The Thief at the End of the World Read online

  The chief city on the Orinoco, Ciudad Bolívar was picturesque, built on a low hill overlooking the river. It was flanked by a deep lagoon and the dry, sandy llanos, which stretched for miles in every direction. Simon Bolívar hoped the city, then called Angostura, would be the great port of South America. This didn’t happen, but it did become the gateway to a frontier that in many ways resembled the American West. The llano was filled with cactus and tough, thorny hedges; cattle ranches stretched for thousands of miles. This prairie was not the rolling kind of the American West but a flat, treeless expanse covered in short brown grass, extending from the Orinoco delta to the spurs of the Andes, where the sun beat down with an average temperature of 90° F. Rumors of gold beyond the eastern hills brought streams of prospectors for supplies. Beyond the horizon, hostile Indians still threatened. The city was an oasis, a neat Spanish town of “rough-paved, but clean streets” dominated by a German merchant class who’d grown rich off local salt. In the harbor lay German, Dutch, and American ships that had come for salt and beef to trade in the Caribbean.

  Ciudad Bolívar was also home to the governor, Antonio Della Costa, whose permission Henry needed to continue in-country. Henry and Rogers slung their hammocks in a large stone-flagged room in the town’s only hotel, and the next day Henry went to the Government House, where he was graciously received. Della Costa was proud of his district: The gold near the hills of Utapa would bring riches like the California gold rush, he claimed. His nation might be in turmoil, but in this region there was law and order; there was opportunity. He gave Henry a signed letter allowing free passage up the river and wished him Godspeed.

  Henry soon witnessed frontier justice in action. Prison labor maintained the roads and public works. Each morning, a chain gang straggled from the district jail under guard, “and a more villainous-looking collection of different types of men I think I never beheld:Among them was a low-class Frenchman, who, associated with a repulsive visaged Negro, had long been in the habit of robbing and murdering travelers on the road from the Caratel mines. On the quay, one day, some soldiers ran past, loading their old flint-lock muskets as they went, halting occasionally to level a shot at a man who had just left a pulperia, and was making up the road. The object of pursuit (but that day released from a term of imprisonment) had found his former sweetheart at the pulperia in the company of a rival, and overpowered by jealousy, had run her through with a machete. The miscreant was a tall Negro, who had been notorious as a bully among his fellow convicts; he was ultimately severely wounded and captured.

  Obtaining the governor’s passage was just the first step in leaving Ciudad Bolívar. Henry had to find a boat, and this proved difficult. Although Della Costa gave him an iron lifeboat salvaged from a wrecked river steamer, the boat was rusted through at the seams. For the first time, Henry’s habitual lack of planning had consequence: The daily two dollar hotel charge ate into his meager savings, so the travelers moved their hammocks to the house of an American woman, “one of the last of the southern settlers who came two years before.” She hailed from that peculiar and desperate species of American exile that Henry would find sprinkled throughout the tropics, a refugee group that would have such an impact on his destiny.

  In the first four years following the end of the American Civil War, 8,000-10,000 former Confederates left the South and sought new homes in Latin America. Called the confederados, they thought they could escape the wreck and ruin that covered the former Confederacy from Texas to Virginia. Although the majority of Southerners stayed home, a few thousand sailed from southern ports to colonize land grants in the wilds of Latin America. The Confederate dream of spreading south to form a new slave society predated the Civil War. Its main spokesman was Matthew Fontaine Maury, one of the most renowned American scientists of his day, famous internationally for his achievements in astronomy, geography, and hydrography. Maury was superintendent of the U.S. Hydrographical Office and astronomer of the Naval Observatory in Washington; the fact that he was also a Southern expansionist gave the idea of colonizing the tropics in the name of the South an air of legitimacy. From 1849 to 1855, Maury wrote unceasingly about turning the great rivers of South America into the South’s own slave colony. He was as enthusiastic as Clements Markham in England, painting Latin America as a land of unlimited resource ripe for the taking. Maury was, in fact, sounding the same imperialist trumpets as Britain, but with an overlay of slavery; his real focus, however, was the Amazon Valley. It was “a gold and diamond country” awaiting the cultivation of cotton, coffee, sugar, “and numerous other commercial agricultural products,” but kindred colonizers used his arguments for the Orinoco, too. It only seemed logical, said Maury, that “the fingers of Manifest Destiny pointed southward as frequently as westward.”

  Maury was such a believer that in 1851-52 he used his influence to promote a scientific survey of the Amazon Valley by a relative, William Lewis Herndon, and Midshipman Lardner Gibbon, an officer assigned to accompany him. In letters to the two, he confided that, although the expedition’s stated purpose was to expand “the sphere of human knowledge,” they must remember that this was “merely incidental.” The real object was to investigate the possibility of transporting a large portion of the South’s slave population to the jungle and to gain land grants for future Southern planters.

  Such schemes did not bear fruit until after the Civil War. The Confederate colony in Venezuela, chartered on February 5, 1866, was one of the first to start, and one of the first to fail. Called the Price Grant after the colony’s leader, Dr. Henry M. Price, the land given to the ex-Confederates for settlement was a vast, 240,000-square-mile tract extending along the Orinoco’s right bank to Colombia, then stretching to the common lands between Venezuela, British Guiana, and Brazil. The first fifty-one colonists arrived in Ciudad Bolívar on March 14, 1867, and were greeted by Governor Della Costa. They settled in Borbon, a small town twenty miles upriver, but they didn’t stay long. Fourteen left to dig for gold 125 miles away, and all fell ill or died. Back in Borbon, the leader, Frederick A. Johnson, woke one morning to find himself alone. At noon the others appeared, said they’d found gold in a nearby bluff, and held forth a bucket filled with glistening black sand. Johnson took the sand to be assayed in Ciudad Bolívar. The test identified the sparkly stuff as mica, and the only use for the yawning hole outside Borbon was a grave in which to bury their dreams. That drained the heart from the settlers, and most went home. Johnson remained until April 12, 1867, when he left to recruit more colonists. His personal resources had dwindled to sixty-five cents, and as far as is known, he never returned.

  Henry did not sympathize with his American hostess or her bitter plight. She “was not blessed with a particularly amiable temper,” he said. In addition, she kept a raucous “stock of some dozen parrots in readiness for a Yankee skipper, who traded with New York.” To escape the din, he and Rogers explored the surrounding llanos and made a practice of swimming in the river near town. The daily constitutional was a ritual that Henry prized: “I believe exercise is even more essential to health in a tropical than in a cold country,” he said, a nod to the Victorian belief that regular habits prevented malaria, and so he took a dip every sunrise and sunset. It was also tempting fate: A local man warned them of the dangers of tembladors, or electric eels. “A shock from an eel would send a bather to the bottom without reprieve,” Henry said.

  La Condamine was the first to bring Electrophorus electricus to Europe’s attention, but von Humboldt was the first to determine the nature of its deadly charge. When his guides drove a herd of mules and horses into a marsh where eels were known to rest, the disturbance caused them to deliver a shock. The frightened animals stampeded from the water, and the guides drove them back in. After several repetitions, during which a few horses died, the eels exhausted their batteries and could be 82 flipped onto land with dry lengths of bamboo. Humboldt dissected the fish and discovered that its fibers of electrical generation were equal in weight to its muscular ti
ssue. He was the first to detail the Hunter organs and Sacks bundles—but not before accidentally stepping on an eel. “I cannot remember ever having received a more terrible shock,” he wrote, realizing he would have been killed if not for the sacrifice of the horses. As it was, he had violent pains in his knees and other joints that lasted the rest of the day.

  Forgoing a bath was “a tremendous denial in such a climate,” so Henry bathed with a calabash, or tutuma, in a shallow creek past town in the cool morning. During one of these dips “poor Rogers was stuck by a raya, [or] ‘stingray,’ whilst wading in the shallow water at the brink of the river, and suffered considerably; his leg swelled and he was rendered almost incapable of walking for some twenty-four hours.” This was one of the twenty-five to thirty species of mottled freshwater Potamotrygon stingray, more feared on the Amazon and Orinoco than the piranha or eel. Fishermen were stung while spreading their nets. The large venomous sting at the base of the tail was known to kill children, and even adults if it hit a major vein or artery, while others told of affected limbs feeling numb for years. One can’t help but feel that Henry was partly responsible: He’d been in the tropics before and should have been aware of its dangers. Since he described Rogers as a “young acquaintance,” he probably was younger and less experienced than Henry. From this point on, Rogers’s health began to deteriorate, and they pushed on before the young man recovered. After this, Henry grew increasingly irritated with his companion and seemed to have little sympathy for those who, for whatever reason, slowed him down.

  Besides further delaying their leavetaking, Rogers’s injury had additional consequences. They moved their quarters again to an even cheaper location, the house of an old Barbados woman named Mother Saidy “who was quite motherly to Rogers” in his pain. Mother Saidy seemed to realize that cockiness and spirit were not enough in this harsh environment. She looked out for all wayward young men, black and white, whose tumbling fortunes led them to her door. Such kindness extended to children. She had a weakness “for picking up, and caring for stray chicks of doubtful pedigree,” Henry observed, apparently unaware that he was a “stray chick” too. Expatriate blacks from throughout the British West Indies rendezvoused at Mother Saidy’s: “It was most amusing to see what pride they took in being British subjects, and the contempt in which they held their dark brothers” who were not so blessed, he said.

  They lingered a month, a delay that grated on Henry’s nerves. They’d steadily lost money, and when they finally cast off on February 22 in a “fast little native-built lancha” with a pilot named Ventura, Henry also felt they’d lost valuable time. The rains would come in April, and with them flood, fever, and disease. His impatience included himself and others. Something valuable had to come from this journey, but what could it be?

  He may have caught a glimmer three days before leaving town. On that day, he considered tapping rubber for the first time. “I proposed exploring the Caura, a major tributary on the south bank which joined the Orinoco about 100 miles upstream from Ciudad Bolivar, in search of India-rubber.” Nowhere in his journal did he seem swept away by the gold fever then consuming young men of all nations, but commercial plants of all stripes—that was a different story. At this point, any valuable species would do. As he ascended the river, he searched for the sarrapia tree, Dipteryx odorata, source of the tonka bean, a black-skinned, aromatic seed that smelled like vanilla and was used as its substitute in soaps, perfumes, and pipe tobacco. Antonio Della Costa may have alerted Henry to such possibilities, either he or an English trader named Derbyshire, for whom Ventura worked. The most likely source of his newfound commercial interest, however, was Mother Saidy, a walking encyclopedia of botanical lore. Rogers and Henry both would be nursed through virulent fevers by her knowledge of jungle medicine. She knew plants that were helpful and harmful, and where they could be found.

  The voyage upriver seemed cursed from the beginning. The river was low; they constantly ran aground. The Orinoco’s bends were compressed between high banks; the wind worked against them and the lancha was too bulky to steer. They abandoned it in the village of Maripe for more nimble canoes, one for each man and his gear. They planned to paddle up the nearby Caura River, but just before they left, Ventura got roaring drunk, so Henry stowed him away in the bottom of a canoe and pressed on. Forest surrounded them at the tributary’s mouth. Cicadas sang in the trees, one sounding like a train whistle, another like “the jingling of little bells.” Masses of cloud rolled up behind the forest, and their camp was swamped in a deluge. They paddled deeper up the river in search of better luck. The left bank was held by hostile Taparitos, the right by agricultural Arigua awed by their wild enemies. “There does not appear to be much actual fighting between them, however, as an alarm of their approach occasions a general bolt into the bush,” Henry observed. “The Taparitos then content themselves with planting a few arrows in the deserted houses.” Nevertheless, Henry carried his double-barreled shotgun and Rogers a Snider rifle wherever they went. When Henry tried to persuade several Arigua to search with him for rubber, no one volunteered. They continued on alone.

  On April 2, fever arrived with the rainy season. Several species of the anopheles mosquito that can transmit malaria flit around the Amazon and Orinoco basins, each as ubiquitous as rain: A. darlingii breeds in swamps; A. aquasalis breeds in salt water along the coast; A. cruzi prefers the dirty pools of water in bromeliads. Whichever species attacked bit Henry first. That morning he’d gone into the forest to shoot some birds when “a feeling of giddy faintness came over me, accompanied by a disagreeable sensation of doubt as to whether I should be able to get back to the camp.” He struggled on, “and succeeded in reaching that destination just before the fever obtained mastery over my limbs.” He tried to tell himself that he’d succumbed to the “effluvia” of a tree that he examined, but by April 15, all three companions were touched by fever. They abandoned their quest and turned downstream.

  It took nine days to return to Maripe, a journey they’d made upstream in six. They lashed the canoes together and drifted with the current. The sun beat upon them in the open boats, and Ventura alone had strength to steer. Sometimes they couldn’t even do that but beached the canoes and lay in the water. They were in the same position now as Alfred Russel Wallace, who’d been attacked by fever on the Rio Negro in 1851: “I began taking doses of quinine and drinking plentifully cream of tartar water, though I was so weak and apathetic that at times I could hardly muster resolution to move myself to prepare them,” Wallace recalled. “During two days and nights I hardly cared if we sank or swam. . . . I was constantly half-thinking, half-dreaming, of all my past life and future hopes, and that they were all doomed to end here.” Henry wasn’t even taking quinine, his only relief a wet towel wrapped around his head. After each spasm of fever, he’d drag himself “to the brink of the river and lay myself down in the rippling water.”

  They reached Maripe on April 24, only to find the lancha ruined. The hawser that made her fast had been stolen; she’d rolled on her side in the current, and her planks were warped and sprung. Henry was deathly ill, and his companions were probably as pitiful as he. Their only choice was to float back to Ciudad Bolívar in the canoes. On May 8, they arrived and were put up by Mother Saidy. The “good natured Barbados woman” nursed them back to health and probably saved their lives.

  Henry had to face facts: All his plans had fallen through. He had no cash. His sailboat was ruined. His only possessions were the three canoes and what he could carry. A return to Trinidad would be an admission of failure, but he couldn’t even do that, since he lacked sufficient funds for the fare.

  While Henry mulled his dim future, he was approached by a young confederado named Watkins—and Watkins had a plan. He wanted to get out of this damned country, he said, and he intended to do so by ascending the cataracts of the Orinoco and gaining the Amazon via the Casiquiare canal. Any alternative seemed better to Henry than rotting in Ciudad Bolívar. “Watkins and I were in good co
ndition,” he said, a bit of wishful thinking since his fever never fully abated. Watkins “had seen much rough service in the late American war and in New Mexico,” and had just arrived in town after walking across the llanos from the coast. Henry perked up: He was with a man again, not just that whiner Rogers. He agreed wholeheartedly to Watkins’s project and “did not fear as to the result.”

  On August 6, three months after returning in tatters, Henry set out once more into the interior, this time with Rogers, Watkins, and an Indian named Ramón, a replacement for Ventura. The rain was at its highest, but all were overjoyed to finally be away. The governor had given Henry letters of safe passage to the governor of Amazonas, his opposite upriver. They were as ready as they’d ever be.

  Four days into the journey, things again went awry. They’d only made it upriver about twenty-five miles, close to the first confederado settlement of Borbon, when “declaring himself unwell, [Watkins] took leave of the expedition, and returned to Bolivar.” This was a blow for Henry: “As I had rather relied upon him, I was much disappointed.” It was as if every plan was doomed from the onset. They entered Borbon in hopes of hiring someone to take Watkins’s place, but no one could be tempted, and they moved on. By now, the woods were flooded. “At this, the height of the rainy season, little or no land is to be met with . . . for several days’ journey,” so they made fast beneath a huge floating tree trunk and ended their day with a meal of jerked meat and tea.

  This upriver journey grew worse as they paddled deeper into the inundated world. Rogers’s malaria returned full-force. By midday, all steering and paddling lay with Henry and Ramón. Massive tree trunks reared from the water. The only animal life they encountered were unforgiving insects and perros de agua, packs of huge river otters. When the strange beasts heard the stroke of their paddles, they “gave forth their peculiar mewing cry . . . or suddenly lifted their heads and shoulders out of the water, in order to reconnoiter us, at the same time displaying a goodly set of sharp white fangs.” When Henry found land on a small island, the dank smell of earth was replaced by the musty odor of otter droppings and urine. Henry watched as the dark-brown, slickly furred heads, flattened on top, thrust from the water; the pack chattered at the intruders: “Uh! Uh! Uff! Uh!” Ramón imitated the chatter, and the otters surfaced beside them, six feet in length. Drops of water slid from their side-whiskers. They resembled murderous representatives of some Ministry of Madness. This was an alien world he’d entered, so different from Nicaragua, where life at least had some semblance to the known world.