Isthmiana/The River
The River[edit]
Few rivers die gloriously. This small one of ours flowed sluggishly into the sea through a thicket of mangroves. The roots of these, on account of the great rise and fall of the water, were longer than their tops at low tide; they seemed like plants on stilts.
Presently we penetrated this thicket, the men jumping out and hauling the boat through the mud. Here the banks were a low, rich alluvion, reeking with swampiness; but above were noble trees, and occasionally open spots in the forest where cattle were feeding, — domestic cattle, looking strangely out of place where was as yet no sign of human habitation. It has a strange and solemn effect to be initiated thus suddenly into the very arcana of Nature. You pass the portal, you draw aside the drapery of vines that concealed it, and are at once in the private apartments of Nature; here she is no trim, toiletted lady, such as we have made her in finished countries. There is no one here to burn up her old clothes, and her fresh attire of to-day contrasts too carelessly with the heap of cast-off garments upon which she is standing. The tropical forest is luxuriant in the extreme, but neglected. It should be always seen from the bank of a river; the constant moisture gives more freshness to the foreground, while in seeing the forest from a path you are perplexed, as Yankee Doodle is said to have been on his first visit to town, by an embarras de richesses.
Then here we had life, as well as inanimate nature. Gay parrots and macaws sent gleams of green and gold flashing through the vines’ drapery. Monkeys roared and chattered; there was a general hum of insect life in the cool morning. There was a sound like the deep note of an oboe, as the alligators, with a yawn, plumped from the banks into the water; they, plumped like falling cocoanuts in a gale of wind. For a while, I respected their lazy lolling; but one lay showing his white waistcoat so invitingly, that I could not refrain from taking a shot at thirty yards with my five-shooter. “Lo pego! lo pego! — popped him!” was the joyous shout of the boatmen, as he rolled heavily into the stream. I immediately became a hero, and the Padron vouchsafed to me his learning in the natural history of the animal. He told me, a fact not generally known, that alligators never die, but, when they have attained with age to the due amount of experience, are translated from the narrow this life of the river to a higher sphere, — the broad eternity of the ocean. Hence occasionally the adventurous see their vast bulk rearing itself up terribly for an instant. This is satisfactory, as accounting for the sea-serpent. Bred in the tepid waters of a tropical river, what a new sensation it must be to our promoted alligator to take his first cold bath, and to swim along the romantic coast of Norway in the guise of a Kraken!
It was a tough tug against the coffee-colored current, rapid as are all the Isthmian rivers. The athletes of the boat, with glistening skins, strained powerfully against the stream with setting-poles. We who live in the intemperate climates of temperate zones are forced to be sartorian slaves. A vicious conventionalism does not allow us to admire the nude, except in marble. But if deformity of figure must be disguised, why not deformity of face? Where are the perpetual veils for the snub-nosed, the pug-nosed, the blubber-lipped? Our boatmen worked away untrammelled by attire.
The day grew warmer, and the thick shade of interlacing branches and vines became more grateful. Sometimes there was only passage by drawing aside the close foliage, and then, as our canoe thrust itself along, flocks of birds would be disturbed, some of brilliant, unfamiliar plumage, with pure white herons, and flamingoes, and macaws screaming like a bad-tempered Norman-French bonne.
At last the masts of a sunken schooner pointed out the spot of no farther progress. With the unwilling willingness that marks the end of a journey, we bade adieu to the canoe.