The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832

SAILING UP THE ESSEQUIBO

(Concluded from page 360.)

A family of Indians was seen crossing the river in their log canoe, and disappearing under the bushes on the opposite side; my companion and myself paddled after them, and we landed under some locust trees, and found an Indian settlement. The logies were sheds, open all round, and covered with the leaves of the trooly-palm, some of them twenty-four feet long; and suspended from the bamboo timbers of the roof were hammocks of net-work, in which the men were lazily swinging. One or two of those who were awake were fashioning arrow-heads out of hard wood. The men and children were entirely naked, with the exception of the blue lap or cloth for the loins; the women in their blue petticoat and braided hair were scraping the root of the cassava tree into a trough of bark; it was then put into a long press of matting, which expresses the poisonous juice; the dry farina is finally baked on an iron plate. The old women were weaving the square coëoo or lap of beads, which they sometimes wear without a petticoat; also armlets and ankle ornaments of beads. Some were fabricating earthen pots, and all the females seemed actively employed. They offered us a red liquor, called caseeree, prepared from the sweet potato; also piwarry, the intoxicating beverage made by chewing the cassava, and allowing it to ferment. At their piwarry feasts the Indians prepare a small canoe full of this liquor, beside which the entertainers and their guests roll together drunk for two or three days. Their helpmates look after them, and keep them from being suffocated with the sand getting into their mouths: but piwarry is a harmless liquor, that is to say, it does not produce the disease and baneful effects of spirits, for after a sleep the Indians rise fresh and well, and only occasionally indulge in a debauch of this kind. Fish, which the men had shot with their arrows, and birds, were brought out of the canoe, and barbacoted or smoke-dried on a grating of bamboos over a fire; and we followed an old man with a cutlass to their small fields of cassava, cleared by girdling and burning a part of the forest behind the logies. These Indians were of the Arrawak nation; we afterwards saw Caribs, Accaways, &c.

The rivers and creeks, and the whole of the interior of British Guiana at a distance from the sea, are unknown and unexplored. October and November are the driest months in the year, and the best for expeditions into the interior. I was unable to go as far up the river as I wished, from the great freshes; the rain fell every day, yet I penetrated in all directions as far as I could, and I trust to be able, at some more favourable season, to return to that interesting country.

Two years ago, a Mr. Smith, a mercantile man from Caraccas, was joined at George Town by a Lieutenant Gullifer, R.N. They proceeded down the Pomeroon river, then up the Wyeena creek, travelled across to the Coioony, sailed down it, and then went up the Essequibo to the Rio Negro, which, it appears, connects the Amazons and Oroonoco rivers. At Bara, on the Rio Negro, Mr. Smith, from sitting so long cramped up in coorials or canoes, became affected with dropsy; and allowing himself to be tapped by an ignorant quack, died after a fortnight's illness. Lieutenant Gullifer sailed down the Rio Negro to the Amazons, and remained at Para for some months, till he heard from England. From domestic details he received at Para, he fell into low spirits, and proceeded to Trinidad, where, one morning, he was found suspended to a beam under the steeple of the Protestant church! His papers, and Mr. Smith's, consisting of journals of their travels, were sent to a brother of Lieutenant Gullifer's, on the Marocco coast of Essequibo, where I went and saw the papers, and was most anxious to obtain them for the Geographical Society; but Mr. Gullifer said that he must consult first with the other relatives.

Among other interesting details I found in the notes, I may mention the following:—High up the Essequibo they fell in with a nation of anthropophagi, of the Carib tribe. The chief received the travellers courteously, and placed before them fish with savoury sauce; which being removed, two human hands were brought in, and a steak of human flesh! The travellers thought that this might be part of a baboon of a new species; however, they declined the invitation to partake, saying that, in travelling, they were not allowed to eat animal food. The chief picked the bones of the hands with excellent appetite, and asked them how they had relished the fruit and the sauce. They replied that the fish was good and the sauce excellent. To which he answered, "Human flesh makes the best sauce for any food; these hands and the fish were all dressed together. You see these Macooshee men, our slaves; we lately captured these people in war, and their wives we eat from time to time." The travellers were horrified, but concealed their feelings, and before they retired for the night, they remarked that the Macooshee females were confined in a large logie, or shed, surrounded with a stockade of bamboos; so that, daily the fathers, husbands, and brothers of these unfortunate women, saw them brought out, knocked on the head, and devoured by the inhuman cannibals. Lieutenant Gullifer, who was in bad condition, got into his hammock and slept soundly; but Mr. Smith, being in excellent case, walked about all night, fearing that their landlord might take a fancy to a steak of white meat. They afterwards visited a cave, in which was a pool of water; the Indians requested them not to bathe in this, for if they did, they would die before the year was out. They laughed at their monitors and bathed; but sure enough were both "clods of the valley" before the twelvemonth had expired.—Journal of the Geographical Society, Part 2.

Fine Arts

CELEBRATED PAINTERS BORN AT ANTWERP

Alexander Adriansen, born 1625, excelled in Fruit, Flowers, Fish, and Still Life; John Asselyn, 1610, Landscapes and Battles; Jacques Backer, 1530, History; Francis Badens, 1571, History and Portraits; Hendrick Van Balen, 1560, History and Portraits; John Van Balen, 1611, History, Landscapes, and Boys; Cornelius Biskop, 1630, Portraits and History; John Francis Van Bloemen, called Orizzonte, 1656, Landscape; Peter Van Bloemen, Battles, Encampments, and Italian Markets; Norbert Van Bloemen, 1672, Portraits and Conversations; Balthasar Vanden Bosch, 1675, Conversations and Portraits; Peter Van Breda, 1630, Landscapes and Cattle; John Van Breda, 1683, History, Landscapes, and Conversations; Charles Breydel, called Cavalier, 1677, Landscapes; Francis Breydel, 1679, Portraits and Conversations; Paul Bril, 1554, Landscapes, large and small; Elias Vanden Broek, 1657, Flowers, Fruit, and Serpents; Abraham Brueghel, called the Neapolitan, 1692, Fruit and Flowers; Denis Calvart, 1555, History and Landscapes; Joseph, or Joas Van Cleef, History and Portraits; Henry and Martin Van Cleef, brothers, Henry painted Landscapes, and Martin History; Giles Corgnet, called Giles of Antwerp, 1530, History, grotesque; Egidius, or Gillies Coningsloo, or Conixlo, 1544, Landscapes; Gonzalo Coques, 1618, Portraits and Conversations; John Cosiers, 1603, History; Gasper de Crayer, 1585, History and Portraits; Jacques Denys, 1645, History and Portraits; William Derkye, History; John Baptist Van Deynum, 1620, Portraits in Miniature, and History in Water Colours; Peter Eykens, 1599, History; Francis Floris, called the Raphael of Flanders, 1520, History; James Fouquieres, 1580, Landscapes; Sebastian Franks, or Vranx, 1571, Conversations, History, Landscapes, and Battle Pieces; John Baptist Franks, or Vranx, 1600, History and Conversations; John Fytt, 1625, Live and Dead Animals, Birds, Fruit, Flowers, and Landscapes; William Gabron, Still Life; Abraham Genoels, 1640, Landscapes and Portraits; Sir Balthasar Gabier, 1592, Portrait in Miniature; Gillemans, 1672, Fruit and Still Life; Jacob Grimmer, 1510, Landscapes; Peter Hardime, Fruit and Flowers; Minderhout Hobbima, 1611, Landscapes; John Van Hoeck, 1600, History and Portraits; Robert Van Hoeck, 1609, Battles; Dirk, or Theodore Van Hoogeshaeten, 1596, Landscapes and Still Life; Cornelius Huysman, 1648, Landscapes and Animals; Abraham Janssens, 1569, History; John Van Kessel, 1626, Flowers, Portraits, Birds, Insects, and Reptiles; David De Koning, Animals, Birds, and Flowers; Balthasar Van Lemens, 1637, History; N. Leyssens, 1661, History; Peter Van Lint, 1609, History and Portraits; Godfrey Maes, 1660, History; Quintin Matsys, 1460, History and Portraits; John Matsys, son of the above, Portrait and History; Minderhout, 1637, Sea Ports and Landscapes; Peter Neefs, the old, 1570, Churches, Perspective, and Architecture; William Van Nieulant, 1584, Landscapes and Architecture; Adam Van Oort, 1557, History, Portraits, and Landscapes; Bonarentine, Peters, 1614, Sea Pieces, and particularly Storms; Erasmus Quellinus, 1607, History; Jacques de Roore, 1686, History and Conversations; Martin Ryckaert, 1591, Landscapes, with Architecture and Ruins; David Ryckaert, the younger, 1615, Conversations, and Apparitions to St. Anthony; Anthony Schoonjans, 1655, History and Portraits; Cornelius Schut, 1600, History; Peter Snayers, 1593, History, Battles, &c.; Francis Snyders, 1579, Animals, Fruit, Still Life, and Landscapes; David Teniers, 1582, Conversations; Sir Anthony Van Dyke, 1599, History and Portraits; Paul Vansomer, 1576, Portraits; Lucas Vanuden, 1595, Landscapes; Adrian Van Utrecht, 1599, Birds, Fruit, Flowers, and Dead Game; Gasper Peter Verbruggen, 1668, Flowers; Simon Verelst, 1664, Fruit, Flowers, and Portraits; Verendael, 1659, Fruit and Flowers; Tobias Verhaecht, 1566, Landscapes and Architecture; Martin de Vos, 1520, History, Landscape, and Portrait; Simon De Vos, 1603, History, Portraits, and Hunting; Lucas De Waal, 1591, Battles and Landscapes; Adam Willaerts, 1577, Storms, Calms, and Sea Ports; John Wildens, 1584, Landscapes and Figures.

Peter Paul Rubens was of a distinguished family at Antwerp; but his father being (says Pilkington) under the necessity of quitting his country, to avoid the calamities attendant on a civil war, retired for security to Cologne; and during his residence in that city Rubens was born, in 1577. The day of his nativity was the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul; and thence he received at the baptismal font the names of these apostles.

Having been absent from his native country eight years, he was summoned home by the repeated illness of his mother; but, though he hastened with all speed, he did not reach Antwerp in time to afford his beloved parent the consolations of his presence and affections. The loss of her affected him deeply; and he intended, when he had arranged his private affairs, to go and reside in Italy; but the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella exerted their interest to retain him in Flanders, and in their service. He consequently established himself at Antwerp, where he married his first wife, Elizabeth Brants, and built a magnificent house, with a saloon in form of a rotunda, which he enriched with antique statues, busts, vases, and pictures, by the most celebrated masters; and here, surrounded by works of art, he carried, (says his biographer,) into execution those numberless productions of his prolific and rich invention, which once adorned his native country, but now are become the spoil of war, and the tokens of conquest and ambition, shining with equal lustre among super-eminent productions of painting in the gallery of the Louvre.

The whole of the paintings, except two, which adorn the gallery of the Luxembourg, were executed at Antwerp, by Rubens, for Mary de Medici.

He died in the year 1640, at the age of 63; and was buried, with extraordinary pomp, in the church of St. James, at Antwerp, under the altar of his private chapel, which he had previously decorated with a very fine picture.

P.T.W.

The Public Journals

ADVENTURE WITH A SHARK

(Abridged from Tom Cringle's Log, in Blackwood's Magazine.)

During the night we stood off and on under easy sail, and next morning, when the day broke, with a strong breeze and a fresh shower, we were about two miles of the Moro Castle, at the entrance of Santiago de Cuba.

The fresh green shores of this glorious island lay before us, fringed with white surf, as the everlasting ocean in its approach to it gradually changed its dark blue colour, as the water shoaled, into a bright, joyous green under the blazing sun, as if in sympathy with the genius of the fair land, before it tumbled at his feet its gently swelling billows, in shaking thunders on the reefs and rocky face of the coast, against which they were driven up in clouds, the incense of their sacrifice. The undulating hills in the vicinity were all either cleared, and covered with the greenest verdure that imagination can picture, over which strayed large herds of cattle, or with forests of gigantic trees, from amongst which, every now and then, peeped out some palm-thatched mountain settlement, with its small thread of blue smoke floating up into the calm, clear morning air, while the blue hills in the distance rose higher and higher, and more and more blue, and dreamy, and indistinct, until their rugged summits could not be distinguished from the clouds through the glimmering hot haze of the tropics.

A very melancholy accident happened to a poor boy on board, of about fifteen years of age, who had already become a great favourite of mine from his modest, quiet deportment, as well as of all the gunroom-officers, although he had not been above a fortnight in the ship. He had let himself down over the bows by the cable to bathe. There were several of his comrades standing on the forecastle looking at him, and he asked one of them to go out on the spritsail-yard, and look round to see if there were any sharks in the neighbourhood; but all around was deep, clear, green water. He kept hold of the cable, however, and seemed determined not to put himself in harm's way, until a little, wicked urchin, who used to wait on the warrant-officers' mess, a small meddling snipe of a creature, who got flogged in well behaved weeks only once, began to taunt my little mild favourite.

"Why, you chicken-heart, I'll wager a thimbleful of grog, that such a tailor as you are in the water can't for the life of you swim but to the buoy there."

"Never you mind, Pepperbottom," said the boy, giving the imp the name he had richly earned by repeated flagellations. "Never you mind. I am not ashamed to show my naked hide, you know. But it is against orders in these seas to go overboard, unless with a sail underfoot; so I sha'n't run the risk of being tatooed by the boatswain's mate, like some one I could tell of."

"Coward," muttered the little wasp, "you are afraid, sir;" and the other boys abetting the mischief-maker, the lad was goaded to leave his hold of the cable, and strike out for the buoy. He reached it, and then turned, and pulled towards the ship again, when he caught my eye.

"Who is that overboard? How dare you, sir, disobey the standing order of the ship? Come in, boy; come in."

My hailing the little fellow shoved him off his balance, and he lost his presence of mind for a moment or two, during which he, if any thing, widened his distance from the ship.

At this instant the lad on the spritsail-yard sung out quick and suddenly, "A shark, a shark!"

And the monster, like a silver pillar, suddenly shot up perpendicularly from out the dark green depths of the sleeping pool, with the waters sparkling and hissing around him, as if he had been a sea-demon rushing on his prey.

"Pull for the cable, Louis," shouted fifty voices at once—"pull for the cable."

The boy did so—we all ran forward. He reached the cable—grasped it with both hands, and hung on, but before he could swing himself out of the water, the fierce fish had turned. His whitish-green belly glanced in the sun—the poor little fellow gave a heart-splitting yell, which was shattered amongst the impending rocks into piercing echoes, and these again were reverberated from cavern to cavern, until they died away amongst the hollows in the distance, as if they had been the faint shrieks of the damned—yet he held fast for a second or two—the ravenous tyrant of the sea tug, tugging at him, till the stiff, taught cable shook again. At length he was torn from his hold, but did not disappear; the animal continuing on the surface crunching his prey with his teeth, and digging at him with his jaws, as if trying to gorge a morsel too large to be swallowed, and making the water flash up in foam over the boats in pursuit, by the powerful strokes of his tail, but without ever letting go his hold. The poor lad only cried once more—but such a cry—oh, God, I never shall forget it!—and, could it be possible, in his last shriek, his piercing expiring cry, his young voice seemed to pronounce my name—at least so I thought at the time, and others thought so too. The next moment he appeared quite dead. No less than three boats had been in the water alongside when the accident happend, and they were all on the spot by this time. And there was the bleeding and mangled boy, torn along the surface of the water by the shark, with the boats in pursuit, leaving a long stream of blood, mottled with white specks of fat and marrow in his wake. At length the man in the bow of the gig laid hold of him by the arm, another sailor caught the other arm, boat-hooks and oars were dug into and launched at the monster, who relinquished his prey at last, stripping off the flesh, however, from the upper part of the right thigh, until his teeth reached the knee, where he nipped the shank clean off, and made sail with the leg in his jaws. Poor little Louis never once moved after we took him in.—I thought I heard a small, still, stern voice thrill along my nerves, as if an echo of the beating of my heart had become articulate. "Thomas, a fortnight ago, you impressed that poor boy, who was, and now is not, out of a Bristol ship." Alas, conscience spoke no more than the truth.

Our instructions were to lie at St. Jago, until three British ships, then loading, were ready for sea, and then to convey them through the Caicos, or windward passage. As our stay was therefore likely to be ten days or a fortnight at the shortest, the boats were hoisted out, and we made our little arrangements and preparations for taking all the recreation in our power, and our worthy skipper, taught and stiff as he was at sea, always encouraged all kinds of fun and larking, both amongst the men and the officers on occasions like the present. Amongst his other pleasant qualities, he was a great boat-racer, constantly building and altering gigs, and pulling-boats, at his own expense, and matching the men against each other for small prizes. He had just finished what the old carpenter considered his chef-d'œuvre, and a curious affair this same masterpiece was. In the first place it was forty-two feet long over all, and only three and a half feet beam—the planking was not much above an eighth of an inch in thickness, so that if one of the crew had slipped his foot off the stretcher, it must have gone through the bottom. There was a standing order that no man was to go into it with shoes on. She was to pull six oars, and her crew were the captains of the tops, the primest seamen in the ship, and the steersman no less a character than the skipper himself.

Her name, for I love to be particular, was the Dragon-fly; she was painted out and in of a bright red, amounting to a flame colour—oars red—the men wearing trousers and shirts of red flannel, and red net night caps—which common uniform the captain himself wore, I think I have said before, that he was a very handsome man, and when he had taken his seat, and the gigs, all fine men, were seated each with his oar held upright upon his knees ready to be dropped into the water at the same instant, the craft and her crew formed to my eye as pretty a plaything for grown children as ever was seen. "Give way, men," the oars dipped as clean as so many knives, without a sparkle, the gallant fellows stretched out, and away shot the Dragon-fly, like an arrow, the green water foaming into white smoke at the bows, and hissing away in her wake.

She disappeared in a twinkling round a reach of the canal where we were anchored, and we, that is the gunroom-officers, all except the second lieutenant, who had the watch, and the master, now got into our own gig also, rowed by ourselves, and away we all went in a covey; the purser and doctor, and three of the middies forward, Thomas Cringle, gent., pulling the stroke oar, with old Moses Yerk as coxswain;—and as the Dragon-flies were all red, so we were all sea-green, boat, oars, trousers, shirts, and night-caps. The strain was between the Devil's Darning Needle and our boat, the Watersprite, which was making capital play, for although we had not the bottom of the topmen, yet we had more blood, so to speak, and we had already beaten them, in their last gig, all to sticks. But the Dragon-fly was a new boat, and now in the water for the first time. * * *

We were both of us so intent on our own match, that we lost sight of the Spaniard altogether, and the captain and the first lieutenant were bobbing in the sternsheets of their respective gigs like a couple of souple Tams, as intent on the game as if all our lives had depended on it, when in an instant the long, black, dirty prow of the canoe was thrust in between us, the old Don singing out, "Dexa mi lugar, paysanos, dexa mi lugar, mis hijos."12 We kept away right and left, to look at the miracle; and there lay the canoe, rumbling and splashing, with her crew walloping about, and grinning and yelling like incarnate fiends, and as naked as the day they were born, and the old Don himself, so staid and sedate, and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting, "Tira, diablitos, tira,"13 flourishing a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping about in his seat, as if his bottom had been a haggis with quicksilver in it.

"Zounds," roared the skipper,—"why, topmen—why gentlemen, give way for the honour of the ship—Gentlemen, stretch out—Men, pull like devils; twenty pounds if you beat him."

It was now the evening, near night-fall. A splendid scene burst upon our view, on rounding a precipitous rock, from the crevices of which some magnificent trees shot up—their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast falling darkness that was creeping over the fair face of nature; and there we floated, in the deep shadow of the cliff and trees—Dragon-flies and Water-sprites, motionless and silent, and the boats floating so lightly that they scarcely seemed to touch the water, the men resting on their oars, and all of us wrapped with the magnificence of the scenery around us, beneath us, and above us.

The left or western bank of the narrow entrance to the harbour, from which we were now debouching, ran out in all its precipitousness and beauty, (with its dark evergreen bushes overshadowing the deep blue waters, and its gigantic trees shooting forth high into the glowing western sky, their topmost branches gold-tipped in the flood of radiance shed by the rapidly sinking sun, while all below where we lay was grey cold shade,) until it joined the northern shore, when it sloped away gradually towards the east; the higher parts of the town sparkling in the evening sun, on this dun ridge, like a golden tower on the back of an elephant, while the houses that were in the shade covered the declivity, until it sank down to the water's edge. On the right hand the haven opened boldly out into a basin about four miles broad by seven long, in which the placid waters spread out beyond the shadow of the western bank into one vast sheet of molten gold, with the canoe tearing along the shining surface, her side glancing in the sun, and her paddles flashing back his rays, and leaving a long train of living fire sparkling in her wake.—It was now about six o'clock in the evening; the sun had set to us, as we pulled along under the frowning brow of the cliff, where the birds were fast settling on their nightly perches, with small happy twitterings, and the lizards and numberless other chirping things began to send forth their evening hymn to the great Being who made them and us, and a solitary white-sailing owl would every now and then flit spectrelike from one green tuft, across the bald face of the cliff, to another, and the small divers around us were breaking up the black surface of the waters into little sparkling circles as they fished for their suppers. All was becoming brown and indistinct near us; but the level beams of the setting sun still lingered with a golden radiance upon the lovely city, and the shipping at anchor before it, making their sails, where loosed to dry, glance like leaves of gold, and their spars, and masts, and rigging like wires of gold, and gilding their flags, which were waving majestically and slow from the peaks in the evening breeze; and the Moorish-looking steeples of the churches were yet sparkling in the glorious blaze, which was gradually deepening into gorgeous crimson, while the large pillars of the cathedral, then building on the highest part of the ridge, stood out like brazen monuments, softening even as we looked into a Stonehenge of amethysts.