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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Notes of a Naturalist in South America," John Ball offers a compelling exploration of the continent's rich biodiversity and varied landscapes. Written in the mid-19th century, this travelogue-style account is characterized by meticulous observation and vivid descriptions that reflect the burgeoning interest in natural history during the Victorian era. Ball's narrative seamlessly intertwines personal anecdotes and scientific observations, capturing not only the flora and fauna he encountered but also the cultural tapestry of the regions he traversed. The book serves as both a scientific record and a lyrical meditation on nature's beauty and complexity, positioning it within the broader context of exploration and naturalism of its time. John Ball, a prominent figure in both geology and botany, was profoundly influenced by the natural sciences throughout his life. His extensive travels and academic background allowed him to engage deeply with the landscapes he explored, fostering a keen appreciation for the natural world. Ball's commitments to the Royal Irish Academy and various botanical societies further reflect his dedication to the scientific community, informing the meticulous and thoughtful nature of his writing in this book. "Notes of a Naturalist in South America" is highly recommended for readers interested in natural history, travel literature, and the evolution of ecological thought. Ball's keen observations and eloquent prose provide both an informative and aesthetically pleasing experience, making it an essential read for both scholars and general readers fascinated by the wonders of the natural world. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Notes of a naturalist in South America
Table of Contents
Introduction
Between the measured gaze of a trained naturalist and the vast, unruly energies of a continent in motion, Notes of a Naturalist in South America follows the making of knowledge in the field, where footsteps, river crossings, and deliberate ascents turn raw spectacle into patient understanding, and where every page negotiates the tension between naming and wondering, between classifying a specimen and yielding to the magnitude of mountain, forest, and sky, so that the act of travel becomes a disciplined openness, a record of attention sharpened by risk, fatigue, and weather, yet steadied by method, instruments, and a notebook.
John Ball’s book is a nineteenth‑century travel and natural history narrative set across South American landscapes, with particular attentiveness to high Andean regions, and published in the late Victorian era. Written by an Irish naturalist best known for combining mountaineering with scientific fieldwork, it situates the reader within a world where geology, botany, and climate are read directly from terrain. Without relying on laboratory distance, the account draws its authority from close looking, measured comparison, and the steady accumulation of notes. The result is a chronicle that is at once itinerary and inquiry, a record of movement that doubles as a portable cabinet of observation.
As a reading experience, it is a first‑person travelogue whose voice is lucid, patient, and exact, more concerned with tracing patterns than with staging dramatic incident. Ball’s prose alternates between tightly observed descriptions and reflective pauses in which broader questions emerge from local detail. The tone remains formal yet companionable, inviting the reader to keep pace with a careful traveler who values clarity over flourish. You follow elevations and horizons, feel shifts of weather and light, and watch explanations assemble gradually. The book rewards slow reading, because meaning collects by increments—through comparisons, reiterated measurements, and recurring scenes viewed at new angles.
Several themes guide the journey and give it coherence beyond route and schedule. One is scale: how altitude, distance, and geological time recalibrate human perception. Another is method: the craft of taking notes that make different places commensurable without flattening their singularity. A third concerns life’s distribution—why plants, animals, and people appear where they do—and how climate and landforms shape those patterns. Throughout, the narrative balances analytic and affective responses, neither surrendering to sentiment nor banishing awe. The constant return to evidence—the seen, collected, and compared—keeps the book grounded even as it acknowledges the limits of what can be known on the move.
Situated in an age when scientific disciplines were consolidating and long‑distance travel was accelerating, the work participates in a wider nineteenth‑century tradition that linked exploration to natural history. It values public communication: observations are arranged so that a general reader can follow methods as well as conclusions. At the same time, the book reflects the period’s assumptions, and contemporary audiences will recognize the need to read it with historical awareness. Yet its core practice—precise description joined to cautious inference—remains exemplary. Rather than chase the sensational, Ball makes patience a principle, trusting that careful attention to place can illuminate larger patterns.
For readers today, the book matters as a usable archive of baseline impressions from environments that have since been altered by development and climate. Its pages preserve how certain landscapes, mountains, forests, and river systems appeared to a trained observer in the nineteenth century, offering a comparative vantage for environmental historians and curious travelers alike. It also models an ethic of looking that is increasingly scarce: to observe before concluding, to situate facts within context, and to let uncertainty stand when evidence is incomplete. In an era of speed, it demonstrates the durable value of disciplined slowness.
Approached on its own terms, Notes of a Naturalist in South America offers both orientation and invitation: orientation in the form of routes, altitudes, and specimens that anchor the reader; invitation in the way questions are posed and left open for further inquiry. Expect an itinerary that advances by modest stages rather than set‑piece drama, and a narrator who privileges clarity, proportion, and restraint. The book’s historical vantage is part of its texture, and recognizing that context enriches rather than diminishes its insights. Read as patient company, it still enlarges the field of attention and makes the unfamiliar newly intelligible.
Synopsis
John Ball’s Notes of a naturalist in South America, a late nineteenth-century work of travel and natural history, presents a measured record of observations gathered during an extended journey across parts of the continent. Written in a plain, precise style, it balances itinerary with analysis, turning routes and halts into opportunities to examine landforms, climates, and living communities. Ball positions himself as both traveler and investigator, attentive to what can be seen, measured, and cautiously inferred in the field. The book’s organization alternates descriptive passages with reflective sections that situate local phenomena within broader scientific questions current in his day.
Early chapters establish the practical circumstances of travel and the observational methods that guide the narrative. Sea passages, coastal approaches, and first landings are treated as a natural preface to inland inquiry, with weather, visibility, and access shaping what can be reliably recorded. Ball stresses the value of repeated looks and comparative vantage points, returning to sites when conditions allow more careful inspection. These pages map the rhythm of the journey—intermittent movement, enforced pauses, and opportunistic detours—while sketching the kinds of evidence he will prioritize: profiles of shores and valleys, changes in temperature and vegetation, and the character of rock and soil.
The work’s geological core assembles a continental cross-section in close-up, moving from lowlands to high cordilleras and back again. Ball reads slopes, ravines, and plateaus for clues to their making, weighing erosion, uplift, and past climatic regimes with a conservative eye. He pays particular attention to mountain structure and to the traces left by former snow and ice, comparing familiar forms from European ranges to analogous features he meets abroad. Rather than asserting grand claims, he sifts patterns of strata, boulder trains, and valley shapes, using them to refine sketches of regional history while acknowledging observational limits imposed by terrain and time.
A complementary set of chapters treats plant life as a map of climate and altitude. Ball notes how vegetation composition shifts with elevation, exposure, and moisture, and how belts of forest, scrub, and grass reveal gradients that instruments only partly capture. He follows flowering times, leaf forms, and growth habits to mark transitions, careful to distinguish between local peculiarity and wider biogeographic trends. These botanical passages also exemplify his method: precise description first, cautious comparison second. Where the evidence suggests continuity across distant regions, he indicates it; where it does not, he leaves questions open for future work.
Faunal observations, while less systematic than the botanical, thread through coasts, plains, and uplands. Birds, marine creatures, and insects serve as indicators of habitat boundaries and seasonal shifts. Ball remarks on behaviors that aid identification and on assemblages that recur under similar conditions, noting how shorelines, wetlands, and high-altitude environments filter which species thrive. He observes domestic animals and their roles in transport and settlement as part of the same ecological picture. Throughout, he is careful to separate firsthand sightings from what he has learned from reliable local informants or from the scientific literature available to him.
Human geography enters as context rather than centerpiece, yet it shapes what the naturalist can know. Ball records routes, passes, and ports that enable or obstruct inquiry, and he sketches the economic activities that imprint landscapes—agriculture, grazing, and extraction—without turning the book into a social survey. He situates his findings within ongoing debates on mountain building, the reach of former glaciation, and the distribution of life, noting convergences and disagreements among contemporaries. The narrative thus becomes a conduit between field and forum, translating localized encounters with land and life into contributions legible to readers of the period.
The closing sections consolidate travel and study into a restrained appraisal of what has been learned and what remains uncertain. Ball emphasizes the value of direct observation, comparative reasoning, and the humility to let unanswered questions stand. Notes of a naturalist in South America endures less as a catalogue of marvels than as a model of field-based inquiry in a vast and varied region. It offers later readers a snapshot of environments and methods at a particular historical moment, and it frames enduring questions—about climate, terrain, and living diversity—that still organize research while leaving interpretive space for evidence yet to be gathered.
Historical Context
John Ball (1818–1889) was an Irish-born British naturalist, mountaineer, and former Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies who became the first president of the Alpine Club. His Notes of a Naturalist in South America appeared in 1887, during the late Victorian surge in scientific travel literature. The book draws on journeys along the Andean and Pacific rim, set against expanding global mobility by steamship and rail. Ball wrote for an audience shaped by the Royal Geographical Society, the Linnean Society, and Kew Gardens, where systematics and plant geography framed observation. His standing as an alpine scientist lent authority to high-mountain comparisons, and he was author of The Alpine Guide.
Ball traveled as South America was consolidating nation-states and export economies. The War of the Pacific (1879–1884) had recently redrawn borders between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, placing major nitrate fields under Chilean control and reshaping coastal commerce. British shipping, banking, and trade houses were prominent in ports such as Valparaíso and Callao. Steamers of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company linked these harbors, aided by the Panama Railroad (opened 1855), while the French canal project at Panama began in 1881. Such routes enabled European naturalists to move rapidly between littoral zones and the Andes, assembling comparative observations within a single itinerary.
Victorian natural history was profoundly shaped by earlier South American explorations. Alexander von Humboldt’s accounts of Andean altitude, climate, and plant distribution established models of systematic observation. Charles Darwin’s Beagle voyage (1831–1836) and On the Origin of Species (1859) reframed biogeography and adaptation, encouraging travelers to read landscapes historically. At Kew Gardens, Joseph Dalton Hooker and colleagues coordinated global taxonomy and exchanged specimens with collectors across the Andes and southern cone. Ball’s training in alpine science, glaciology, and plant geography situated his notes within these traditions, emphasizing altitude, zonation, and comparative morphology more than anecdote, and privileging measured description.
By the 1880s, travel logistics favored systematic fieldwork. Steam navigation had cut passage times around Cape Horn and through the Strait of Magellan, and regular postal services and telegraphy connected Pacific ports with Europe. Railways linked interior valleys to seaports—among them the line between Valparaíso and Santiago (completed in the 1860s) and rapidly expanding networks on the Argentine pampas. The British Admiralty’s hydrographic surveys furnished detailed coastal charts used by merchant and mail steamers. Such infrastructure allowed Ball to sample coastal deserts, temperate forests, and high Andes within weeks, taking barometric readings, noting geology, and comparing floras across sharp gradients.
State-building campaigns were reshaping southern South America. Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) and Chile’s long Pacification of Araucanía (largely concluded by the early 1880s) extended central authority over Patagonia and the southern Andes, displacing Indigenous communities and opening routes to settler ranching and timber extraction. These policies also expanded garrisons, roads, and coastal provisioning points, which foreign travelers used. British consuls, merchants, and engineers formed social and logistical networks in key towns, smoothing introductions and transport. Ball’s encounters with officials and landowners fit within this milieu, where scientific observation and state-led territorial consolidation frequently intersected in the Victorian imagination.
Economic transformation framed many landscapes described by European visitors. The guano boom of the mid-nineteenth century had waned, but nitrate extraction in the Atacama Desert, copper development in Chile, and expanding pastoral and cereal exports from the River Plate region were accelerating. Coastal towns rebuilt and adapted after major earthquakes and tsunamis in 1868 and 1877, events well known in Europe through scientific reports and the press. Such settings drew geologists and naturalists to questions of aridity, seismicity, and resource frontiers. These concerns emphasized environmental limits—snowlines, timberlines, and desert margins—within which observers situated measurements of climate, geology, and plant distribution.
In Britain, travel-natural history occupied a respected niche that blended popular narrative with technical reporting. Publishers such as Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. issued handsomely produced volumes aimed at educated readers and libraries. Learned societies expected observations to include altitudes, temperatures, rock types, and species identifications anchored in Kew and Linnean nomenclature. Maps and Admiralty place-names standardized itineraries for comparison. Ball’s South American notes follow these conventions, interleaving itinerary, geology, and botany, and contrasting alpine forms across continents. The format served to extend metropolitan scientific debates with fresh data from understudied regions while remaining accessible to non-specialist audiences.
Notes of a Naturalist in South America therefore exemplifies late Victorian science-in-travel: precise, comparative, and globally referential. Ball reads Andean and Pacific-slope environments through Humboldtian schemes, Darwinian history, and European alpine experience, while relying on steam routes, consular aid, and commercial networks characteristic of British global reach. The narrative situates field observations amid recently altered boundaries, busy commodity ports, and expanding railheads, acknowledging how politics and economy structure access to nature. In doing so, the book mirrors its moment’s confidence in measurement and synthesis and offers a tempered, observational record that informs debates on glaciation, biogeography, and climatic gradients.
Notes of a naturalist in South America
PREFACE.
A tour round the South American continent, which was completed in so short a time as five months, may not appear to deserve any special record; yet I am led to hope that this little book may serve to induce others to visit a region so abounding in sources of enjoyment and interest. There is no part of the world where, in the same short space of time, a traveller can view so many varied and impressive aspects of nature; while he whose attention is mainly given to the progress and development of the social condition of mankind will find in the condition of the numerous states of the continent, and the manners and habits of the many different races that inhabit it, abundant material to engage his attention and excite his interest.
Although, as the title implies, the aim of my journey was mainly directed to the new aspects of nature, organic and inorganic, which South America superabundantly presents to the stranger, I have not thought it without interest to give in these pages the impressions as to the social and political condition of the different regions which I visited, suggested to an unprejudiced visitor by the daily incidents of a traveller’s life.
Those who may be tempted to undertake a tour in South America will find that by a judicious choice of route, according to the season selected for travelling, they may visit all the accessible parts of the continent with perfect ease, and with no more risk of injury to health, or of bodily discomfort, than they incur in a summer excursion in Europe. The chief precaution to be observed is to make the visit to Brazil fall in the cool and dry season, extending from mid-May to September. It may also be well to mention that, while the cost of passage and expenses on board, for a journey of about 18,400 miles by sea, somewhat exceeded £170, my expenses during about ten weeks on land, without any attempt at economy, did not exceed £100.
The reader may regard as superfluous the rather frequent references to the meteorology of the various parts of the continent which I was able to visit. But, if he will consider the importance of the two main elements—temperature and moisture—in regulating the development of organic life in past epochs, and the influence which they now exercise on the character of the human population, he will admit that a student of nature could not fail to make them the objects of frequent attention, the more especially as many erroneous impressions as to the climate of various parts of South America are still current, even among men of science.
I make no pretension to add anything of importance to our store of positive knowledge respecting the region described in this volume; I shall be content if it should be found that I have suggested trains of thought that may lead others to valuable results. I venture, indeed, to believe that the argument adduced in the sixth chapter, as to the great extent and importance of the ancient mountains of Brazil, approaches near to demonstration, and that the recognition of its validity will be found to throw fresh light on the history of organic life in that region of the globe.
In the Appendices to this volume two subjects of a somewhat technical character, not likely to interest the general reader, are separately discussed. With regard to both of them, my aim has been to show that the opinions now current amongst men of science do not rest upon adequate evidence, and that we need further knowledge of the phenomena, discoverable by observation, before we can safely arrive at positive conclusions.
In deference to the prejudices of English readers, which are unfortunately shared by many scientific writers, the ordinary British standards of measure and weight have been followed throughout the text, as well as the antiquated custom of denoting temperature by the scale of Fahrenheit’s thermometer[1]. With regard to the metrical system of measures and weights, I am fully aware of its imperfections, and if the question were now raised for the first time I should advocate the adoption of some considerable modifications. But seeing that no other uniform system is in existence, and that the metrical system has been adopted by nearly all civilized nations, I cannot but regret that my countrymen should retain what is practically a barrier to the free interchange of thought with the rest of the world. The defects of the metrical system are mainly those of our decimal system of numeration, which owes its existence to the fact that the human hand possesses five fingers. If in some future stage of development our race should acquire a sixth finger to each hand, it may then also acquire a more convenient system of numeration, to which the scale of measures would naturally be adapted. In the mean time the advantages of a uniform system far outweigh its attendant defects.
The adherence to the Fahrenheit scale for the thermometer is even less defensible. It belongs to a primitive epoch of science, when a knowledge of the facts of physics was in a rudimentary stage, and its survival at the present day is a matter of marvel to the student of progress.
I should not conclude these prefatory words without expressing my obligations to many scientific friends whom I have from time to time consulted with advantage; and I must especially record my obligation to Mr. Robert Scott, F.R.S., who has on many occasions been my guide to the valuable materials available in the library of the Meteorological Office.
NOTES OF A NATURALIST IN SOUTH AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
Voyage across the Atlantic—Barbadoes—Jamaica—Isthmus of Panama—Buenaventura, tropical forest—Guayaquil and the river Guayas—Payta—The rainless zone of Peru—Voyage to Callao.
A voyage across the Atlantic in a large ocean steamer is now as familiar and as little troublesome as the journey from London to Paris. It rarely offers any incident worth recounting, and yet, especially as a first experience, it supplies an abundant variety of sources of curiosity and interest. It is easy for a man to sit down at home and within the walls of his own study to find the requisite materials for investigating the still unsolved problems presented by the physics and meteorology of the ocean, or the evidence favourable or hostile to the important modern doctrine of the permanence of the great ocean valleys; but in point of fact very few men who stay at home do occupy themselves with these questions, and it is no slight privilege to feel drawn towards them by the hourly suggestions received during a sea-voyage. Nor is it possible to make light of the simpler pleasures caused by the satisfaction of mere curiosity, when that is linked by association with the pictures on which the fancy has worked from one’s earliest childhood onward. The starting of a covey of flying-fish, the fringe of cocos palms rising against the horizon, the Southern Cross and the Magellanic clouds, the reversed apparent motion of the sun from right to left—none of them very marvellous as mere observed facts—are so many keys that unlock the closed-up recesses, the blue chambers of the memory, which the youthful imagination had peopled with shapes of beauty and wonder and mystery.
Some thrill of delightful anticipation was, I presume, felt by many of the passengers who went on board the royal mail steamer Don in Southampton Water on the 17th of March, 1882. Amid the usual waving of handkerchiefs from the friends who remained behind on board the tender, we glided seaward, and by four p.m. were going at half speed abreast of the Isle of Wight. The good ship had suffered severely during the preceding winter on her homeward passage from the West Indies, when the heavy seas which swept her upper deck had carried away the covering of her engine-room, stove in the chief officer’s cabin, and severely injured her commander, Captain Woolward. On this occasion our voyage was easy and prosperous, and nothing occurred to test severely the careful seamanship of Captain Gillies, who had taken the temporary command.
On the 19th the barometer, which, in spite of a gentle breeze from south-west, had stood as high as 30·40, fell about a quarter of an inch between sunrise and sunset; and in the night, on the only occasion during the entire voyage, remained for some hours below 30·00. A moderate breeze from the north brought with it a disproportionately heavy sea, and although there was no sensible pitching, the ship rolled so heavily as to send many of the passengers to solitary confinement in their berths. This continued throughout the 20th, afterwards styled Black Monday by the sufferers from sea-sickness, and we escaped into smoother water only on the evening of the following day. The discomfort which I felt from fancying that I had “lost my sea legs” was entirely relieved by fortunately coming across a distinguished naval officer, on his way to take a command on the West Indian station, who like myself was forced to hold on with both hands during the rolling of the ship.
It was clear that we had passed at no great distance from a cyclone in the North Atlantic—one of those disturbances whose visits are so often predicted from the western continent, but which so often fortunately lose their way or get dissipated before they approach our shores. It would seem that little progress has been made in forecasting the direction in which these great aërial eddies traverse the ocean, or the conditions under which they expend their force. It seems allowable to suppose that the most important of the causes influencing their direction depend upon the general movements of the great currents of the atmosphere; and that, as these are constantly modified by the changing position of the earth in her orbit, the element of season is primarily to be considered. It being admitted that the origin of these disturbances is to be sought in the abnormal heating or cooling of some considerable portion of the earth’s surface, it would seem that, in the case of the Atlantic, local causes can have little effect, unless we suppose that the heating of the surface of the Azores in summer, or the annual descent of icebergs from the polar seas, are adequate to influence the march of a travelling cyclone.
On the evening of the 20th the barometer had risen again to its former position, rather over 30·40 inches; the mean of the four following days was 30·55, and that of the entire run from Southampton to Barbadoes was 30·36. This fact of the continuance of high or low pressures at the sea-level at certain seasons in some parts of the world has scarcely been sufficiently noted in connection with the ordinary rules for the measurement of heights by means of the barometer. The tables supplied to travellers are all calculated on the assumption that the pressure at the sea-level is constant—the English tables fixing the amount at 30·00 inches of mercury, those calculated on the continent starting from a pressure of 760 millimetres, or about 29·921 inches. It is admitted that this mode of determining heights, when comparative observations at a known station are not available, is subject to serious unavoidable error. With regard, however, to mountains not remote from the sea-coast, it may be possible to lessen this inconvenience in many parts of the world by substituting for the assumed uniform pressure that higher or lower amount which is known to prevail at given seasons. Such a correction could not, of course, be made available in very variable climates, such as that of the British Islands, but might be applied in many parts of the broad zone lying within 40° of the equator.
Soon after ten p.m. on the 21st we were abreast of the bright light which marks the harbour of St. Michael’s, but, the night being dark, we saw very little of that or any other of the Azores group. The spring temperature of these islands is about the same as that of places in the same latitude in Portugal; but it appears that the cooling effect of the east and north-east winds prevailing at that season must in the mid-Atlantic extend even much farther south. With generally fair settled weather, the thermometer rose very slowly as we advanced towards the tropics. Between the 18th and 24th of March, in passing from 50° to 29° north latitude, the mean daily temperature rose only from about 55° to about 65° Fahr.—the thermometer never rising to 70°, nor falling below 52°. Notwithstanding the relatively low temperature, a few flying-fish were seen on the 24th—rare, it is said, outside the tropics so early in the year, though sometimes seen in summer as far north as the Azores.
On March 25th we, for the first time, became conscious of a decided though moderate change of climate. The thermometer at noon stood at 71°, and was not seen to fall below 70° until, some three weeks later, off the Peruvian coast, we met the cold antarctic current which plays so great a part in the meteorology of that region. We were now in the regular track of the north-east trade-wind, and my mind was somewhat exercised to account for the circumstance, said to be of usual occurrence, that the breeze increases in strength from sunrise during the day, and falls off, though it does not die away, towards nightfall. It is easy to understand the cause of this intermittence in breezes on shore, whether near the sea-coast or in the neighbourhood of mountain ranges, inasmuch as their direction and strength are determined by the unequal heating of the surface; but the trade-winds form a main part of the general system of aërial circulation over the surface of our planet, and, supposing the phenomenon to be of a normal character, the explanation is not quite simple. Regarding the trade-wind as a great current set up in the atmosphere, it is conceivable that the heating and consequent expansion which must occur as the sun acts upon it, tends to increase the rate of flow at the bottom of the aërial stream, while the cooling which ensues as the sun’s heat is withdrawn, has the contrary effect.
On this and the next day or two my attention was called to the frequent recurrence of masses of yellow seaweed, sometimes in irregular patches, but more frequently arranged in regular bands, two or three yards in width, and extending in a straight line as far as the eye could reach. We were here at no great distance from the great sargassum fields[2] of the Northern Atlantic, but I was unable to satisfy myself that the species seen from the steamer was that which mainly forms the sargassum beds; and, whatever it might be, this arrangement in long straight strips seemed deserving of further inquiry. More flying-fish were now seen, and two or three small whales of the species called by seamen “black-fish” were sighted during this part of the voyage.
On the afternoon of the 26th we entered the tropics, and this and the following day were thoroughly enjoyable, but did not offer much of novelty. The colour of the sea was here of a much deeper and purer blue (rivalling that of the Mediterranean) than we had hitherto found it, while that of the sky was much paler. The light cumuli with ill-defined edges were such as we are used to in British summer weather; and, excepting that the interval of twilight was sensibly shorter, the sunsets were devoid of special interest. At this season the Southern Cross was above the horizon about nightfall, and was made out by the practised eyes of some of the officers; but, in truth, it remains a somewhat insignificant object when seen from the northern side of the equator, and to enjoy the full splendour of that stellar hemisphere one must reach high southern latitudes.
Although the thermometer never quite reached 80° Fahr. in the shade until we touched land, the weather on the 28th and 29th was hot and close, and few passengers kept up the wholesome practice of a constitutional walk on the long deck of the Don. Of the rain which constantly seemed impending very little fell.
At daybreak on the morning of the 30th, in twelve days and seventeen hours, we completed the run of about 3340 nautical miles which separates Southampton from Barbadoes, and found ourselves in the roads of Bridgetown, about a mile from the shore. Being somewhat prepared, I was not altogether surprised to find that this first view of a tropical island forcibly reminded me of the last land I had beheld at home—the northern shores of the Isle of Wight. Long swelling hills, on which well-grown trees intervene between tracts of tillage, present much the same general outline, and at this distance the only marked difference was the intense dark-green colour of the large trees that embower the town and nearly conceal all but a few of the chief buildings. The appearance of things as the morning advanced quite confirmed the reputation of this small island as the most prosperous, and, in proportion to its extent, the most productive of the West Indian Islands. With an area not greater than that of the Isle of Wight, and a population of about sixty thousand whites and rather more than a hundred thousand negroes, the value of the exports and imports surpasses a million sterling under each head; and, besides this, it is the centre of a considerable transit trade with the other islands. Under local representative institutions, which have subsisted since the island was first occupied by the English early in the seventeenth century, the finances are flourishing, and the colonial government is free from debt. The average annual produce of sugar is reckoned at forty-four thousand hogsheads, but varies with the amount of rainfall. This averages from fifty-eight to fifty-nine inches annually, but any considerable deficiency, such as occurred in the year 1873, leads to a proportionate diminution in the sugar crop.
Among other tokens of civilization, the harbour police at Bridgetown appeared to be thoroughly efficient. As, about nine o’clock, we prepared to go ashore, we found on deck two privates—black men in plain uniform—who seemed to have no difficulty in keeping perfect order amid the crowd of boatmen that swarmed round the big ship. We had already learned the event of the hour—the fall of three inches of rain during the day and night preceding our arrival. This is more than usually falls during the entire month of March, and seemed to be welcomed by the entire population. On landing we encountered a good deal of greasy grey mud in the streets, but all was nearly dry when, after a short excursion, we returned in the afternoon. After a short stay in the town, where there was a little shopping to be done, and where some of my companions indulged in a second breakfast of fried flying-fish, I started with a pleasant party of fellow-travellers to see something of the island. It was arranged that, after a drive of six or seven miles, we should go to luncheon at the house of Mr. C——, the owner of a sugar-plantation, whose brother, Colonel C——, was one of our fellow-passengers. We enjoyed the benefit of the recent heavy rain in the comparative coolness of the air—the thermometer scarcely rose above 80° Fahr. in the shade—and in freedom from dust.
A small, low island, nearly every acre of which has been reduced to cultivation, cannot offer very much of picturesque beauty; nevertheless the first peep of the tropics did not fail to present abundant matter of interest. In this part of the world the dry season, now coming to an end, is the winter of vegetation, and, of course, there was not very much to be seen of the herbaceous flora; but the beauty of the trees and the rich hues of their foliage quite surpassed my anticipations. The majority of these are plants introduced either from the larger islands or from more distant tropical countries, that have been planted in the neighbourhood of houses.
One of the first that strikes a new-comer in the tropics is the mango tree, which, though introduced by man from its original home in tropical Asia, is now common throughout the hotter parts of America. Its widespreading branches, bearing dense tufts of large leathery leaves, make it as welcome for the sake of protection from the sun as for its fruit, which is a luxury that some persons never learn to appreciate. The cinnamon tree (Canella alba), common in most of the West Indian Islands, is another of the plants that serve for ornament and shade while ministering products useful to man. Of the smaller shade-trees, the pimento (probably Pimenta acris) was also conspicuous, and very many others which I failed to recognize, might be added to the new impressions of the first day in the tropics. One of the most curious is that known to the English residents as the sand-box tree, the Hura crepitans[3] of botanists. It belongs to the Euphorbiaceæ, or Spurge family, but is strangely unlike any of the Old-World forms of that order. Here the fruit is in form rather like a small melon, of hard woody texture, divided into numerous—ten to twenty—cells. If, when taken from the tree, the top is sawn off and the seeds scooped out, no farther change occurs, and it may be, and often is, as the name implies, used as a sand-box. But if left until the seeds are mature, the whole capsule bursts open with a loud report, scattering the seeds to a distance. Thinking that a small young fruit, if dried very gradually, might escape this result, I carried one away, which, after my return to Europe, I placed in a small wooden box in my herbarium. Some nine months after it had been collected it must have exploded in my absence, for, unlocking the room one day, I found the box broken to pieces, and the valves of the fruit and the seeds scattered in all directions about the room.
Next to the vegetable inhabitants, I was interested in the black population of the island. The first impression on finding one’s self amid fellow-creatures so markedly different in physical characters is one of strangeness, and one is tempted to ask whether, after all, there can be any pith in the arguments once confidently urged to establish a specific difference between the negro and the white man. But this very quickly wears away, and a contrary impression arises. The second thought is that, considering what we know of the conditions under which the native races of Equatorial Africa have been developed during an unrecorded series of ages, and of the subsequent conditions during several generations of slavery, the surprising thing is that the differences should not be far greater than they are.
It would be very rash to draw positive conclusions from what could be seen in a visit of a few hours, but, undoubtedly, the general effect was pleasing, and tended to confirm the assertion that the difficult problem of converting a population of black slaves into useful members of a free community has been better solved in Barbadoes than in any other European colony. So far as the elementary wants are concerned, there was a complete absence of the painful suspicion so commonly felt as regards the poor in Europe and the East, that their food is either insufficient or unwholesome. With very few exceptions they all seemed sleek and well fed, and their clothing showed no symptoms of poverty. In the town their dress was generally neat, and most of the women made a display of bright colour in handkerchiefs and parasols. What struck me most was a general air of good humour and enjoyment. One may be misled in this respect by the facial characteristics of the black race, which, in the absence of disturbing causes, readily turn to a smile or a grin. But, whether in the streets of Bridgetown or botanizing among the fields in the country, and using the few opportunities of speaking to the people, the same impression was retained.
Their manner in speaking to whites seemed to imply neither servility nor yet the independence which characterizes the Arab or the Moor. A latent sense of inferiority seemed to be combined with a complete absence of shyness or apprehension, as in children used to kind treatment, and not too carefully drilled. We happened to halt near a spot where there was a cluster of labourers’ cabins, and a school well filled with small children. There had been a wedding in Bridgetown that morning, and as we halted two carriages passed, carrying the bridal party to some house in the country. All the inhabitants rushed out at once, and contended, young and old, in the most boisterous cheering. Perhaps this meant little more than the mere love of noise, as when boys cheer a passing railway train, but it argued, at least, the absence of any feeling of race animosity.
The houses of the labouring population, whether in town or country, are mere sheds, seemingly of the frailest materials, the walls of thin upright boards, and roofed with small imbricated wooden shingles, such as one sometimes sees in Tyrol; but there must be a very substantial framework, or they would be annually carried away by the August hurricanes. The interiors appeared to be fairly clean, and in a country where cold is unknown good houses are luxuries, not necessaries of life.
One need not go far to seek the explanation of the superior condition of Barbadoes as compared with the other West Indian Islands. Unlike these, there was here no waste land; every acre was occupied, and the emancipated negro could not follow the very natural but unfortunate instinct which elsewhere led him to squat in idleness, supporting life on a few bananas and other produce that cost but a few days’ labour in the year. Apart from this, it is said that the Barbadoes, unlike the Jamaica, planters showed practical intelligence in at once recognizing the new conditions created by the Act of Emancipation, and, by offering fair wages and giving their personal influence and supervision, helping to convert the slave into an industrious freeman. Whatever poets may have fancied of the delights of lotus-eating, it seems to be true in the tropics, as well as in temperate climates, that there is more contentment and real enjoyment of life among people who are held to regular daily work—not excessive or exhausting—than among those who have little or nothing to do.
The house at which we were hospitably entertained, with no architectural pretensions, struck us as admirably suited to the climate. On the ground floor, several spacious and airy sitting-rooms opened on a broad verandah that ran round the building, and a number of fine trees close at hand, with the dense impervious foliage characteristic of the tropics, offered the alternative of sitting in the open air. One of the natural advantages of Barbadoes is the almost complete absence of noxious and venomous insects and reptiles. The frequency of poisonous snakes in some of the islands, especially Martinique and Sta. Lucia, must seriously interfere with the pleasures of a country life.
The voyage from Barbadoes to Jacmel, which occupied the greater part of three nights and two days, was highly enjoyable, but uneventful. With a temperature of about 80° in the shade, and a pleasant breeze from the north-east, life on deck was much more attractive than any occupation in the cabins, and nothing more laborious than reading an interesting book, such as Tschudi’s “Travels in Peru,” or at the utmost some brushing up of nearly forgotten Spanish, could be undertaken. In the early morning, the rising of the coveys of flying-fish as the steamer disturbed them from their rest on the surface, with their great silvery fins glancing in the level rays of the sun, was always an attractive sight. They certainly often change the direction of their flight as they momentarily touch the surface, but I could not satisfy myself whether this depended on a muscular effort of the animal, or merely on the angle at which it happened to strike the irregular surface of the little dancing waves that surrounded us.
About sunrise on the 2nd of April the anchor was let go, and we found ourselves in the harbour of Jacmel, the only port on the south side of the great island of Hayti. The Royal Mail steamers call here periodically to deliver letters and to receive a bag which, after due fumigation and such other incantations as are deemed proper, is delivered at the end of a long pole. The entire island being supposed to be constantly subject to zymotic diseases, especially small-pox which is the great scourge of the negro race, no further communication with the shore is permitted, and within less than two hours we were again under way. The hills surrounding the harbour are apparently covered with forest, the trees being of no great size, but of the most brilliant green; but I could detect no dwellings of a superior class such as Europeans would be sure to construct in picturesque and healthy spots near a seaport. As we ran for more than twenty miles very near the coast, I could at first detect here and there small patches of cleared ground with sheds or huts; but beyond the distance of a few miles these ceased, and no token of the presence of man was discernible.
Making large allowance for exaggeration, and having had the opportunity of correcting some loose reports by the more careful and accurate information afterwards received from a gentleman who resided for some time at Port au Prince as the representative of a European power, it is impossible for me to avoid the conclusion that, in the hands of its black possessors, this noble island has retrograded to a condition of savagery little, if at all, superior to that of the regions of tropical Africa whence they originally came.
There may be but slight foundation for the reports as to the revival of cannibal customs in the interior of the island; but it would seem that the sanguinary encounters so frequently recurring between the people of the rival republics between whom the island is divided, differ little in point of ferocity from those of Ashantee or Dahomey. The political institutions, caricatures of those of the United States, have produced in astonishing luxuriance all the abuses characteristic of different types of misgovernment, and the few men distinguished by superior intelligence and a desire for rational progress have sought in vain for support in efforts for reform. The condition of the two republics, Hayti and San Domingo, seems to be the reductio ad absurdum of the theories which ascribe to free institutions an inherent power of promoting human progress.
April 3 was a day to be long remembered. Barbadoes to Jamaica is as Champagne or Mecklenburg compared to Switzerland or Tyrol, and now for the first time the dream of tropical nature became a reality. At six p.m. we passed Port Royal, and about seven had cast anchor at Kingston. The first impression on landing here is unfavourable. The buildings are mean, the thoroughfares and side-paths out of repair, the people in the streets seem to have nothing to do and to be doing it, the general air that of listlessness and neglect. Altogether the place contrasts disadvantageously with the ports of Spanish America, to say nothing of our own colonies. But Kingston was not to detain us, and the overpowering attraction was towards the range of the Blue Mountains, on which my eyes had been fixed all the morning as we approached the shore. We were told that we must return to the ship at five o’clock, so that it was hopeless to attempt to reach even the middle zone of the mountains, and all that could be done with advantage was to engage a carriage to a place called Gordontown, in a valley which is the ordinary route to Newcastle and other places in the mountains. After a delay which to our impatience seemed unreasonable, I started in a tolerable carriage with W——, an old friend who was proceeding to Lima as commissioner from the Court of Chancery to receive evidence in an important pending lawsuit, and who, although not a naturalist, gave effective and valuable help on this and other subsequent occasions in the work of plant-collecting.
For a distance of four or five miles the land slopes very gently from the coast towards the roots of the hills. This tract is partly occupied by sugar-plantations; but our road lay for some time among small country houses, each surrounded by pleasure-ground or garden. As the dry season was not yet over, the country here looked parched; but I saw many trees and shrubs new to me, many of them laden with flowers, and found it hard to keep my resolution not to stop the carriage until we should reach Gordontown. The excitement increased as we entered the valley, and the road began to wind up the slopes above the right bank of the torrent, where at every yard some new object came into view. It was near eleven a.m. when we reached the little inn, which, with four or five houses, make the station of Gordontown, where the carriage road ends, and horses are hired by those bound for Newcastle or other places in the hills. No time was to be lost, and we were speedily on our way to ramble up the valley, keeping as near as might be to the banks of the torrent.
The first effect upon one accustomed only to the vegetation of the temperate zone is simply bewildering. As I expressed it at the time, it seemed as if the inmates of the plant-houses at Kew had broken loose and run scrambling up the rocky hills that enclose the valley. These are of a red arenaceous rock, rough and broken, but affording ample hold for trees as well as smaller plants. The torrent at this season was shrunk to slender dimensions, but is never wholly dry; and I was somewhat surprised to find that on the steep slopes exposed to the full sunshine the vegetation was much less parched than one commonly finds it in summer in the Mediterranean region, and even to gather a good many ferns on exposed banks. It would appear that, even in the dry season, the air must here be nearly saturated with aqueous vapour, and that abundant dews must supply the needs of delicate plants. Not many species were in flower, but yet there was more than sufficient to occupy the short time available. Malvaceæ and Convolvulaceæ were the most prominent forms; but to a new-comer the most lively interest attaches to groups never before seen in a wild state, such as Passiflora—of which two species were found in flower—a first solitary representative of the great tropical American family of Melastomaceæ, or the gorgeous Amaryllid, Hippeastrum equestre, hiding in shady places by the stream.
Although Gordontown can scarcely be so much as a thousand feet above the sea-level, the climate is very sensibly cooler than that of Kingston. When we left the town the thermometer stood at 83° in the shade, while here at midday the sea-breeze felt positively cold, and I was glad to have with me an extra garment. A light luncheon of ham and eggs, with guava sweetmeat for dessert, was soon despatched; and, as I wished to halt at several spots on the way, we started about half-past two, laden with the spoils of the excursion, and reached the steamer before five o’clock. Great was my disgust to find that there was no intention of starting until nine a.m. the next morning, and this was changed to indignation when it came to be known that we had been deprived of the priceless pleasure of a trip to the mountains by the deliberate misstatement of the company’s superintendent, who had arranged to embark on the following morning three hundred negroes going to work on the Panama Ship Canal[4].
A stranger can scarcely fail to observe a marked difference between the negro population of Jamaica and that of Barbadoes. In the larger island, while no way deficient in physical qualities, they appear decidedly inferior in intelligence, activity, and courtesy towards their white neighbours. It is said that the independent class, who live by cultivating small patches of land on which they have squatted, has of late years much improved, and that the increasing desire for purchasable comforts and luxuries has begun to develop habits of steady industry; but as regards the mass of the people who live by wages, there are many indications of a sullen dislike towards the descendants of their former masters which some trifling provocation may at any time inflame to a pitch of wild ferocity. Some who have lived in the island maintain that a general rising with a view to the massacre of the white population is not an impossible occurrence, and, however improbable it may appear, there is ample reason for constant vigilance on the part of those responsible for the government of the island. Such vigilance, it must be remembered, is quite as much requisite to prevent acts of real or apparent injustice towards the inferior race, as to repress the first beginnings of violence if some spark should fire the mine of suppressed hatred.
After a too short visit to this beautiful island, we were under way before ten a.m. on April 4th, and before midday the outline of the Blue Mountains of Jamaica was fast fading in the northern horizon. Throughout the greater part of the run from Kingston we encountered a moderately brisk breeze, which gradually veered from south-east to south-west, and this, according to our experienced captain, commonly occurs at this season. It may be conjectured that the great mountain barrier extending on the south side of the Caribbean Sea through Venezuela and Colombia deflects the current of the north-east trade-wind until it finally flows in an exactly contrary direction. Whatever its origin may be, it might be supposed that the interference of a current from the south-west with the course of the regular trade-wind would give rise to storms of dangerous violence. These, however, rarely if ever occur during the spring months. It may be that, on the meeting of contrary currents of unequal temperature, the ordinary result is that the warmer current rises and flows over the cooler one without actual interference.
Before sunrise on the morning of the 6th we reached Colon, and, after a little inevitable delay, took leave of our excellent commander, and set foot on the American continent at a spot which seems destined to become familiar to the civilized world as the eastern termination of the Panama Ship Canal. People who love to paint in dark colours had done their best to make us uncomfortable as to the part of the journey between the arrival at Colon and the departure from Panama. The regular train crossing the isthmus starts very early from Colon, and we should be forced to remain during the greater part of the day breathing the deadly exhalations of that ill-famed port. In point of unhealthiness Panama is but little better than Colon, and as the weekly steamer of the Pacific Navigation Company bound southward would have departed one or two days before our arrival, we were sure to be detained for five or six days, equally trying to the health and temper. Fully believing these vaticinations to be much exaggerated, we had no opportunity of testing them. A free use of the telegraph on the morning of our arrival at Jamaica, and the courtesy of the officials of the various companies concerned, relieved us from all anxiety, and reduced our stay within the shortest possible limits. It was true that the regular train had been despatched before we could land, but a special engine was in readiness to convey us across the isthmus, and the agent for the Pacific mail steamer at Panama had detained the ship bound for Lima until the same evening in order to enable us to continue our voyage.
Since the commencement of the works connected with the canal, Colon must have undergone much improvement. The bronze statue of Columbus presented by the Empress Eugénie[5], which for many years had lain prostrate in the mud of the sea-beach, has been cleansed and placed upon a stone pedestal. A number of stores, frail structures of wooden planks, were arranged in an irregular street, and displayed a great variety of European goods. It was rather surprising to find the prices of sundry small articles purchased here extremely moderate. One might suppose that the only inducement that could lead people to trade in a spot of such evil repute would be the hope of exorbitant profits enabling them soon to retire from business.
Of the works connected with the Ship Canal little was to be seen from the railway cars. For its eastern termination the mouth of the Chagres river, which reaches the sea close to Colon, has been selected. I am not aware whether it is proposed to divert the course of that stream from the channel of the canal, but, to judge from the appearance of its banks and the extensive mangrove swamps on either side, it appears to bear down a great amount of fine alluvial mud, which, if discharged into the canal, must be a source of future difficulty. What chiefly struck the eye of the passing traveller was the broad band which had been cleared across the isthmus to mark the line of the future canal. It is fully a hundred metres in width, and seemingly carried in a nearly straight line through the forest and over the hills that lie on the western side near to Panama. This clearing does not appear a very serious undertaking, but in a region where the energy of vegetation is so marvellous, must have cost an immense amount of labour, and to keep the line open, if that be found expedient, will demand no small yearly expenditure. There is here, properly speaking, no dry season[1q]. The rains recur at frequent intervals throughout the year, and to keep back the ever-encroaching sea of vegetation the axe is in constant requisition.
In the interest of the human race, it is impossible not to desire the success of the Ship Canal, but it must not be forgotten that the project is of a character so gigantic that all previous experience, such as that of the Suez Canal, fails to give a measure of the difficulties to be encountered, or of the outlay required to overcome them. Engineers may doubtless calculate with sufficient accuracy the number of millions of cubic yards of rock or earth that must be removed, and may estimate approximately the cost of labour and materials; but the obstacles due to the climate and physical conditions of this region are a formidable addition whose amount experience alone can fully determine. The only race combining physical strength with any moderate adaptation to the climate is apparently the African negro, and even with these the amount of sickness and mortality is said to be alarmingly great. The field from which negro labour can be recruited, though large, is by no means unlimited, and it is to be expected that the rate of wages must be considerably increased as time advances. The conditions of the problem have no doubt been carefully studied by the remarkable man to whom its existence is due, and by the able assistants whom he has consulted; but it may not be too rash to hazard the prediction that, apart from any international difficulties, its success may depend upon the more or less complete realization of two desiderata—first, the extensive application of labour-saving machinery, for which perhaps the heavy rainfall may supply the motive power; secondly, the possibility, by completely clearing the summits of some of the higher hills near the line, of establishing healthy sites whence workmen could be conveyed to the required points during the day and brought back before nightfall.
Nothing in our brief experience suggested the idea of an especially unhealthy region, and the feelings of a botanist at being whirled so rapidly through a land teeming with objects of curiosity and interest are better imagined than expressed. For more than half the distance the line is simply a trench cut through the forest, which is restrained from invading and burying the rails only by constant clearing on either side. The trees were not very large, but seemed to include a vast variety of forms. More striking were the masses of climbers, parasites, and epiphytes, to say nothing of the rich and strange herbaceous plants that fringed the edge of the forest. Our train, being express, gave but a single chance of distinguishing anything amid the crowd of passing objects—during a brief halt at a station about half-way across the isthmus, round which was a cluster of small houses or huts, inhabited by Indians. Their features were much less remote from the European type than I had expected—less remote, I thought, than those of many Asiatics of Mongol stock. Ten minutes on the verge of the surging mass of vegetation that surrounded us gave a tantalizing first peep at the flora of Equatorial America. Many forms hitherto seen only in herbaria or hot-houses—several Melastomaceæ, Heliconia, Costus, and the like—were hastily gathered; but the summons to return to the train speedily calmed the momentarily increasing excitement. Although the sky was almost completely free from clouds, and the sun very near the zenith, the heat was no way excessive. My thermometers had been stowed away in the hurry of leaving the steamer, but I do not believe that the shade temperature was higher than 84° Fahr. On the western side of the isthmus the land rises into hills some five or six hundred feet in height, and between these the railway winds to the summit level, thence descending rather rapidly towards Panama. What a crowd of associations are evoked by the first view of the Pacific! What trains of mental pictures have gathered round the records of the early voyagers, the adventurers, the scientific explorers! Strangely enough,
