Wanderings in South America. Charles Waterton
light a fire of sticks and warm himself by it. So active did he continue to the end of his days, that on his eightieth birthday he climbed an oak in my company. He was very kind to the poor, and threw open a beautiful part of his park to excursionists all through the summer. He had a very tender heart for beasts and birds, as well as for men. If a cat looked hungry he would see that she had a meal, and sometimes when he had forgotten to put a crust of bread in his pocket before starting on his afternoon walk, he would say to his companion, “How shall we ever get past that goose?” for there was a goose which used to wait for him in the evening at the end of the bridge over the moat, and he could not bear to disappoint it. If he could not find a bit of food for it, he would wait at a distance till the bird went away, rather than give it nothing when it raised its bill.
Towards the end of his life I enjoyed his friendship, and can never forget his kindly welcome, his pithy conversation, the happy humour with which he expressed the conclusions of his long experience of men, birds and beasts, and the goodness which shone from his face. I was staying at Walton when he died, and have thus described his last hours in the biography which is prefixed to the latest edition of his Essays.2 I was reading for an examination, and used, on the Squire’s invitation, to go and chat with him just after midnight, for at that hour be always awoke, and paid a short visit to his chapel. A little before midnight on May 24th I visited him in his room. He was sitting asleep by his fire wrapped up in a large Italian cloak.
His head rested upon his wooden pillow, which was placed on a table, and his thick silvery hair formed a beautiful contrast with the dark colour of the oak. He soon woke up, and withdrew to the chapel, and on his return we talked together for three-quarters of an hour about the brown owl, the nightjar, and other birds. The next morning, May 25, he was unusually cheerful, and said to me, “That was a very pleasant little confab we had last night: I do not suppose there was such another going on in England at the same time.” After breakfast we went with a carpenter to finish some bridges at the far end of the park. The work was completed, and we were proceeding homewards when, in crossing a small bridge, a bramble caught the Squire’s foot, and he fell heavily upon a log. He was greatly shaken, and said he thought he was dying. He walked, notwithstanding, a little way, and was then compelled to lie down. He would not permit his sufferings to distract his mind, and he pointed out to the carpenter some trees which were to be felled. He presently continued his route, and managed to reach the spot where the boat was moored. Hitherto he had refused all assistance, but he could not step from the bank into the boat, and he said, “I am afraid I must ask you to help me in.” He walked from the landing-place into the house, changed his clothes, and came and sat in the large room below. The pain increasing, he rose from his seat after he had seen his doctor, and though he had been bent double with anguish, he persisted in walking up-stairs without help, and would have gone to his own room in the top storey, if, for the sake of saving trouble to others, he had not been induced to stop half-way in Miss Edmonstone’s sitting-room. Here he lay down upon the sofa, and was attended by his sisters-in-law. The pain abated, and the next day he seemed better. In the afternoon he talked to me a good deal, chiefly about natural history. But he was well aware of his perilous condition, for he remarked to me, “This is a bad business,” and later on he felt his pulse often, and said, “It is a bad case.” He was more than self-possessed. A benignant cheerfulness beamed from his mind, and in the fits of pain he frequently looked up with a gentle smile, and made some little joke. Towards midnight he grew worse. The priest, the Reverend R. Browne, was summoned, and Waterton got ready to die. He pulled himself upright without help, sat in the middle of the sofa, and gave his blessing in turn to his grandson, Charlie, to his granddaughter, Mary, to each of his sisters-in-law, to his niece, and to myself, and left a message for his son, who was hastening back from Rome. He then received the last sacraments, repeated all the responses, Saint Bernard’s hymn in English, and the first two verses of the Dies Iræ. The end was now at hand, and he died at twenty-seven minutes past two in the morning of May 27, 1865. The window was open. The sky was beginning to grow grey, a few rooks had cawed, the swallows were twittering, the landrail was craking from the Ox-close, and a favourite cock, which he used to call his morning gun, leaped out from some hollies, and gave his accustomed crow. The ear of his master was deaf to the call. He had obeyed a sublimer summons, and had woke up to the glories of the eternal world.
He was buried on his birthday, the 3rd of June, between two great oaks at the far end of the lake, the oldest trees in the park. He had put up a rough stone cross to mark the spot where he wished to be buried. Often on summer days he had sat in the shade of these oaks watching the kingfishers. “Cock Robin and the magpies,” he said to me as we sat by the trees one day, “will mourn my loss, and you will sometimes remember me when I lie here.” At the foot of the cross is a Latin inscription which he wrote himself. It could hardly be simpler: “Pray for the soul of Charles Waterton, whose tired bones are buried near this cross.” The dates of his birth and death are added.
Walton Hall is no longer the home of the Watertons, the oaks are too old to flourish many years more, and in time the stone cross may be overthrown and the exact burial place of Waterton be forgotten; but his “Wanderings in South America” and his “Natural History Essays” will always be read, and are for him a memorial like that claimed by the poet he read oftenest—
“quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.”
FIRST JOURNEY
—“nec herba, nec latens in asperis
Radix fefellit me locis.”
In the month of April, 1812, I left the town of Stabroek, to travel through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America.
The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali-poison; and to reach the inland frontier fort of Portuguese Guiana.
It would be a tedious journey for him who wishes to travel through these wilds to set out from Stabroek on foot. The sun would exhaust him in his attempts to wade through the swamps, and the mosquitos at night would deprive him of every hour of sleep.
The road for horses runs parallel to the river, but it extends a very little way, and even ends before the cultivation of the plantation ceases.
The only mode then that remains is to proceed by water; and when you come to the high lands, you may make your way through the forest on foot, or continue your route on the river.
After passing the third island in the river Demerara, there are few plantations to be seen, and those not joining on to one another, but separated by large tracts of wood.
The Loo is the last where the sugar-cane is growing. The greater part of its negroes have just been ordered to another estate; and ere a few months shall have elapsed all signs of cultivation will be lost in under-wood.
Higher up stand the sugar-works of Amelia’s Waard, solitary and abandoned; and after passing these there is not a ruin to inform the traveller that either coffee or sugar has been cultivated.
From Amelia’s Waard an unbroken range of forest covers each bank of the river, saving here and there where a hut discovers itself, inhabited by free people of colour, with a rood or two of bared ground about it; or where the wood-cutter has erected himself a dwelling, and cleared a few acres for pasturage. Sometimes you see level ground on each side of you for two or three hours at a stretch; at other times a gently sloping hill presents itself; and often, on turning a point, the eye is pleased with the contrast of an almost perpendicular height jutting into the water. The trees put you in mind of an eternal spring, with summer and autumn kindly blended into it.
Here you may see a sloping extent of noble trees, whose foliage displays a charming variety of every shade from the lightest to the darkest green and purple. The tops of some are crowned with bloom of the loveliest hue; while the boughs of others bend with a profusion of seeds and fruits.
Those whose heads have been bared by time, or blasted by the thunder-storm,
“Natural History Essays,” by Charles Waterton, edited, with a life of the author, by Norman Moore (Warne and Co.).