Páramo

“ It was not without reason that we dreaded passing across this bleak region. The name of Paramo is given to those inhospitable desert-regions high up among the mountains, of which there are so many in the Andes. No human being can exist in them without keeping in incessant and violent motion. Artificial means are incapable of sustaining life while a person is exposed to the inclement air. Ardent spirits are entirely void of any good effect, and generally increase the evil consequences. ”

“ In the morning, just as we were about to start, I shot two wild turkeys; and had we had time to spare, I might have killed several more. As we proceeded we saw several tracks of bears and jaguars, perfectly fresh.
The next day we reached the Paramo, on the summit of the Cordilleras, thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. We caught sight of numbers of wild asses, which inhabit this mountainous region. The hoof of the animal is divided like that of a pig. They are very shy, so that even the Indians are seldom able to approach near enough to kill them ”

“ The men work the sand on shares, and do so well that, paradoxical as it may seem, there is difficulty in keeping a full gang of men at work. The trouble is, that, as soon as the men get a few ounces of dust to their credit, they must take it and go away to Punta Arenas and swap it for such joys as may be had in that tiny metropolis.
At Paramo, on the beach, they now use a combination of wooden sluices and a copper-plate machine with which all gold miners are familiar, but which could not be briefly described here. ”

“ The fortress of the former Inca city of Huánaco el Viejo, far up on the now uninhabited pampa above the sheltering valley in which cowers the modern city of the same name
A typical residence of the Indians of the high páramos, built of heaped-up stones and brown ichu-grass; so low one cannot stand upright in it. Here the family sleeps on the uneven earth floor, or on a hairy cowhide, with their yellow curs, guinea-pigs, and other domestic animals. ”

“ Nowhere, perhaps, can be found collected together, in so small a space, productions so beautiful, and so remarkable in regard to the geography of plants. At the height of a thousand toises, the lofty savannahs of the hills terminate in a zone of shrubs which, by their appearance, their tortuous branches, their stiff leaves, and the magnitude and beauty of their purple flowers, remind us of what is called, in the Cordilleras of the Andes, the vegetation of the paramos and the punas.* (* For the explanation of these words, see above Chapter 1.5.) ”

“ It is in such passes as the Quindio, too, when one reaches the paramos, thousands of feet in altitude, and far above the clouds, that one experiences the rigorous cold of the Tropics. The temperature at night is nearly always below [22] forty degrees; occasionally it drops to freezing-point, and one feels it all the more after a sojourn in the hot lowlands. No amount of clothing then seems adequate. Travellers will remember the bitter cold nights they have passed in the paramos." [2]
This bitter atmosphere is experienced, let us remember, on or near the Equator. ”

“ Upon the pampas of the Argentine Republic they are found in great numbers, from a few miles west of Rosario, on the Paraná, latitude 32° 56′ south, to the vicinity of San Luis, where the pampas end, and a travesia or saline desert commences.
On these immense plains of grass it lives in company with the bizcacha. The habits of this bird are said to be the same as those of the species that inhabits the holes of the marmots upon the prairies of western North America. ”

“ When the desert blooms the farmer of the Piura Valley in northwestern Peru turns shepherd and drives his flocks of sheep and goats out into the short-lived pastures of the great pampa on the west. In dry years he sends them eastward into the mountains. The forest Indian of the lower Urubamba is a fisherman while the river is low and lives in a reed hut beside his cultivated patch of cane and yuca. When the floods come he is driven to the higher ground in the hills where he has another cultivated patch of land and a rude shelter. ”

“ I have also seen in Surinam a parrot of a deep slate blue colour, though not like those that come from the coast of Guinea, which are rather of a lead-grey. This parrot is said to be very scarce, and only inhabits the deepest recesses of the forest, whence it is brought to Paramaribo by the Indians: this bird is less than the common parrot, but appears very strong and lively. The most common parrots in Guiana are those which Marcgrave calls ajurucura. These birds are not so large as those that come from Africa; they are green, with the breast and belly a pale yellow ”

“ Above the flat desert is an enormous bowl of clear, transparent sky and one looks far away to distances that seem endless. At sunrise and sunset the effects of light upon the sky and pampa are of a beauty never seen but in expanses such as these. I have watched the sky in an Antofagasta nitrate pampa when, as the sun fell swiftly, all the arch flushed with rose, and quickly flooded with sheets of purest violet while the orange and umber pampa took on deep amethyst shadows ”

“ The fauna of Paraguay proper is practically the same as that of Brazil. Caymans, water-hogs (capinchos) , several kinds of deer (Cervus paludosus the largest) , ounces, opossums, armadillos, vampires, the American ostrich, the ibis, the jabiru, various species popularly called partridges, the pato real or royal duck, the Palamedea cornuta, parrots and parakeets, are among the more notable forms. Insect life is peculiarly abundant; the red stump-like ant-hills are a feature in every landscape, and bees used to be kept in all the mission villages. ”

“ Living in the nitrate pampa has some compensations, as in the feelings inspired by the desert and especially in the beauty of its nights, but not even the mighty Pacific can lend charm to the seaports which act as middlemen between the oficinas and the outside world. Iquique, Antofagasta, Taltal, Chañaral, Mejillones, Pisagna and Tocopilla, ranging in population from 50,000 down to 5,000, suggest mining towns of our far west in varying early stages of evolution. ”

“ Green parrots screamed in and out of the orange-groves, the fruit of which was green in color even when ripe and of rather acid taste. Across the Paraná, as wide as the Hudson, Posadas, in the Argentine, lay banked up on the sloping opposite shore, in plain sight from any part of the town.
Life is free and easy in Paraguay, close to nature. Its women, in their loose gowns and bare feet, very erect from the practice of carrying loads on their heads from childhood, have a childlike simplicity, as well as an extremely graceful carriage. ”

“ A reddish-yellow line crosses the mouthy and for a short distance forms a distinct vein along the right bank of the Paraguay.
Above the Bermejo the vegetation is on a larger scale : the current of the main artery slackens,, and the vrater becomes limpid as that of the Parana. The eastern bank is concealed by the long, narrow river-curves which the furado forms. Presently, where Lieutenant Day^s chart (1858) shows " narrow pass, 21 to 24 feet/^ we found an island splitting the channel, and growing trees twenty-five feet high. ”

“ Our road ran near the towns of Pararca and Colcabamba, the latter much like Colta, a straggling village of thatched huts surrounded by hundreds of terraces. The vegetation on the valley slopes indicated occasional rains. Near Pararca we passed fields of barley and wheat growing on old stone-faced terraces. On every hand were signs of a fairly large population engaged in agriculture, utilizing fields which had been carefully prepared for them by their ancestors. ”

“ Pará does not enjoy a very good reputation for its climate, but I do not think it is so bad as is generally supposed. It has a fair alternation of wet and dry seasons, and the air is so pure that it is said that persons suffering from consumption rapidly recover after a short stay there. Yellow fever and [6] small-pox sometimes linger a long time amongst the lower classes, being maintained a good deal, I believe, by the exhalations at low tides from the silted-up mud in front of the river wall. ”

“ I have already mentioned that Paramaribo is situated on the right side of the beautiful river Surinam, at about sixteen or eighteen miles distance from its mouth. It is built upon a kind of gravelly rock, which is level with the rest of the country, in the form of an oblong square, its length is about a mile and a half, and its breadth about half as much. All the streets, which are perfectly straight, are lined with orange, shaddock, tamarind, and lemon-trees, which appear in everlasting bloom ”

“ The lands are beautifully hedged in by the line of forest trees. Man has set before him here the hedging and ditching of nature. This pampa looks like a great pasture-field, enclosed by the Mamoré ditch on the south, and the Securé on the north. Under the shade of those trees stand the cattle of the field. They have gradually clambered over the Cordilleras from the flats of Guayaquil, through the table lands of Oruro, and from the salt district of Charcas. The creoles drove them down by the side of the Mamoré river, and let them out into the grassy prairie lands of Chiquitos and Mojos. ”

“ This bird was one of the two common parrots of the district, the other larger species being the Patagonian parrot, Conarus patagonus, the Loro barranquero or Cliff Parrot of the natives. In my early years this bird was common on the treeless pampas extending for hundreds of miles south of Buenos Ayres as well as in Patagonia, and bred in holes it excavated in cliffs and steep banks at the side of lakes and rivers. These breeding-sites were far south of my home, and I did not visit them until my boyhood's days were over. ”

“ Pará, however, is an agreeable place of residence, and has a delightful climate. The sun is hot till about noon, when the sea breeze comes in, bringing clouds, with rain, thunder, and lightning, which cool and purify the atmosphere, and wash the streets of the city. ”

“ The Parana is a considerable river before it enters the Spanish territories, and after passing the frontiers of Brazil in about 24° 40' it flows in a south-west course through the colonies of the Jesuits, in a country of incomparable fertility and of a delightful aspect. It seldom overflows its banks, owing to the breadth and depth of its channel, and it is much more rapid than the Paraguay as it flows from higher ground: at its junction with the Paraguay it is nearly two miles broad, and incloses innumerable islands, which are overflowed in the annual inundations ”

“ M. Garella is convinced, as much by his own observations, as by the information that he has been able to obtain upon the spot, that all that has been said of the unhealthiness of the Isthmus has been exaggerated. Panama is, of all the towns upon the coast of America which are situated between the Tropics, the most healthy, and perhaps the only town where the yellow fever has never appeared. ”

“ The Perdiz comun or Common Partridge of the pampas, as it is always called—the naturalist’s name of Tinamou being utterly unknown in the southern part of South America—is much smaller than the “Perdiz grande,” but in its form, slender curved beak, bare legs, and in the yellowish mottled plumage generally resembles it. It also inhabits the same kind of open grassy country, and is abundant everywhere on the pampas and as far south as the valley of the Rio Negro in Patagonia. It is solitary; but a number of individuals are usually found in proximity ”

“ Speaking of horticulturists reminds me of their enemies. Uru is the Quichua word for caterpillars or grubs, pampa means flat land. Urubamba is “flat-land-where-there-are-grubs-or-caterpillars.” Had it been named by people who came up from a warm region where insects abound, it would hardly have been so denominated. Only people not accustomed to land where caterpillars and grubs flourished would have been struck by such a circumstance. Consequently, the valley was probably named by plateau dwellers who were working their way down into a warm region where butterflies and moths are more common. ”

“ Pará is an exotic growth, a bit of Parisian civilization isolated in an enormous wilderness, which encroaches so constantly upon it that the European air of the center of town quickly disappears in grass-grown alleyways of swamp and jungle. The heavy rains cause this grass to grow with tropical luxuriance and rapidity, so that there are many wide streets laid out between unbroken rows of buildings that are nothing but deep green lawns with a cow-path or two straggling along them. ”

“ The Pampa plains, immense and limitless, those mysterious sea-like horizons of the solid land, stimulate the fancy like the unknown, and cause her to express herself in glowing language and exaggerated ideas. ”

“ If the wind wanted to blow his new panama into some lower treetop, compelling him to throw stones, perhaps to its permanent damage, in order to dislodge it, why, that was just one more cause of offense to pin to his indictment of irritation against the great island republic of Caracuña. Such is the temper one gets into after a year in the tropics.
Like as peas are panama hats to the eyes of the inexpert; far more like than men who live under them. ”

“ The population of Pará is thirty-five thousand, or double what it was when Wallace and Bates entered it twenty years ago. It is the largest city on the largest river in the world, and the capital of a province ten times the size of New York State. The enterprising, wealthy class consists of Portuguese and pure Brazilians, with a few English, Germans, French, and North Americans. The multitude is an amalgamation of Portuguese, Indian, and Negro. The diversity of races, and the mingled dialects of the Amazon and Europe, make an attractive street scene. ”