FROM TRINIDAD TO PARA, BRAZIL.* Fr is to be regretted
that Mr. Wickham has allowed his book to be published in his absence, in the form of "Rough Notes." It is not a narrative of striking exploits of travel for which the pub- lic have been looking with impatience ; it is not concerned with explorations or experiments whose results, in the briefest and clearest form, are demanded as being of general importance. It is, on the contrary, precisely the kind of book of travel which requires careful arrangement and grace of style, for its scenes are only incidentally novel ; the readers of travels are familiar with similar kinds of places and tribes, and its object was private enterprise. We should have been much more grateful to Mr. Wickham if he would have kept us longer in ignorance of the ciringa forests, and then told us more. As it is, he writes as if he took it for granted that everybody must know everything about the various processes by which rubber is extracted from the tree which produces it, and made to assume the innumerable forms in which we are in the habit of using it. This is an unreasonable and unfounded assumption, and an argument against the publica- tion of "rough notes" on any special subject. Memoranda are essentially of private application only. Mr. 'Wickham's book is peculiarly tantalising, because it is very well illustrated, and we naturally feel it rather hard that he is so chary of letter-press in explanation. Of course he did not require to account for himself to himself in the pages of his note-book, but it is always satis- factory to readers to know a little about the person or per- sons whom they are to accompany, in imagination, upon a
* Rough Notes of a Journey through the Waderness, from Trinidad to Pare, Brasil By Alexander Wickham. London : W. H. J. Carter
journey. But so vague is Mr. Wickham, that though
one of his drawings represents a thatched cottage under some j spreading trees with an awning stretched across to an upright pole, and a bench on which a lady, in English dress, is sitting with a book in her hand, and the hut is described as "our first (temporary) home, near Santarem, 1871," we are not told any- thing about the travelling party, and can only conclude that the lady is Mrs. Wickham, and that she shared the marvels and mosquitoes of his journey through the wilderness from Trinidad to Park. The absence of a map is another drawback to the pleasure of reading this book, but, nevertheless, there is pleasure in reading it, for the glimpses which it affords of wild men, wild anima* and the secluded beauties of nature in parts of the world in which the future destiny of millions of the human race will doubtless be cast, that is to say, provided the insect tribes can be sub- dued. There will be very little trouble with the human popula- tion. How rough and brief these notes of travel are we find from the first, when, in five and a half pages of large type, the author, having sailed from St. Thomas, disposes of Santa Lucia, his first vision of the tropics; Grenada, "a quaint, clean little town ;" Port of Spain, the valley of Diego Martin, the famous pitch lake, and Cedras, where "the woods begin to assume the primeval type,"—which is an odd way of saying that for the first time the traveller finds himself in the presence of the primeval forest ;--and the sand-pits bright with egrets and scarlet ibis round the mouth of the Pedernales channel, by which the boat was to gain the delta of the yellow, mighty Orinoco. The boat was about the size of a Margate lugger, the crew, Creoles and Guadeloupe men, were good fellows enough in their way, though noted smugglers, and one of them, a Mestizo lad, instructed Mr. Wickham in the names of the native trees and fishes. We should like to have been told a great deal more of this drowsy river voyage, upon the yellow waters freshened by the sea breeze, along the low banks where the tall wild canes waved in the sunlight, between banks on one aide crowned by mountain ranges and wooded hills rising from the savannah lands, while on the other the famous Llanos stretch away hundreds of miles towards Caracas and the great savannahs of the Apure. Not till after many days, and they had reached the upper lands, did they meet the true Guayanan forest, with its trees more enormous than the giants of the Sierra Nevada.
There is nothing noteworthy in the author's account of Spanish Guayana, except his denunciation of the false statements put for- ward by the Venezuela Company to induce emigrants to go out there. It ought to be made as widely known as possible that the published information as to the means of transit, facility of pro- curing labourers, and possibility of purchasing implements and materials for farming, is entirely untrue, and that Venezuela is a place "where," says the author, "morals are so despicably corrupt, that I think no Englishman or American would like to introduce the women of his household within hearing of the common every- day parlance." They turned into the Cauca, a tributary of the Orinoco, and camped at the island of Los Trembladors, so called from the electric eels with which the surrounding waters abound. They produce also many strange varieties of fish. The travellers secured the boat in a deep pool, and went inland for a freight of precious bark and balsam, then going on to Chapparo, they landed in the first purely Indian settlement in the wilderness, intending to get together a body of natives to explore for indiarubber. They did not succeed, but the friendly Indians, very savage in appearance, but quite harmless, lent Mr. Wickham a long, light canoe, fit for the intricate work before them, and they pushed off, leaving the main river and entering the Nicare. They had a good deal of trouble throughout the expedition about their provisions, and at their firat evening's camp on the Nicare, they supped on heron, ibis, electric eel, and sting-ray. Ducks shot on the lagoons, and little turtles, were their chief resources. Mr. Wickham gives us provokingly scanty information respecting the features of the country, and he only lets us catch glimpses of beautiful birds, brilliant beetles, and curious insects, about which we wish he would be more explicit. A few anecdotes of ants are far more interesting than his accurately recorded dates and his records of the state of the weather. Here is a bald, brief passage in which to dismiss a strange and beautiful spectacle :—" On the 4th June, the first heavy fall of rain caused vegetation to spring up so rapidly on the sandy ground, so dry before, that we had difficulty in recognising places we were familiar with." The narrative brightens up somewhat when it reaches the point at which Mr. Wickham and a young Southerner, named Watkins, determined to make a push for the Amazon Valley, by way of the " randales " of the Orinoco. It would be more agreeable if we knew what the randales are, and no ordinary atlas will enable us to follow, with the closeness necessary to the thorough enjoyment of a book of travel, such an itinerary as this. "We arranged that we should pass the Orinoco cataracts of Atures and Maypures, and thus gain the Rio Negro, and thence the Amazon, either by the Cassiquiare or the Atabapo." Mr. Watkins had seen much rough service in the American war and New Mexico, and had just arrived at Angostura (Ciudad Bolivar), having walked all the way across the plains from Valentia and Caracas.
The little that is told about this expedition makes us wish to hear more, and wonder how anyone who had done and seen so much could make it so tame in the telling. Ague, fever, short commons sometimes, and constant anxiety about the supply of provisions are well calculated no doubt to damp the ardour of one's love of nature, and take the edge off one's power of observation, but their effect need not be left so apparent so long after the facts. Mr. Wickham makes dreary entries of date after date and day after day, and in each there is mention of some little circumstance which with other treatment might be made interesting. The oddest thing is that he disclaims the imputation on their journey of dulness, in one of the least dull bits in the book, and declares that "excitement stimulates every power of endurance." The forests of the Upper Orinoco, with their scanty foliage of tongue-shaped leaves and their marvellous world of parasites, their background of fantastic moun- tains, said to be a continuation of the hills of the cataracts, their swarming life, and their rich perfumes, their many-coloured gem-like birds, and their wonderful wealth of gum, and balsam, and dye-wood, their terrible snakes, and insect tribes, afford an embarrasiles richesses for any pen. Mr. Wickham is not tempted by them into any digressions, or touched by them into any enthusiasm. Arrived at San Fernando, he finds all the inhabitants have gone off into the woods in search of " goma," and we are quite glad of it, for per- haps, we think, we shall now come to a business-like description of the finding of indiarubber. It is not so, however. There are entries about " tapping " and "soaking," but to the uninitiated these terms mean very little, and let the fault be whose it may, the fact is that we are no wiser on closing the book than we were on opening it concerning the special objects of the writer. Of the Falls he has nothing whatever to say. He does tell us about the pit-pans used by certain tribes of Indians, but only for the illus- trations we should not know either the people or their boats, and though the second portion of the book is much superior to the first, the effect produced by the whole is thoroughly disappointing.
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