Odd People: Being a Popular Description of Singular Races of Man. Reid Mayne
the nest and ensconces himself in it. His diminutive body, when close squatted, cannot be perceived from a distance, especially when there are a few bushes around the nest, as there usually are. Thus concealed he awaits the return of the birds, holding his bow and poisoned arrows ready to salute them as soon as they come within range. By this ruse he is almost certain of killing either the cock or hen, and not infrequently both – when they do not return together.
Lizards and land-tortoises often furnish the Bushman with a meal; and the shell of the latter serves him also for a dish; but his period of greatest plenty is when the locusts appear. Then, indeed, the Bushman is no longer in want of a meal; and while these creatures remain with him, he knows no hunger. He grows fat in a trice, and his curs keep pace with him – for they too greedily devour the locusts. Were the locusts a constant, or even an annual visitor, the Bushman would be a rich man – at all events his wants would be amply supplied. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for everybody else, these terrible destroyers of vegetation only come now and then – several years often intervening between their visits.
The Bushmen have no religion whatever; no form of marriage – any more than mating together like wild beasts; but they appear to have some respect for the memory of their dead, since they bury them – usually erecting a large pile of stones, or “cairn,” over the body.
They are far from being of a melancholy mood. Though crouching in their dens and caves during the day, in dread of the boers and other enemies, they come forth at night to chatter and make merry. During fine moonlights they dance all night, keeping up the ball till morning; and in their kraals may be seen a circular spot – beaten hard and smooth with their feet – where these dances are performed.
They have no form of government – not so much as a head man or chief. Even the father of the family possesses no authority, except such as superior strength may give him; and when his sons are grown up and become as strong as he is, this of course also ceases.
They have no tribal organisation; the small communities in which they live being merely so many individuals accidentally brought together, often quarrelling and separating from one another. These communities rarely number over a hundred individuals, since, from the nature of their country, a large number could not find subsistence in any one place. It follows, therefore, that the Bushman race must ever remain widely scattered – so long as they pursue their present mode of life – and no influence has ever been able to win them from it. Missionary efforts made among them have all proved fruitless. The desert seems to have been created for them, as they for the desert; and when transferred elsewhere, to dwell amidst scenes of civilised life, they always yearn to return to their wilderness home.
Truly are these pigmy savages an odd people!
Chapter Two.
The Amazonian Indians
In glancing at the map of the American continent, we are struck by a remarkable analogy between the geographical features of its two great divisions – the North and the South, – an analogy amounting almost to a symmetrical parallelism.
Each has its “mighty” mountains – the Cordilleras of the Andes in the south, and the Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre (Rocky Mountains) in the north – with all the varieties of volcano and eternal snow. Each has its secondary chain: in the north, the Nevadas of California and Oregon; in the south, the Sierras of Caraccas and the group of Guiana; and, if you wish to render the parallelism complete, descend to a lower elevation, and set the Alleghanies of the United States against the mountains of Brazil – both alike detached from all the others.
In the comparison we have exhausted the mountain chains of both divisions of the continent. If we proceed further, and carry it into minute detail, we shall find the same correspondence – ridge for ridge, chain for chain, peak for peak; – in short, a most singular equilibrium, as if there had been a design that one half of this great continent should balance the other!
From the mountains let us proceed to the rivers, and see how they will correspond. Here, again, we discover a like parallelism, amounting almost to a rivalry. Each continent (for it is proper to style them so) contains the largest river in the world. If we make length the standard, the north claims precedence for the Mississippi; if volume of water is to be the criterion, the south is entitled to it upon the merits of the Amazon. Each, too, has its numerous branches, spreading into a mighty “tree”; and these, either singly or combined, form a curious equipoise both in length and magnitude. We have only time to set list against list, tributaries of the great northern river against tributaries of its great southern compeer, – the Ohio and Illinois, the Yellowstone and Platte, the Kansas and Osage, the Arkansas and Red, against the Madeira and Purus, the Ucayali and Huallaga, the Japura and Negro, the Xingu and Tapajos.
Of other river systems, the Saint Lawrence may be placed against the La Plata, the Oregon against the Orinoco, the Mackenzie against the Magdalena, and the Rio Bravo del Norte against the Tocantins; while the two Colorados – the Brazos and Alabama – find their respective rivals in the Essequibo, the Paranahybo, the Pedro, and the Patagonian Negro; and the San Francisco of California, flowing over sands of gold, is balanced by its homonyme of Brazil, that has its origin in the land of diamonds. To an endless list might the comparison be carried.
We pass to the plains. Prairies in the north, llanos and pampas in the south, almost identical in character. Of the plateaux or tablelands, those of Mexico, La Puebla, Perote, and silver Potosi in the north; those of Quito, Bogota, Cusco, and gold Potosi in the south; of the desert plains, Utah and the Llano Estacado against Atacama and the deserts of Patagonia. Even the Great Salt Lake has its parallel in Titicaca; while the “Salinas” of New Mexico and the upland prairies, are represented by similar deposits in the Gran Chaco and the Pampas.
We arrive finally at the forests. Though unlike in other respects, we have here also a rivalry in magnitude, – between the vast timbered expanse stretching from Arkansas to the Atlantic shores, and that which covers the valley of the Amazon. These were the two greatest forests on the face of the earth. I say were, for one of them no longer exists; at least, it is no longer a continuous tract, but a collection of forests, opened by the axe, and intersected by the clearings of the colonist. The other still stands in all its virgin beauty and primeval vigour, untouched by the axe, undefiled by fire, its path scarce trodden by human feet, its silent depths to this hour unexplored.
It is with this forest and its denizens we have to do. Here then let us terminate the catalogue of similitudes, and concentrate our attention upon the particular subject of our sketch.
The whole valley of the Amazon – in other words, the tract watered by this great river and its tributaries – may be described as one unbroken forest. We now know the borders of this forest with considerable exactness, but to trace them here would require a too lengthened detail. Suffice it to say, that lengthwise it extends from the mouth of the Amazon to the foothills of the Peruvian Andes, a distance of 2,500 miles. In breadth it varies, beginning on the Atlantic coast with a breadth of 400 miles, which widens towards the central part of the continent till it attains to 1,500, and again narrowing to about 1,000, where it touches the eastern slope of the Andes.
That form of leaf known to botanists as “obovate” will give a good idea of the figure of the great Amazon forest, supposing the small end or shank to rest on the Atlantic, and the broad end to extend along the semicircular concavity of the Andes, from Bolivia on the south to New Granada on the north. In all this vast expanse of territory there is scarce an acre of open ground, if we except the water-surface of the rivers and their bordering “lagoons,” which, were they to bear their due proportions on a map, could scarce be represented by the narrowest lines, or the most inconspicuous dots. The grass plains which embay the forest on its southern edge along the banks of some of its Brazilian tributaries, or those which proceed like spurs from the Llanos of Venezuela, do not in any place approach the Amazon itself, and there are many points on the great river which may be taken as centres, and around which circles may be drawn, having diameters 1,000 miles in length, the circumferences of which will enclose nothing but timbered land. The main stream of the Amazon, though it intersects this grand forest, does not bisect it, speaking with mathematical precision. There is rather