Martin Rattler

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER XIV

  COGITATIONS AND CANOEING ON THE AMAZON--BARNEY'S EXPLOIT WITH ANALLIGATOR--STUBBORN FACTS--REMARKABLE MODE OF SLEEPING

  It is pleasant, when the sun is bright, and the trees are green, and whenflowering shrubs and sweet-smelling tropical trees scent the balmyatmosphere at eventide, to lie extended at full length in a canoe, anddrop easily, silently, yet quickly, down the current of a noble river,under the grateful shadow of overhanging foliage; and to look lazily upat the bright blue sky which appears in broken patches among the verdantleaves; or down at the river in which that bright sky and those greenleaves are reflected; or aside at the mud-banks where greedy vultures aresearching for prey, and lazy alligators are basking in the sun; and tolisten, the while, to the innumerable cries and notes of monkeys,toucans, parrots, orioles, bemtevi or fly-catchers, white-winged and bluechatterers, and all the myriads of birds and beasts that cause theforests of Brazil, above all other forests in the world probably, toresound with the gleeful songs of animated nature!

  It is pleasant to be thus situated, especially when a cool breeze blowsthe mosquitoes and other insects off the water, and relieves you for atime from their incessant attacks. Martin Rattler found it pleasant, ashe thus lay on his back with his diminutive pet marmoset monkey seated onhis breast quietly picking the kernel out of a nut. And BarneyO'Flannagan found it pleasant, as he lay extended in the bow of the canoewith his head leaning over the edge gazing abstractedly at his ownreflected visage, while his hands trailed through the cool water, and hisyoung dog--a shaggy indescribable beast with a bluff nose and a bushytail--watched him intently, as a mother might watch an only child in adangerous situation. And the old sun-dried, and storm-battered, andtime-shrivelled mulatto trader, in those canoe they were embarked andwhose servants they had become, found it pleasant, as he sat thereperched in his little montaria, like an exceedingly ancient and overgrownmonkey, guiding it safely down the waters of the great river of theTocantins.

  Some months have passed since we last parted from our daring adventurers.During that period they had crossed an immense tract of country, andreached the head waters of one of the many streams that carry the surplusmoisture of central Brazil into the Amazon. Here they found an oldtrader, a free mulatto, whose crew of Indians had deserted him,--a commonthing in that country,--and who gladly accepted their services, agreeingto pay them a small wage. And here they sorrowfully, and with manyexpressions of good-will, parted from their kind friend and entertainerthe hermit. His last gift to Martin was the wonderfully small marmosetmonkey before mentioned; and his parting souvenir to Barney was thebluff-nosed dog that watched over him with maternal care, and loved himnext to itself;--as well it might; for if everybody had been of the samespirit as Barney O'Flannagan, the Act for the prevention of cruelty toanimals would never have been passed in Britain.

  It was a peculiar and remarkable and altogether extraordinary monkey,that tiny marmoset. There was a sort of romance connected with it, too;for it had been the mother of an indescribably small infant-monkey,which was killed at the time of its mother's capture. It drank coffee,too, like--like a Frenchman; and would by no means retire to rest atnight until it had had its usual allowance. Then it would fold itsdelicate little hands on its bosom, and close its eyes with anexpression of solemn grief, as if, having had its last earthly wishgratified, it now resigned itself to--sleep. Martin loved it deeply, buthis love was unrequited; for, strange to say, that small monkey lavishedall its affection on Barney's shaggy dog. And the dog knew it, and wasevidently proud of it, and made no objection whatever to the monkeysitting on his back, or his head, or his nose, or doing, in fact,whatever it chose whenever it pleased. When in the canoe, the marmosetplayed with Grampus, as the dog was named; and when on shore itinvariably travelled on his back.

  Martin used to lie in the canoe half asleep and watch the little face ofthe marmoset, until, by some unaccountable mental process, he came tothink of Aunt Dorothy Grumbit. Often did poor Martin dream of his dearold aunt, while sleeping under the shelter of these strange-leavedtropical trees and surrounded by the wild sounds of that distant land,until he dreamed himself back again in the old village. Then he wouldrush to the well-known school, and find all the boys there except BobCroaker, who he felt certain must be away drowning the white kitten; andoff he would go and catch him, sure enough, in the very act, and wouldgive him the old thrashing over again, with all the additional vigouracquired during his rambles abroad thrown into it. Then he would run homein eager haste, and find old Mrs. Grumbit hard at the one thousand ninehundred and ninety-ninth pair of worsted socks; and fat Mr. ArthurJollyboy sitting opposite to her, dressed in the old lady's bed-curtainchintz and high-crowned cap, with the white kitten in his arms and hisspectacles on his chin, watching the process with intense interest, andcautioning her not to forget the "hitch" by any means; whereupon thekitten would fly up in his face, and Mr. Jollyboy would dash through thewindow with a loud howl, and Mrs. Grumbit's face would turn blue; and,uncoiling an enormous tail, she would bound shrieking after him in amongthe trees and disappear! Martin usually wakened at this point, and foundthe marmoset gazing in his face with an expression of sorrowfulsolemnity, and the old sun-dried trader staring vacantly before him as hesteered his light craft down the broad stream of the Tocantins.

  The trader could speak little more English than sufficed to enable him tosay "yes" and "no"; Barney could speak about as much Portuguese asenabled him to say "no" and "yes"; while Martin, by means of a slightsmattering of that language, which he had picked up by ear during thelast few months, mixed now and then with a word or two of Latin, andhelped out by a clever use of the language of signs, succeeded inbecoming the link of communication between the two.

  For many weeks they continued to descend the river; paddlingenergetically when the stream was sluggish, and resting comfortably whenthe stream was strong, and sometimes dragging their canoe over rocks andsand-banks to avoid rapids--passing many villages and plantations of thenatives by the way--till at last they swept out upon the bosom of thegreat Amazon River.

  The very first thing they saw upon entering it was an enormous alligator,fully eighteen feet long, sound asleep on a mud-bank.

  "Och! put ashore, ye Naygur," cried Barney, seizing his pistol and risingup in the bow of the canoe. The old man complied quickly, for his spiritwas high and easily roused.

  "Look out now, Martin, an' hould back the dog for fear he wakes him up,"said Barney, in a hoarse whisper, as he stepped ashore and hastenedstealthily towards the sleeping monster; catching up a handful of gravelas he went, and ramming it down the barrel of his pistol. It was awonderful pistol that--an Irish one by birth, and absolutely incapable ofbursting, else assuredly it would have gone, as its owner said, to"smithereens" long ago.

  Barney was not a good stalker. The alligator awoke and made for the wateras fast as it could waddle. The Irishman rushed forward close up, as itplunged into the river, and discharged the compound of lead and stonesright against the back of its head. He might as well have fired at theboiler of a steam-engine. The entire body of an alligator--back andbelly, head and tail--is so completely covered with thick hard scales,that shot has no effect on it; and even a bullet cannot pierce its coatof mail, except in one or two vulnerable places. Nevertheless the shothad been fired so close to it that the animal was stunned, and rolledover on its back in the water. Seeing this, the old trader rushed in upto his chin, and caught it by the tail; but at the same moment themonster recovered, and, turning round, displayed its terrific rows ofteeth. The old man uttered a dreadful roar, and struggled to the land asfast as he could; while the alligator, equally frightened, no doubt, gavea magnificent flourish and splash with its tail, and dived to the bottomof the river.

  The travellers returned disgusted to their canoe, and resumed theirjourney up the Amazon in silence.

  The vulnerable places about an alligator are the soft parts under thethroat and the joints of the legs. This is well known to the jaguar, itsmortal foe,
which attacks it on land, and fastening on these soft parts,soon succeeds in killing it; but should the alligator get the jaguar intoits powerful jaws or catch it in the water, it is certain to come off theconqueror.

  The Amazon, at its mouth, is more like a wide lake or arm of the sea thana river. Mention has been already made of this noble stream in theHermit's Story; but it is worthy of more particular notice, for truly theAmazon is in many respects a wonderful river. It is the largest, thoughnot quite the longest, in the world. Taking its rise among the rockysolitudes of the great mountain range of the Andes, it flows throughnearly four thousand miles of the continent in an easterly direction,trending northward towards its mouth, and entering the Atlantic Ocean onthe northern coast of South America, directly under the Equator. In itscourse it receives the waters of nearly all the great rivers of centralSouth America, and thousands of smaller tributaries; so that when itreaches the ocean its volume of water is enormous. Some idea may beformed of its majestic size, from the fact that one of itstributaries--the Rio Negro--is fifteen hundred miles long, and varying inbreadth; being a mile wide not far from its mouth, while higher up itspreads out in some places into sheets of ten miles in width. TheMadeira, another tributary, is also a river of the largest size. TheAmazon is divided into two branches at its mouth by the island of Marajo,the larger branch being ninety-six miles in width. About two thousandmiles from its mouth it is upwards of a mile wide. So great is the forceof this flood of water, that it flows into the sea unmixed for nearly twohundred miles. The tide affects the river to a distance of about fourhundred miles inland; and it is navigable from the sea for a distance ofthree thousand miles inland.

  On the north bank of the Amazon there are ranges of low hills, partlybare and partly covered with thickets. These hills vary from threehundred to a thousand feet high, and extend about two hundred milesinland. Beyond them the shores of the river are low and flat for morethan two thousand miles, till the spurs of the Andes are reached.

  During the rainy season the Amazon overflows all its banks, like theNile, for many hundreds of miles; during which season, as Martin Rattlertruly remarked, the natives may be appropriately called aquatic animals.Towns and villages, and plantations belonging to Brazilians, foreignsettlers, and half-civilized Indians, occur at intervals throughout thewhole course of the river; and a little trade in dye-woods, India-rubber,medicinal drugs, Brazil nuts, coffee, &c., is done; but nothing to whatmight and ought to be, and perhaps would be, were this splendid countryin the hands of an enterprising people. But the Amazonians are lazy, andthe greater part of the resources of one of the richest countries in theworld is totally neglected.

  "Arrah!" said Barney, scratching his head and wrinkling his foreheadintensely, as all that we have just written, and a great deal more, wastold to him by a Scotch settler whom he found superintending a cattleestate and a saw-mill on the banks of the Amazon--"Faix, then, I'm jistas wise now as before ye begun to spake. I've no head for fagureswhatsumdiver; an' to tell me that the strame is ninety-six miles long andthree thousand miles broad at the mouth, and sich like calcerlations, iso' no manner o' use, and jist goes in at wan ear an' out at the tother."

  Whereupon the Scotch settler smiled and said, "Well, then, if ye canremember that the Amazon is longer than all Europe is broad; that itopens up to the ocean not less than ten thousand miles of the interiorof Brazil; and that, _comparatively_ speaking, no use is made of itwhatever, ye'll remember enough to think about with profit for sometime to come."

  And Barney did think about it, and ponder it, and revolve it in his mind,for many days after, while he worked with Martin and the old trader atthe paddles of their montaria. They found the work of canoeing easierthan had been anticipated; for during the summer months the wind blowssteadily up the river, and they were enabled to hoist their mat-sail, andbowl along before it against the stream.

  Hotels and inns there were none; for Brazil does not boast of many suchconveniences, except in the chief towns; so they were obliged, intravelling, to make use of an empty hut or shed, when they chanced tostop at a village, and to cook their own victuals. More frequently,however, they preferred to encamp in the woods--slinging their hammocksbetween the stems of the trees, and making a fire sometimes, to frightenaway the jaguars, which, although seldom seen, were often heard atnight. They met large canoes and montarias occasionally coming down thestream, and saw them hauled up on shore, while their owners were cookingtheir breakfast in the woods; and once they came upon a solitary oldIndian in a very curious position. They had entered a small stream inorder to procure a few turtles' eggs, of which there were many in thatplace buried in the sand-banks. On turning a point where the stream wasnarrow and overhung with bushes and trees, they beheld a canoe tied tothe stem of a tree, and a hammock slung between two branches overhangingthe water. In this an old Indian lay extended, quite naked and fastasleep! The old fellow had grown weary with paddling his little canoe;and, finding the thicket along the river's banks so impenetrable that hecould not land, he slung his hammock over the water, and thus quietlytook his siesta. A flock of paroquets were screaming like little greendemons just above him, and several alligators gave him a passing glanceas they floundered heavily in the water below; but the red man cared notfor such trifles. Almost involuntarily Martin began to hum the popularnursery rhyme--

  "Hushy ba, baby, on the tree top;When the wind blows the cradle will rock."

  "Arrah, if he was only two foot lower, its thirty pair o' long teethwould be stuck into his flank in wan minute, or I'm no prophet," saidBarney, with a broad grin.

  "Suppose we give him a touch with the paddle in passing,"suggested Martin.

  At this moment Barney started up, shaded his eyes with his hand, and,after gazing for a few seconds at some object ahead of the canoe, he gaveutterance to an exclamation of mingled surprise and consternation.