certain hours the animal comes thither to pasture. Sometimes only a single individual frequents the place, but oftener a pair, with their calves, – never more than two of the latter. At times there may be seen a small herd of old ones.

Their enemy, seated in his canoe, awaits their approach in silence; and then, after they have become forgetful of all save their enjoyment of the succulent grass, he paddles up to them. He makes his advances with the greatest caution; for the fish-cow, unlike its namesake of the farm-yard, is a shy and suspicious animal. The plunge of the paddle, or a rude ripple of the water against the sides of the montaria, would frighten it from its food, and send it off into the open water, where it could not be approached.

The occupant of the canoe is aware of this, and takes care not to make the slightest disturbance, till he has got within striking distance. He then rises gently into a half-crouching attitude, takes the measure of the distance between him and his victim, and throws his harpoon with unerring aim. A line attached to the shaft of the weapon secures the wounded animal from getting clear away. It may dive to the bottom, or rush madly along the surface, but can only go so far as that terrible tether will allow it, to be dragged back towards the montaria, where its struggles are usually terminated by two or three thrusts of a spear.

The sport, or, more properly speaking, the trade, of harpooning this river cetacean, is followed by most of the Amazonian Indians. There is not much of it done during the season of the floods. Then the animals, becoming dispersed over a large surface of inundated forest, are seen only on rare occasions; and a chase specially directed to discover them would not repay the trouble and loss of time. It is when the floods have fallen to their lowest, and the lagoas or permanent ponds of water have contracted to their ordinary limits, that the harpooning of the fish-cow becomes profitable. Then it is followed as a regular pursuit, and occupies the Indian for several weeks in the year.

Sometimes a lagoon is discovered in which many of these creatures have congregated, – their retreat to the main river having been cut off by the falling of the floods. On such occasions the tribe making the discovery reaps a plentiful harvest, and butchering becomes the order of the day.

The malocca, or village, is for the time deserted; all hands – men, women, children, and curs – moving off to the lagoa, and making their encampment upon its edge. They bring with them boiling-pots, for trying out the oil, and jars to contain it, and carry it to the port of commerce; for, being of a superior quality, it tempts the Portuguese trader to make long voyages up many remote tributaries where it is obtained.

During these grand fisheries there is much feasting and rejoicing. The “jerked” flesh of the animal, its skin, and, above all, its valuable oil, are exchanged for knives, pigments, trinkets, and, worse still, for cashaca (rum). The last is too freely indulged in; and the fishing rarely comes to a close without weapons being used in a manner to bring wounds, and often death.

As the old Mundurucú had been present at many a hunt of the fish-cow, he was able to give a graphic account of the scenes he had witnessed, to which his companions on the log listened with the greatest attention. So interested were they, that it was not till near midnight that they thought of retiring to rest.

Chapter Seventy One. A Sail of Skin

By daybreak they were astir upon their new craft; and after breakfast they set about moving it away from its moorings. This was not so easily accomplished. The log was a log in every respect; and though once a splendid silk-cotton-tree, covered with gossamer pods, and standing in airy majesty over the surrounding forest, it now lay as heavy as lead among the weeds and water-lilies, as if unwilling to be stirred from the spot into which it had drifted.

You may wonder how they were able to move it at all; supposing, as you must, that they were unprovided with either oars or sails. But they were not so badly off as that. The whole of the preceding day had not been spent in curing the fish-cow. Munday’s knife had done other service during the afternoon hours, and a pair of paddles had been the result. Though of a rude kind, they were perfect enough for the purpose required of them; while at the same time they gave evidence of great ingenuity on the part of the contriver. They had handles of wood, with blades of bone, made from the fish-cow’s shoulder-blades, which Munday had carefully retained with the skin, while allowing the offal to sink. In his own tribe, and elsewhere on the Amazon, he had seen these bones employed – and had himself employed them – as a substitute for the spade. Many a cacao patch and field of mandioca had Munday cleared with the shoulder-blade of a fish-cow; and upon odd occasions he had used one for a paddle. It needed only to shaft them; and this had been done by splicing a pole to each with the tough sipos.

Provided with these paddles, then, – one of them wielded by himself, the other by the sturdy Mozambique, – the log was compelled to make way through the water. The progress was necessarily slow, on account of the tangle of long stalks and broad leaves of the lilies. But it promised to improve, when they should get beyond these into the open part of the lagoon. Out there, moreover, they could see that there was a ripple upon the water; which proved that a breeze had sprung up, not perceptible inside the sheltering selvage of the trees, blowing in the right direction, – that is, from the trees, and towards the lagoa.

You may suppose that the wind could not be of much use to them with such a craft, – not only without a rudder, but unprovided with sails. So thought they all except the old tapuyo. But the Indian had not been navigating the Gapo for more than forty years of his life, without learning how to construct a sail; and, if nothing else had turned up, he could have made a tolerable substitute for one out of many kinds of broad, tough leaves, – especially those of the miriti palm.

He had not revealed his plans to any one of the party. Men of his race rarely declare their intentions until the moment of carrying them into execution. There is a feeling of proud superiority that hinders such condescension. Besides, he had not yet recovered from the sting of humiliation that succeeded the failure of his swimming enterprise; and he was determined not to commit himself again, either by too soon declaring his designs, or too confidently predicting their successful execution.

It was not, therefore, till a stout pole had been set up in a hollow dug out by his knife in the larger end of the log, two cross pieces firmly lashed to it by sipos, and the skin of the fish-cow spread out against these like a huge thick blanket of caoutchouc, and attached to them by the same cordage of creepers, – it was not till then that his companions became fully acquainted with his object in having cut poles, scooped the hollow, and retained the skin of the cow, as he had done to their previous bewilderment.

It was all clear now; and they could not restrain themselves from giving a simultaneous cheer, as they saw the dull dead-wood, under the impulsion of the skin sail, commence a more rapid movement, until it seemed to “walk the water like a thing of life.”