The Naturalist in Nicaragua Part 20

As has been already mentioned, the Pacific provinces of Nicaragua were inhabited by a people closely related to the Mexicans, and their language was nearly the same. According to Squier, who has more than any other traveller studied the different races, the Indians living at the island of Omotepec at the present time are of pure Mexican or Aztec stock. So many of the names of towns in the central provinces are also of Aztec origin, that they must have had a considerable footing there also. They called the older inhabitants, whom they had probably dispossessed and driven back to the interior, "Chontalli," "barbarians," and hence the name of the province of Chontales, where these tribes still existed in considerable numbers at the time of the conquest.

All these races, differing as they did in language and in the degree of civilisation at which they had arrived, were closely affiliated.* (* According to Prescott the Aztecs and cognate races believed their ancestors came from the north-west, and were preceded by the real civilisers--the Toltecs.) The American archaeologist, Mr. John D. Baldwin, is of opinion that they were the descendants of indigenes. That at some very remote period, before they had attained a high degree of civilisation, they separated into two branches, one of which occupied Peru, the other Central America and Mexico. Both branches advanced greatly in civilisation, and both afterwards deteriorated by being conquered by ruder but more warlike people belonging to the same stock. From Mexico the ancient people spread northward and southward. The northern emigrants peopled the banks of the Mississippi, and were the mound-builders. The southern emigrants peopled Central America.

Then came an immigration from the far north-west, of nomadic tribes from north-eastern Asia, who drove out the mound-builders. The latter retreated back to Mexico, that their fathers had left ages before, and were the ancient Toltecs. Later on, the Aztecs, who were the southern branch of the ancient Mexicans, invaded Mexico from the south, and supplanted the Toltecs. Another branch of the same ancient stock were the Mayas of Yucatan.* (* "Ancient America"

by J.D. Baldwin, A.M.)

Looking then far back we have, according to the old traditions, a few people who had escaped a great cataclysm, when fire and water both fought against mankind; remnants perhaps of many tribes, who, when the lowlands were overwhelmed, escaped to the mountains, speaking a variety of languages, and bringing with them some remembrances of the civilisation of their ancient homes. They increased and multiplied in their new abodes. Some in Mexico, some in Yucatan, and others in Peru arrived at a great pitch of civilisation. Ages pa.s.sed away, they had developed into several distinct peoples, all showing traces of their common descent, but having branched off in different directions in their lines of progress; all underlaid by a few great principles: in their religion, by the wors.h.i.+p of the heavenly bodies; in their government, by complete and absolute obedience to their kings and leaders; in their mode of life all agriculturists and dwellers in regular towns and villages. They spread northward and occupied the valley of the Mississippi, and in summer time sent off large bodies of workmen to extract the copper of Lake Superior. Then came the nomadic tribes from the north-west, the Red Indians of the present day, and drove out the mound-builders, who were turned back on their ancient home, of which they had lost all recollection, and where they appeared as immigrants and invaders. In the subjugation of the ancient Choluans by the Toltecs, and afterwards the Toltecs by the Aztecs, we see what has often occurred in the world's history--a highly civilised race conquered by a ruder people, who had advanced farther in the arts of war, and so overcame the people who had advanced farther in the arts of peace. Therefore the Choluans were replaced by the more warlike Toltecs, the Toltecs by the ruder Aztecs, and those who look at the miserable towns and villages of the present inhabitants alongside of the ruins of the grand edifices, the roads and aqueducts of ancient Mexico and Peru, may say, the Aztecs by the less civilised Spaniards.

The term Brown Indians has been proposed to distinguish the races of Mexico, Central and South America, from the Red Indians of the north; but it is a too general term, as it includes not only the highly-civilised Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians, but the much ruder Caribs of the eastern coasts of South America and the Antilles, who were widely removed from them in race and language. Squier has proposed the term Nahuatls for the people of Mexico and Central America, and if it might be strained to include the Peruvians also, and all the peoples descended from that ancient civilised race that had spread northward and southward, it would supply a want that I have greatly felt in studying these peoples. The Nahuatls--I use the term in this extended sense--are one of three great Indian races that occupy the greater part of North and South America. They had the Red Indians to the north of them, the savage Caribs to the south-east. From both these races they were profoundly different, though not in equal degrees. To the Red Indian they have scarcely any affinity, excepting such as had been brought about by the nomads, who came down from the north-west, taking the women of the Nahuatls, whom they conquered, for their wives, and thus bringing about some points of structural resemblance, such as are to be seen in a lesser degree in the citizens of the United States, through whose veins the blood of the half-breeds of the earlier settlements still courses. In Florida, and around the northern side of the Gulf of Mexico, there had probably been a greater fusion of the two races. But in origin the two peoples are distinct; the one came from north-eastern Asia, the other, I believe, from a tropical country joined on to the present continent, that was submerged at the breaking up of the glacial period.

Was that country to the east or the west of the present continent?

Was it Atlantis, or was it a submerged country in the Pacific? I am inclined to the latter opinion, and to believe that the inhabitants of ancient Atlantis were the ancestors of the warlike and adventurous Caribs. The Nahuatls, in their peaceful dispositions and agricultural pursuits, are much more nearly allied to the Polynesians, and their present preponderance on the western coast favours the idea that they had a western origin.* (* I have already at page 46 alluded to the fundamental difference in the food of the Nahuatls and the Caribs.)

The Caribs, who were found in possession of most of the West Indian Islands, and of the eastern coast of South America, were a warlike, fierce, and enterprising race. Even in Columbus's time they were found making long voyages to ravage the villages of the peace-loving Nahuatls. If there be any truth in the story told to Solon by the priests of Sais, they are a much more likely people to have invaded the countries around the Mediterranean than the Nahuatls. What seems foreign in the customs and beliefs of the latter appears to have come from the west--from China and j.a.pan--whilst there are some few points of affinity between the Caribs and the peoples of Europe and Africa. Thus, Mr. Hyde Clarke states that the greater part of Brazil is covered by the Guarani or Tupi languages, which are allied to the Agaw of the Nile region, the Abka.s.s of Caucasia, etc.

There is one singular custom amongst the Carib races of America, and amongst some ancient peoples in Asia, Europe, and Africa, the existence of which on both sides of the Atlantic cannot, I think, be explained excepting on the theory that there was a remote intercourse or affinity amongst the peoples who practised it. I allude to the singular custom of the "couvade," in which the father is put to bed on the birth of a child. I take the following account of this curious practice from Mr. Tylor's philosophical "Early History of Mankind".

The couvade is developed to the highest degree in South America and the West Indies. The following account is given by Du Tertre of the Carib couvade in the West Indies. When a child is born, the mother goes presently to work, but the father begins to complain, and takes to his hammock, and there he is visited as though he were sick, and undergoes a course of dieting "which would cure of the gout the most replete of Frenchmen." The imaginary invalid must repose and take careful nursing and nouris.h.i.+ng food. In Brazil, on the birth of a child, the father was put to bed and fed with light food, whilst the mother was unattended to, and went about her work.

The practice of the couvade was universal, in some form or other, amongst the Carib races, but was unknown amongst the peoples whom I have called the Nahuatls.

On the other side of the Atlantic the couvade has been noticed in West Africa, and "amongst the mountain tribes known as the Miau-tsze, who are supposed to be, like the Sontals and Gonds of India, remnants of a race driven into the mountains by the present dwellers of the plains." "Another Asiatic people, recorded to have practised the couvade, are the Tibareni of Pontus, at the south of the Black Sea, among whom, when the child was born, the father lay groaning in bed with his head tied up, while the mother tended him with food and prepared his baths." In Europe the couvade may be traced up from ancient into modern times in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees. Above 1800 years ago Strabo mentions the story that, among the Iberians of the north of Spain, the women, after the birth of a child, tend their husbands, putting them to bed instead of going themselves; and this account is confirmed by the evidence of the practice amongst the modern Basques. In Biscay, says Michel, "in valleys whose population recalls in its usages the infancy of society, the women rise immediately after childbirth and attend to the duties of the household, while the husband goes to bed, taking the baby with him, and thus receives the neighbours' compliments."

"It has been found also in Navarre, and on the French side of the Pyrenees. Legrand d'Aussy mentions that in an old French fable the king of Torelose is 'au lit et en couche' when Auca.s.sin arrives and takes a stick to him and makes him promise to abolish the custom in his realm. The same author goes on to state that the practice is said still to exist in some cantons of Bearn, where it is called 'faire la couvade.' Lastly, Diodorus Siculus notices the same habit of the wife being neglected, and the husband put to bed and treated as the patient among the natives of Corsica about the beginning of the Christian era."

For a fuller account of the couvade I must refer my readers to Tylor's "Early History of Mankind", from which I have so largely quoted; his summing up of this curious custom is profound and philosophical. He says: "The isolated occurrences of a custom among particular races, surrounded by other races that ignore it, may be sometimes to the ethnologist like those outlying patches of strata from which the geologist infers that the formation they belong to once spread over intervening districts, from which it has been removed by denudation; or like the geographical distribution of plants, from which the botanist argues that they have travelled from a distant home. The way in which the couvade appears in the new and old worlds is especially interesting from this point of view. Among the savage tribes of South America it is, as it were, at home, in a mental atmosphere, at least, not so different from that in which it came into being as to make it a mere meaningless, absurd superst.i.tion. If the culture of the Caribs and Brazilians, even before they came under our knowledge, had advanced too far to allow the couvade to grow up fresh among them, they at least practised it with some consciousness of its meaning; it had not fallen out of unison with their mental state. Here we find, covering a vast compact area of country, the mental stratum, so to speak, to which the couvade most nearly belongs. But if we look at its appearances across from China to Corsica the state of things is widely different; no theory of its origin can be drawn from the Asiatic and European accounts to compete for a moment with that which flows naturally from the observations of the missionaries, who found it not a mere dead custom, but a live growth of savage psychology. The peoples, too, who have kept it up in Asia and Europe seem to have been, not the great progressive, spreading, conquering, civilising nations of the Aryan, Semitic, and Chinese stocks. It cannot be ascribed even to the Tartars, for the Lapps, Finns, and Hungarians appear to know nothing of it. It would seem rather to have belonged to that ruder population, or series of populations, whose fate it has been to be driven by the great races out of the fruitful lands to take refuge in mountains and deserts.

The retainers of the couvade in Asia are the Miau-tsze of China and the savage Tibareni of Pontus. In Europe they are the Basque race of the Pyrenees, whose peculiar manners, appearance, and language, coupled with their geographical position, favour the view that they are the remains of a people driven westward and westward, by the pressure of more powerful tribes, till they came to these last mountains, with nothing but the Atlantic beyond. Of what stock were the original barbarian inhabitants of Corsica we do not know; but their position, and the fact that they, too, had the couvade, would suggest their having been a branch of the same family who escaped their persecutors by putting out to sea and settling in their mountainous island."* (* E.B. Tylor "Early History of Mankind"

pages 288-297.)

Let us now return to the Nahuatls, and see if they present any affinities to the nations of the old world. Humboldt's well-known argument, in which he sought to prove the Asiatic origin of the Mexicans, was based upon the remarkable resemblance of their system of reckoning cycles of years to that found in use in different parts of Asia. Both the Asiatic and Mexican systems of cycles are most artificial in their construction, and troublesome in practice, and they are very unlikely to have arisen independently on two continents. Humboldt says: "I inferred the probability of the western nations of the new continent having had communication with the east of Asia long before the arrival of the Spaniards from a comparison of the Mexican and Tibeto-j.a.panese calendars, from the correct orientation of the steps of the pyramidal elevations towards the different quarters of the heavens, and from the ancient myths and traditions of the four ages or four epochs of destruction of the world, and the dispersion of mankind after a great flood of waters."* (* Humboldt "Aspects of Nature" volume 2 174.)

Whilst there are undoubtedly many curious coincidences in the customs of the ancient Mexicans and the peoples of eastern Asia, there are, on the other hand, so many differences that I believe it is safer to infer that they were essentially distinct in origin, and that there had been communication between the two peoples in very early times, but that the foreign influence in Mexico was extremely feeble, and too weak to check the growth of an essentially indigenous civilisation. Possibly sun and serpent wors.h.i.+p, baptism, and the use of the cross as a sacred emblem, were the survival of religious beliefs that had obtained in the very cradle of the human race. We cannot, however, believe that mankind had, before the separation and dispersion of the eastern and western nations, attained to any great astronomical knowledge, and it is quite possible that the extraordinary coincidences between the chronological and astronomical systems of the Nahuatls and the eastern Asiatics might have been brought about by some of the latter having been stranded on the American sh.o.r.e.

Humboldt argued that, "as the western coasts of the American continent trend from north-west to south-east, and the eastern coasts of Asia in the opposite direction, the distance between the two continents in 45 degrees of lat.i.tude, or in the temperate zone, which is most favourable to mental development, is too considerable to admit of the probability of such an accidental settlement taking place in that lat.i.tude. We must then a.s.sume the first landing to have been made in the inhospitable climate of from 55 to 65 degrees, and that the civilisation thus introduced, like the general movement of population in America, has proceeded by successive stations from north to south."* (* Humboldt "Aspects of Nature" volume 2 176.) If we are obliged to a.s.sume that the people themselves came from the old world, such an origin might be sought for them as well as any other; but all research since Humboldt's time has favoured the idea that there are no signs of the Nahuatls being a newer people than the nations of Asia. And if it is not the derivation of the people, but of some coincidences in their observances and knowledge, we may seek for it some simpler solution than the migration of a whole people down through North to Central America. That solution is, I believe, to be found in the fact, not taken into consideration by Humboldt, that the great j.a.panese current, after traversing the eastern coast of j.a.pan, sends one large branch nearly directly east across the Pacific to the coast of California, and an offshoot from it pa.s.ses southward along the Mexican coast and as far as the western coast of Central America.

In Kotzebue's narrative of his voyage round the world, he says: "Looking over Adams' diary, I found the following notice--'Brig Forester, March 24, 1815, at sea, upon the coast of California, lat.i.tude 32 degrees 45 seconds north, longitude 133 degrees 3 minutes west. We saw this morning, at a short distance, a s.h.i.+p, the confused state of whose sails showed that they wanted a.s.sistance.

We bent our course towards her, and made out the distressed vessel to be j.a.panese, which had lost both mast and helm. Only three dying j.a.panese, the captain and two sailors, were found in the vessel. We took these unfortunate people on board our brig, and, after four months' nursing, they entirely recovered. We learned from these people that they had sailed from the harbour of Osaka, in j.a.pan, bound for another seaport, but were overtaken by a storm, in which they lost the helm and mast. Till that day their s.h.i.+p had been drifting about, a mere b.u.t.t for the winds and waves, during seventeen months; and of thirty-five men only three remained, all the others having died of hunger.'" Is it not likely that in ancient times such accidents may have occurred again and again, and that information of the astronomical and chronological systems of eastern Asia may thus have been brought to the Nahuatls, who, from the ease with which they embraced the religion of the Spaniards, are shown to have been open to receive foreign ideas?

The three arguments on which Humboldt princ.i.p.ally relied to prove that a communication had existed between the east of Asia and the Mexicans may be explained without adopting his theory that the Nahuatls had travelled round from the old world. The remarkable resemblance of the Mexican and Tibeto-j.a.panese calendars might result from the accidental stranding of a j.a.panese or Chinese vessel on their sh.o.r.es, bringing to them some man learned in the astronomy of the old world. The correct orientation of the sides of their pyramidal temples was but the result of their great astronomical knowledge and of the wors.h.i.+p of the sun. And the resemblance of their traditions of four epochs of destruction and of the dispersion of mankind after a great flood of waters, arose from the fact that the great catastrophes that befell the human race at the melting of the ice of the glacial period were universal over the world.

CHAPTER 21.

Return to Santo Domingo.

The birds of Chontales.

The insects of Chontales.

Mimetic forms.

Departure from the mines.

Nicaragua as a field for emigration.

Journey to Greytown.

Return to England.

HAVING finished our business at Masaya, we rode back to Granada on the evening of the second day, and the next morning took a pa.s.sage in a fine steamboat that Mr. Hollenbeck, of Greytown, had placed on the lake to convey pa.s.sengers and goods between Granada and San Carlos, at the head of the river San Juan. We arrived at San Ubaldo at two o'clock, and found our mules safe but foot-sore, through travelling over the rocky hills from Santo Claro. The San Jose plains were in a dreadfully muddy state, and for five miles we went plunging through the swamps. Most of the mules fell several times, and we had great difficulty in getting them up again. We pa.s.sed two travellers with their mules up to their girths in mud, and incapable of extricating themselves, but could not help them, as we dared not allow ours to stand, or they would stick fast also. We had met, at San Ubaldo, the son of Dr. Seemann, on his way home to England. His pack-mule had stuck fast in the plains the night before, and he had pa.s.sed the night sitting on his boxes, half sunk in the mud, and attacked by myriads of mosquitoes that had covered his hands, face, and neck with blisters.

It was two hours after dark before we got across the weary plains.

We found shelter for the night at a small hut on their border, where, for a consideration, the occupants gave up to us their mosquito curtains and stretchers, and sat up themselves. I suppose in such situations people get used to the mosquitoes, but to us they were intolerable. They buzzed around us and settled on our hands and face, if the former were not incessantly employed driving them off. Those of our party who had no curtains had a lively time of it. A gentleman of colour, from Jamaica, who was returning to the mines after escorting young Mr. Seemann to the port, and who could find no place to rest in, excepting an old hammock, kept his long arms going round like a windmill, every now and then wakening every one up with a loud crack, as he tried to bring his flat hand down on one of his tormentors. A mosquito, however, is not to be caught, even in the dark, in such a way. It holds up its two hinder legs as feelers; the current of air driven before a descending blow warns it of the impending danger, and it darts off to one side, to renew its attack somewhere else. The most certain way to catch them in the dark is to move the outstretched finger cautiously towards where one is felt, until a safe striking distance is reached. But what is the use of killing one when they are in myriads? None whatever, excepting that it is some occupation for the sleepless victim. The black gentleman was a thinker and a scholar, and used to amuse himself at the mines by writing letters addressed to Mr.

Jacob Elam, Esquire (himself), in which he informed himself that he had been left legacies of ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds, a few thousand more or less costing nothing. Pondering during that weary night over the purpose of creation, he startled me about one in the morning with the question, "Mr. Belt, sir, can you tell me what is the use of mosquitoes?"

"To enjoy themselves and be happy, Jacob."

"Ah, sir! if I was only a mosquito!" said Jacob, as he came down with another fruitless whack.

At the first c.o.c.k-crow we were up, and as the cheerful dawn lighted up the east, we were in our saddles, and the miseries of the night Were but the jests of the morning. The mules even seemed to be eager to leave that dismal swamp, where malaria hung in the air, and mosquitoes did their best to drive mankind away. The dry savannahs were before us, our hearts were young as the morning, the tormenting spirits of the night had flown away with the darkness, and jest and banter enlivened the road. We reached Acoyapo at nine o'clock; my good friend Don Dolores Bermudez lent me a fresh mule, and, riding all day, I reached Santo Domingo in the evening.

I have little more of interest to relate. Years had sped on at Santo Domingo; and the time approached when I should be set free from the worries and responsibilities attending the supervision of gold-mines, the products of which were just at that tantalising point, on the verge between profit and loss, that made their superintendence a most irksome and anxious duty. The difficulty of the task was vastly increased by the capital of the company having been originally wasted in the erection of machinery that proved to be useless; so that financial questions constantly r.e.t.a.r.ded the completion of the works. This book has not been written, however, to tell the story of the struggles of a mining engineer; and I turn aside with pleasure from this slight digression to say what little more I have to tell of my natural history experiences.

I did not, until near the conclusion of my stay, commence collecting the skins of birds, contenting myself with watching and noting their habits. I obtained the skins of ninety-two species only; but small as this collection was, it proved an important addition to the knowledge of the bird-fauna of Nicaragua. The eminent ornithologist, Mr. Osbert Salvin, published in the "Ibis"

for July 1872 a list of seventy-three species that I had up to that time sent to England. Altogether, only one hundred and fifty species, including those that I had collected, were known from Nicaragua. Fragmentary as our knowledge is, it is sufficient, in Mr. Salvin's opinion, to indicate, with tolerable accuracy, to which of the two sub-provinces of the Central American fauna the forest region of Chontales belongs. The birds I sent to England proved nearly conclusively that the Costa-Rican sub-province included Chontales in Nicaragua, and that the boundary between it and the sub-province of Southern Mexico and Guatemala must be sought for more to the north-west.

Of the southern species, which in Chontales find their northern limit, so far as is known, there are in my small collection thirty-two species, whilst belonging to the northern sub-province, and not known to range further south, there are only seven species; showing that the connection with Costa Rica and the south is much closer than that with Guatemala and the north, and that the boundary between the two sub-provinces is not found, as was supposed, in the depression of the isthmus occupied by the great lakes and their outlet the San Juan river, but must exist further towards, if not in, Honduras. Mr. Salvin says, "What I suspect to be the case, though I cannot as yet bring evidence to prove it, is, that the forests of Chontales spread uninterruptedly into Costa Rica, but that towards the north and north-west a decided break occurs, and that this break determines the range of the prevalent Costa Rican and Guatemalan forest forms."* (* "The Ibis" July 1872 page 312.) I can confirm Mr. Salvin's supposition. The San Juan river forms no greater break in the forest than a dozen other rivers that run through it and fall into the Atlantic. But a decided interruption does occur to the north-west. It is found in the valleys of Humuya and Goascoran in Honduras, which, along with the central plain of Comayagua, const.i.tute a great transverse valley running north and south from sea to sea, and cutting completely through the chain of the Cordilleras.* (* Squier "States of Central America" page 681.) The highest point of this pa.s.s is 2850 feet above the sea, and the country around is composed of undulating savannahs and plains covered with gra.s.s. The Gulf of Honduras, cutting deeply into the continent, also plays an important part in preventing the intermingling of the faunas of the two sub-provinces, but the princ.i.p.al barrier is the termination of the great Atlantic forest north-westward, which even at Cape Gracias begins to give place to plains and savannahs next the coast.

(PLATE 25. LONGICORN BEETLES OF CHONTALES.

1. Evander n.o.bilis, Bates.

2. Gymnocerus beltii, Bates.

3. Polyrhaphis fabricii, Thom.

4. Deliathis nivea, Bates.

5. Taeniotes praeclarus, Bates.

6. Chalastinus rubrocinctus, Bates.

7. Cosmisoma t.i.tania, Bates.

8. Carneades superba, Bates.

9. Amphionyca princeps, Bates.)

My entomological collections were much more complete than my collections of birds, especially those of the b.u.t.terflies and beetles.* [* The author's bird and insect collections were purchased at his death by Messrs G.o.dman and Salvin who also acquired from Mr. H.W. Bates the types and other specimens of coleoptera described by him which had not remained in the original collection. These are all now in the British Museum, together with the Hewitson bequest, in which are many of the lepidoptera types.

It may not be out of place to add that Mr. Hewitson left in his will the sum of two hundred pounds to Belt in recognition of the way in which the latter's collections had been placed at his service.] Mr. W.C. Hewitson has described twenty-five new species, but no list of the whole of the b.u.t.terflies known from Nicaragua has yet been published. In Coleoptera I made large collections, but the extensive families of the Elateridae, Lamellicorns, and others are still uncatalogued, and very many species remain to be described. The only beetles that have been catalogued as yet with sufficient completeness to warrant any general conclusions are the Longicorns. I collected about 300 different species, and Mr. H.W.

Bates has enumerated 242 of these in a paper "On the Longicorn Coleoptera of Chontales, Nicaragua," published in the "Transactions of the Entomological Society" for 1872. In an interesting summary of the results he gives the following a.n.a.lysis of the range of the species:--

Peculiar to Chontales: 133 species.

Common to Chontales and Mexico: 38 species.

Common to Do. and the West India Islands: 5 species.

Common to Do. and the United States: 5 species.

Common to Do. and New Grenada or Venezuela: 24 species.

Common to Do. and the Amazon Region: 22 species.

Common to Do. and South Brazil: 10 species.

Generally distributed in Tropical America: 5 species.