Lorenzo brought my breakfast to the canoe. Gregorio helped him. The fellow set up to be an excellent cook, and promised me a savory dish for the next day.
We were due at San Cipriano in the afternoon, and the boatmen did not need to be urged to go on, as the collector’s good wine was doing its work with them.
The sun did not belie its summer reputation.
When the shores would permit of it, Lorenzo and I walked short distances along the banks—or “beached” it, as they call it. We did this partly to rest ourselves, and partly to lighten the canoe in perilous stretches of the river. At such times, however, the fear of running upon a guascama, or of having a black chouta dart upon us, made us walk through the brush more with our eyes than our feet.
It was needless to ask if Laurean and Gregorio were amateur doctors, for there is scarcely a boatman that is not, and that does not carry with him fangs of many kinds of vipers, and antidotes for their bites. But this is hardly enough to calm a traveller, as it is well known that these remedies are without effect, and that one who has been bitten dies after a few hours, sweating blood, and in fearful agony.
We arrived at San Cipriano. On the right bank, and in the angle formed by the river that gives its name to the place, and the Dagua, was the house, raised on piles in the midst of a leafy banana orchard. We had not yet leaped out on the shore when Gregorio shouted: “ ’ña’ Rufina! Here I come!”
Immediately afterwards he added, “Where did you catch this old girl?”
“Good afternoon, ’ño’ Gregorio,” replied a young negress, coming out to the corridor.
“You must take me in, for I’ve got something nice.”
“Yes, Seño’. Come on up, then.”
“Where’s our brother?”
“At Junta.”
“Uncle Bibiano with him?”
“No, he’s alone, ’ño’ Gregorio.”
Laurean said good afternoon to the mistress of the house, and then relapsed into his usual silence.
While the boatmen and Lorenzo were getting the things out of the canoe, I was looking at the thing which Gregorio had called the “old girl.” It was a snake as thick as a stout arm, about three yards long, with a corrugated back of the color of dried leaves with black spots. The belly looked like a marble mosaic. The head was enormous, and the mouth was as broad as the whole head; in it showed fangs like a cat’s claws. She was fastened by the neck to one of the piles of the landing, and her tail was in the water.
“Saint Paul!” exclaimed Lorenzo, as he saw what I was gazing at, “what a monster!”
Rufina, who had come down to greet me, remarked with laughter that they had sometimes killed larger ones.
“Where did they find this one?” I asked.
“On the shore, my master, there in the chípero,” said she, pointing to a leafy tree about thirty yards away.
“When?”
“Early in the morning, when my brother was going away, he found her hanging on that tree, and he brought her in so as to get the antidote. Her mate was not there, but I saw him this morning, and my brother will catch him tomorrow.”
Bibiano, the father of the young negress, who was a boatman more than fifty years old, already laid aside by rheumatism, came out to welcome me, hat in hand, and leaning upon a thick cane. His pantaloons were of yellow baize, and he wore a blue striped shirt outside them.
My hammock was soon slung. Lying in it, I looked at the distant, untrodden mountains, lighted up by the last light of the afternoon, and watched the waters of the Dagua flow by, blue, green, and gold, under the sun’s touch.
The boatmen, with their trousers now on, gossiped with Rufina. Lorenzo brought in some of his provisions to go with the stew which Bibiano’s daughter was making ready for us, and then lay down quietly in the darkest corner of the room.
It was almost night when we heard cries on the river. Lorenzo ran down hurriedly. He soon came back saying that it was the mail-boat going up, and that he had been told my luggage was behind at Mondomo.
Soon the night surrounded us with all its American splendor. Why is it that nights in Cauca, in London, on the high seas, were never so majestically melancholy as that one?
At eight we were all settled for sleep. Lorenzo arranged everything for me with an almost maternal care, and then went to lie down in his own hammock.
“Little father,” called out Rufina from her room, speaking to Bibiano, who was sleeping with us in the main room—“little father, just hear warty-back singing out on the river!”
In fact one could hear in that direction something like the clucking of an enormous hen.
“Tell ’ño’ Laurean,” went on the girl, “to go by there carefully in the morning.”
“Do you hear that, man?” asked Bibiano.
“Yes, Seño’,” replied Laurean. It was fitting that Rufina’s voice should have awakened him, since he was, as I afterwards learned, her sweetheart.
“What is this great thing flying here?” I asked Bibiano, almost imagining that it must be a winged snake.
“A bat, little master,” he answered; “but you need not be afraid of its biting you while you are sleeping in the hammock.”
These bats are veritable vampires, which will bleed a man in a very short time if they can get at his
