by Peter Raby
Some two hundred men, women, and children were scattered about the house, lying in the maqueiras, squatting on the ground, or sitting on the small painted stools, which are made only by the inhabitants of this river. Almost all were naked and painted, and wearing their various feathers and other ornaments. Some were walking or conversing, and others were dancing, or playing small fifes and whistles. The regular festa had been broken up that morning: the chiefs and principal men had put off their feather head-dresses, but as caxirí still remained, the young men and women continued dancing … The men and boys appropriated all the ornaments, thus reversing the custom of civilised countries and imitating nature, who invariably decorates the male sex with the most brilliant colours and most remarkable ornaments … The wild and strange appearance of these handsome, naked, painted Indians, with their curious ornaments and weapons, the stamp and song and rattle which accompanies the dance, the hum of conversation in a strange language, the music of fifes and flutes and other instruments of reed, bone, and turtles’ shells, the large calabashes of caxiri constantly carried about, and the great smoke-blackened gloomy house, produced an effect to which no description can do justice, and of which the sight of half-a-dozen Indians going through their dances for show, gives but a very faint idea.15
A malocca
Wallace was entranced, and intrigued, and found himself equally a great object of admiration, principally on account of his spectacles, ‘which they saw for the first time and could not at all understand’. This was precisely the kind of experience he had been longing for, and when he and Lima reached Jauarité, just below a great rapid which barred further easy progress, they settled down for a week, Lima to buy farinha and sarsaparilla, Wallace to naturalise. The Indians bred birds and animals of many kinds, and he conceived a plan of making a live collection in the area. By now he seemed thoroughly acclimatised to a largely fish diet. There were yams, sweet potatoes, delicious drinks from the fruits of different palms; and, for once, Wallace comments on the attractiveness of the women – though some were too fat, ‘most of them had splendid figures, and many of them were very pretty’.16 At Lima’s suggestion, the head man organised a festa, and Wallace was privileged to observe, and record, the elaborate dances. Most of the women wore the tanga, or small apron of beads, but some were perfectly naked. ‘Several wore large cylindrical copper ear-rings, so polished as to appear like gold. These and the garters formed their only ornaments, – necklaces, bracelets, and feathers being entirely monopolised by the men. The paint with which they decorate their whole bodies has a very neat effect, and gives them almost the appearance of being dressed …’ There was far more immodesty, he comments, ‘in the transparent and flesh-coloured garments of our stage dancers, than in the perfect nudity of these daughters of the forest’.17 Then there was a ‘snake’ dance, with two groups of young men and boys carrying forty-foot long artificial snakes of twigs and bushes, advancing and retreating and having a kind of fight inside the great house; and later fires were lit outside, and the young men jumped through and over them. After three hours, Wallace retired to his own house, he is careful to record. He let Lima smoke the ceremonial cigar on his behalf, but did manage to empty a calabash of caxirí, and pronounced it exceedingly good (even though the mandiocca cake of which it was made had been chewed ‘by a parcel of old women’). He passed up the chance to try the powerful narcotic caapí, unlike Richard Spruce on another occasion.
Pausing at São Jeronymo, as they headed down river towards Guía, Wallace revised his strategy. As well as the attraction of the Indians’ way of life, and the chance of penetrating further up river than any European traveller, other objectives beckoned. A mile from the village he came on an abundance of orchids – thirty different species in an hour’s ramble: a complete natural orchid-house; and more fish. Then there was the variety of live specimens, monkeys, parrots and other birds, which could be bought for a few cheap goods. His notes record: ‘Heard much about the upp part of the river – painted turtles – White umbrella bird etc Determine to go to Barra and return to spend the dry season in this River & give up for the present any journey to Peru.’18 A white umbrella bird would be a real prize. The need to go to Barra, a round trip of fifteen hundred miles, was frustrating, but essential. To spend four months, as he planned, on the Vaupes, at the low-water period, would require fresh supplies, and goods for barter. As rapidly as he could, Wallace returned to Barra, collecting commissions from every village he stopped at on the way, and arrived on 15 September. The whitewashed houses and open situation seemed strangely attractive after the forest-buried huts of the Rio Negro; and his friend Richard Spruce was there, living in Dr Natterer’s former residence. He also found some bad news: a letter from the Vice-Consul at Pará, Miller, telling him that Herbert was dangerously ill with yellow fever. The letter was three months old.
Wallace was left, as he afterwards put it, ‘in a state of the greatest suspense’.19 If Herbert had recovered, he would surely have written before sailing to England. If he had died, surely some other resident at Pará would have sent word. (What Wallace could not know was the severity of the epidemic: Bradley and Berchenbrinck, two young traders, were also dead; Bates himself had been seriously ill.) To go down to Pará might take three weeks; to return again as many months. Besides, there was no guarantee that the journey would do any good. He decided to remain in Barra, preparing for his return to the Vaupés.
Herbert Edward Wallace had died on 8 June 1851. Bates, who nursed him for four nights before falling ill with the same symptoms, broke the news to Mrs Wallace ‘as the only person here nearly connected to your sons’.20 Herbert had reached Pará in May, taken lodgings in the house he once shared with Alfred, and booked his passage to Liverpool. In his last moments he told Miller that ‘it was very sad to die so young’, but he did not mention his brother, or any of his friends, or express any particular wish before he died. He was twenty-two. Bates, writing again to the family that October, still did not know whether Alfred had been informed of what had happened. ‘I think no one knew where he was residing & many months have passed since he wrote to Pará. I have just heard however that he is expected daily at the Barra of the Rio Negro with a very rich collection & I intend to write him by the first canoe that leaves for that place.’21
But Wallace was off again before any letter could reach him, after a fortnight’s frenzied activity: buying and selling, arranging his collections, constructing his own insect boxes and packing cases in the absence of the only carpenter, and, in his rare spare moments, luxuriating in the pleasure of ‘rational conversation’ with Spruce. Spruce, himself impatient to head up the Rio Negro, was waiting for a crew. He accompanied Wallace for a day paddling alongside him in a montaria, a small canoe, before returning to Barra. Wallace made his way up river but suffered all kinds of delays and difficulties. He had a bout of fever, and found himself ‘quite knocked up, with headache, pains in the back and limbs, and violent fever’. He took a purgative, and began a regime of quinine and cream-of-tartar water: the Indians paddled on, and for days and nights he hardly cared if ‘we sank or swam’, half thinking, half dreaming, of all his past life and future hopes, perhaps all doomed to end on the Rio Negro; and he thought of the ‘dark uncertainty’ of his brother’s fate.22 But, he comments, with returning health these gloomy thoughts passed away, and he consoled himself by rejoicing that this was his last voyage. At São Joaquim, however, he relapsed, with violent and recurring fever. Lima, fortunately, was there: but for days Wallace lay, unable to turn over in his hammock, unable to write, even to speak intelligibly. Spruce, who had now made his own base at São Gabriel, wrote to Kew at the end of December with bleak news of his friend:
He writes me by another hand that he is almost at the point of death from a malignant fever, which has reduced him to such a state of weakness that he cannot rise from his hammock or even feed himself. The person who brought me the letter told me that he had taken no nourishment for some days except the juice of orang
es and cashews … The Rio Negro might be called the Dead River – I never saw such a deserted region …23
The simple business of procuring enough nourishment took precious time and energy. Spruce found that the mechanical labour of drying plants was so great that he had little time for anything else, such as making geographical observations. The naturalist’s life was arduous, dangerous, and wearing.
Spruce went to see his friend; and, as soon as Wallace was strong enough to walk with a stick to the riverside, he was canoed down to visit his fellow naturalist at São Gabriel. Spruce was not exactly comfortable there: instead of the snug cabin in his canoe, he had to contend with an old hut whose thatch was stocked with rats, scorpions, cockroaches and vampire bats, and an earth floor undermined by sauba ants, who attacked his dried plants. The vampire bats were especially active: when Spruce first entered the house, he noted the large patches of dried blood on the floor. But he wore stockings, wrapped himself in a blanket, covered his face with a handkerchief, and kept a lamp burning all night. He and Wallace had much to talk about. Spruce, for a start, had to break the news of Herbert’s death, which had reached him at Barra in the month after Wallace’s departure. The three men had got on very well together. For Wallace, there must have been a touch of guilt to add to his grief, for it was his example and suggestion that encouraged Herbert to try his hand at the collecting trade. All those glowing reports of healthy living on the Amazon seemed to belong to another era.
The two men talked at length, too, on the question of species. Years later, after the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, Spruce reminded Wallace of these discussions: ‘If you recollect our conversations at São Gabriel, you will understand that I have never believed in the existence of any permanent limits – generic or specific – in the groups of organic beings.’24 Later and more expansively, Spruce wrote a ‘Note on the Theory of Evolution’, placing his conclusions on the subject to ‘about 1852’:
Whilst travelling in S. America (long before I heard of Mr Darwin & his speculation) I thought much of this subject, and I came to the conclusion that surely the same laws & the same forces are in existence now as have been from all eternity, and will continue to be, in saecula saeculorum. Also that The Evolution of Organic Forms is continuous, without any break. It follows that the incessant variation of living beings is a movement of progression – not merely an oscillation around fixed points which we choose to call species; so that if we could have before our eyes all the individuals now existing, & that have ever existed, of any (so-called) species or genus, we should find it impossible to draw any lines of separation – or to include any central (specific) points – distinguishing our species & genera.25
Wallace, his mind as sharpened by the effects of fever as his body was dull, would have found confirmation in the views he and Bates had already explored together. He would have sympathised, too, with Spruce’s thoughts on progression and development:
The one thing certain (for me) is that this universe is regulated by immutable laws; that to find out those laws – physical, moral etc – is to bring ourselves into closer relation with the Supreme Intelligence from whom they emanate, & who must be far greater than all the gods mythologists (or theologists, for there is no difference) have ever invented. In fact those very gods, and the religions founded upon them, do but endure until Natural Selection shall substitute for them something more in accord with man’s increasing needs and intelligence.26
This statement of Spruce comes from 1870, long after his return to England. But his letter to Wallace about their conversations at São Gabriel implies that his views on the transmutation of species, at least, were already formed. All these ideas Wallace stored away for future reference.
Heartened by his days with Spruce, Wallace bought a little wine and some biscuits from the commandante, and, reasoning that he might just as well recuperate in a canoe as in his hammock, set off once again to ascend the Vaupés. This was to be, positively, his last Amazon trip: his objectives were the white umbrella chatterer, the painted turtle, and as many live birds and animals as he could acquire.
The journey did not have quite the excitement of his first ascent. Without Lima, the Indians proved less reliable, slipping away after taking him one or two stages, or providing less-experienced substitutes, and once breaking open the sealed flask of spirits, which he had with him solely for preserving purposes. Wallace’s patience was beginning to fray, and his fever returned. Nevertheless, with extraordinary persistence, he pushed up river, an enterprise that involved negotiating some fifty falls. Sometimes the canoe could be pushed up by the crew. Once, he had to summon reinforcements from a neighbouring village, and it required the combined strength of twenty-five men, pushing, and pulling on ropes, to manoeuvre the unloaded boat over the bare rocks. The water level was falling, and he waited five days to have a smaller canoe built. On 13 March, he reached Mucura, his farthest point: the next falls were a week away, and Wallace decided to call a halt, satisfied that he was now in a part of the country never before visited by a European traveller. He did his best to map the place, although his boiling-point thermometers were lost or broken, and he had only a pocket surveying sextant. He sent his men out to buy supplies, and any birds and animals they could find. He collected what he could in his fortnight’s stay, but blamed the months he had lain half dead at São Joaquim for the shortage of birds, fish and insects: the fruit season was over, the fish were less numerous, even the painted turtle which was reportedly waiting for him secured in a trap disappeared; and no white umbrella chatterers were to be found. Wallace now doubted their very existence, and the relentless fatigue of the isolated and precarious existence was sapping his spirit, as it did with Spruce and Bates. What he could acquire easily, though, were Indian artefacts. He bought weapons, implements, ornaments and dresses, and recorded the local vocabulary. Now it was time to go home. England beckoned, a distant paradise of green fields, flowery paths and neat gardens, and visions of the fireside tea table, with familiar faces round it, and the luxury of bread and butter.27
He retraced his route, stopping, once he reached the Rio Negro, to say goodbye to Senhor Lima at São Joaquim, and to make some cages for his birds, and also to pay a farewell visit to Richard Spruce at São Gabriel. He left São Joaquim with fifty-two live animals. The numbers fluctuated. Some escaped, and a monkey ate two of the birds; more were purchased, parrots especially. At Barra, he picked up four large cases of specimens which should have been shipped to England the previous year, but which had been held up by customs regulations. By the time he left for Pará, the hundred or so creatures he had acquired had dwindled to thirty-four: five monkeys, two macaws, twenty parrots or paroquets, a white-crested pheasant, some small birds, and his favourite, a fully grown and very tame toucan. Later, down river, he was given a forest wild dog to add to the collection. The night before he sailed, the toucan flew overboard, and was drowned. It was a bad omen. On the voyage down the Amazon, he stopped at Santarem to visit his friends. Captain Hislop was there, but Bates had left a week before, on a trip up the Tapajóz. Wallace continued to suffer from recurrent bouts of fever, and when they arrived in Pará he did little beyond booking his passage on the brig Helen. Yellow fever was still claiming victims. Wallace carried out one last sad duty, and visited the cemetery to see Herbert’s grave. It was crowded with crosses: every dwelling in the city was ‘a house of mourning’. He wrote to Spruce, and on 12 July embarked with his cargo and the remains of his menagerie.
Two days out, he had another attack of fever, sharp enough to make him wonder whether he had contracted yellow fever. Some calomel set him right, but he remained weak, and mostly stayed in his cabin reading. One morning three weeks out, Captain Turner came in after breakfast with the alarming words: ‘I’m afraid the ship’s on fire. Come and see what you think of it.’ Dense smoke was pouring from the forecastle – ‘more like the steam from heating vegetable matter than the smoke from a fire’: the cargo was largely indiarubber,
with cocoa, balsam and piassaba.28 The crew attempted to break into the hold, to find the source, but were beaten back by the smoke. The ship’s boats were launched. Wallace went to his cabin, found a small tin box with a couple of shirts, and put in his drawings of fishes and palms, and a few valuables such as his watch. In the suffocating smoke it was impossible to search further: his clothes, his journals, and a large portfolio of drawings were left behind: ‘I did not care to venture down again, and in fact felt a kind of apathy about saving anything, that I can now hardly account for.’ They took to the boats. The balsam was bubbling, the fire rushed up the sails, the decks were fiercely alight. Some of the parrots and monkeys retreated to the bowsprit, and as it caught fire, they ran back, and disappeared in the flames. Only one parrot, clinging to a rope, fell in the water, and was picked up. The Helen burned all night, and the next morning the boats’ sails were set, and they made for Bermuda, seven hundred miles distant.
Wallace had plenty of time to contemplate his losses, as he later wrote to Spruce. Why had he bothered to save his watch, and a few sovereigns? Hat, shoes, coat and trousers would have been much more useful. But there was never any hope of saving his collections, which he estimated to be worth £500. Even worse, his private collection of insects and birds, which he had kept with him from the beginning, was lost, ‘hundreds of new and beautiful species, which would have rendered (I had fondly hoped) my cabinet, as far as regards American species, one of the finest in Europe’; and the sketches, drawings, notes, and three of the most interesting years of his journal: ‘You will see that I have some need of philosophic resignation to bear my fate with patience and equanimity.’29