In Alexander von Humboldt’ Narratives, Volume V, one reads a brief mention of what the locals called the juvia tree. Humboldt and Bonpland (see here), having canoed the Casiquiare (see here), and camping in the southern regions of what is now Venezuela’s Amazonas territory, were excited to have seen this tree of which they had heard so much. They were not disappointed.
The two explorers named the tree, Bertholletia Excelsa, “that majestic plant which furnishes the triangular nuts called in Europe the almonds of the Amazon.” And that is its name today. It is found in the Amazonian areas of Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, even Perú, and is known by a multitude of names including Brazilian Nut Tree, Castaña del Brasil, Castaña del Maranon, and others. In Venezuela it is still known as the yubia tree, which is what Humboldt noted as juvia.
These majestic trees grow up to 50 meters (over 160 feet) and more, towering over the jungle canopy. Their coronas spread over 30 meters (close to 100 feet), and their trunks have been measured at 2 and even 3 meters (6 and 10 feet) across. Their fruit can weigh up to 4 or even 5 pounds each. These are not Planters Peanuts.
These trees are estimated to age up to a thousand years or more, each tree producing crops for centuries. Readers with an instinct or desire for exploration and adventure can raft down the Casiquiare and measure Humboldt’s tree today. It should still be there for you to enjoy.
Bertholletia Excelsa Brazilian Nut NOT the Brazilian nut
To read Alexander von Humboldt’s journals of his and Aimé Bonpland’s journey to the Americas, much of which took place in Venezuela (1799-1804), is not only a pleasure, but also a rewarding experience. In many instances, I find his narratives and observations to be as helpful and profitable today as readers found them to be two centuries ago.
His praiseworthy writing and infinite curiosity does not, however, obscure Mr. Humboldt’s manifest prejudice against Christianity or his exasperating blind spot towards the enormous contributions by missionaries who loved the Americas and who travelled and lived there centuries before Humboldt’s birth. Were it not for those who went before, Humboldt’s travels would not have been possible, certainly not anywhere close to the extent he was able to achieve.
For more on Humboldt, see here, here and here. As noted in that last link (“So Far From God and So Close to the United States”), Humboldt got his passport, enabling him to travel, not from “Enlightenment France” but from “priest-ridden Spain.”
The following comments are extracted from the sections of his journals concerning his explorations in the lower Orinoco regions.
“Some of the islands are inhabited by a cruel and savage race, called cannibals, who eat the flesh of men and boys, and captives and slaves of the male sex, abstaining from that of females.” Hist. Venet. 1551. The custom of sparing the lives of female prisoners confirms what I have previously said of the language of the women. Does the word cannibal, applied to the Caribs of the West India Islands, belong to the language of this archipelago (that of Haiti)? or must we seek for it in an idiom of Florida, which some traditions indicate as the first country of the Caribs?) It is they who have rendered the names of cannibals, Caribbees, and anthropophagi, synonymous; it was their cruelties that prompted the law promulgated in 1504, by which the Spaniards were permitted to make a slave of every individual of an American nation which could be proved to be of Caribbee origin.
Note Humboldt’s allusion to a possible Floridian origin to the Caribs. Although some anthropologists make strong arguments for a Brazilian origin, meaning the Caribs came up from what is now Brazil, the Floridian, or North American origin of the Caribs is not an unprecedented hypotheses. Their features would seem to corroborate that theory. This is not due only to their physical features but also their few surviving sculptures and even their language. These things intimate an ancestry very dissimilar from that of most of the other Indians of South and Central America and the Caribbean. The Caribs seem to be evidence of ancient communications between North and South America.
Interested readers might take a few minutes to open a map of the Caribbean Sea, put a finger on the southern tip of Florida, and then trace it down to Cuba, and then move it in a pronounced southeastern arc across Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and on and on, all the way down to Grenada and finally to Tobago and Trinidad, just off the coast of Venezuela. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see an ancient land bridge which once connected Florida and Venezuela. At the least, it isn’t difficult to hypothesize that the Caribs migrated through those islands down to South America.
Humboldt seeks to cast doubt on the extent of the cruelties of the Caribs, writing “I believe [such cannibalism] was much exaggerated….” Much exaggerated? So they ate human flesh, just not as much as reported? Instead of a pound of flesh a week, they limited themselves to, say, a pound fortnightly? That might be an academic question to a detached observer, but certainly not to the ill-fated victims of that cruel and ferocious people.
We’ll conclude this post with his citing an old missionary and then going on to relate his own experience with “the perversity” of certain Indian tribes, which experience corroborates the missionaries comments.
“You cannot imagine,” said the old missionary of Mandavaca, “the perversity of this Indian race (familia de Indios). You receive men of a new tribe into the village; they appear to be mild, good, and laborious; but suffer them to take part in an incursion (entrada) to bring in the natives, and you can scarcely prevent them from murdering all they meet, and hiding some portions of the dead bodies.” In reflecting on the manners of these Indians, we are almost horrified at that combination of sentiments which seem to exclude each other; that faculty of nations to become but partially humanized; that preponderance of customs, prejudices, and traditions, over the natural affections of the heart.
Note how Humboldt, in appealing to “natural affections”, knowingly or not, cites the first chapter of Romans, which warns that any people who reject God will degenerate and that among the characteristics of a people evidencing that degeneration are men “without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful….[Emphasis mine]”
We took one who had become sufficiently civilized in a few weeks to be useful to us in placing the instruments necessary for our observations at night. He was no less mild than intelligent, and we had some desire of taking him into our service. What was our horror when, talking to him by means of an interpreter, we learned, that the flesh of the marimonde monkeys, though blacker, appeared to him to have the taste of human flesh. He told us that his relations (that is, the people of his tribe) preferred the inside of the hands in man, as in bears. This assertion was accompanied with gestures of savage gratification.
We inquired of this young man, so calm and so affectionate in the little services which he rendered us, whether he still felt sometimes a desire to eat of a Cheruvichahena. He answered, without discomposure, that, living in the mission, he would only eat what he saw was eaten by the Padres. Reproaches addressed to the natives on the abominable practice which we here discuss, produce no effect; it is as if a Brahmin, travelling in Europe, were to reproach us with the habit of feeding on the flesh of animals.
In the eyes of the Indian of the Guaisia, the Cheruvichahena was a being entirely different from himself; and one whom he thought it was no more unjust to kill than the jaguars of the forest. It was merely from a sense of propriety that, whilst he remained in the mission, he would only eat the same food as the Fathers. The natives, if they return to their tribe (al monte), or find themselves pressed by hunger, soon resume their old habits of anthropophagy.
Humboldt goes on to seek to mitigate excessive revulsion to the described practice by noting that cannibalism was widespread in thirteenth century Egypt. Howbeit, his brief dissertation on the Egyptian practice does not eclipse the yuck factor elicited by his matter-of-fact discussion about his “sufficiently civilized” travel companion.
As readers of this blog know, I very much admire Alexander von Humboldt. My father introduced me to him and I’ve introduced him to my children. He makes for exhilarating reading. But, as you read him, be sure to “prove all things, hold fast that which is good.”
We’ll visit with him again.
Alexander von Humboldt (left) and Aimé Bonpland in the lower Orinoco. Carib Indian natives in Dominica (circa early 20th century) Satellite photo taken “looking east”. The Meta River flows east into the Orinoco, which at this point flows south to north, but in photo it’s “right-to-left”. This and further south (right) is the vast Upper Orinoco region. Map helps “visualize” the satellite photo (previous). Note the Meta River to the left (in Colombia). For about 150 miles before it flows into the Orinoco, it forms the boundary between Venezuela to the north and Colombia to the south. Note the Casiquiare Canal further south. Humboldt and Bonpland made it that far but were eventually turned back by Portuguese civil authorities.
On May 21, 1927, not far from Paris, France, the first modern traffic jam developed.
Colonel Charles Lindbergh, having flown for 33 hours and 30 minutes, and not having slept for 55 hours, touched down and was instantly swarmed by tens of thousands (some estimates range up to a million) of men, women, and children, all seeking to see, touch, embrace, and take mementos from the man and his plane. Incredibly, only 10 people were hospitalized. Parisians feted Mr. Lindbergh like no one else before. By the end of the week, millions (no debate on this estimate) had seen or greeted him as he was driven from ceremonies, to banquets, to historical sites, such as the Champs-Élysées. Throughout, the twenty-five-year-old pilot behaved with modest aplomb and his speeches were gems of diplomacy.
The adulation and joy followed Mr. Lindbergh to Brussels and London, where the behavior and lionization exhibited by the phlegmatic British could not be distinguished from that of the exuberant French.
By mid-June, Charles Lindbergh was back in his own country, where New York City feted him with a ticker tape parade in which several millions joined in the celebration.
President Coolidge, whose July 4th, 1926 speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (see here) evinced a disquietude with the spiritual reality of the country, and who urged a return to eternal verities, apparently saw in the young pilot something of a personification of what he had in mind. Below is the transcript of President Coolidge’s welcome and Charles Lindbergh’s response before a large crowd in Washington, D.C.:
Calvin Coolidge: On behalf of his own people, who have a deep affection for him, and have been thrilled by his splendid achievements, and as President of the United States, I bestow the distinguished Flying Cross, as a symbol of appreciation for what he is and what he has done, upon Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh.
[Applause]
Intelligent, industrious, energetic, dependable, purposeful, alert, quick of reaction, serious, deliberate, stable, efficient, kind, modest, congenial, a man of good moral habits and regular in his business transactions.
[Applause]
Charles Lindbergh: When I landed at le Bourget, a few weeks ago, I landed with the expectancy, and the hope, of being able to see Europe. [Laughter and applause]. It was the first time I had ever been abroad [Laughter], and I wasn’t in any hurry to get back [Laughter and applause]. And I was informed, that while it wasn’t an order to come back home [laughter], that there’d be a battleship waiting for me next week. [Laughter and applause].
President Coolidge requested Lindbergh, who the world saw as an embodiment of America, to fly to South America as a goodwill ambassador for the United States. Lindbergh did so, taking off on December 1, 1927, on the famed Spirit of St. Louis, the same plane he flew across the Atlantic Ocean. His itinerary took him to Mexico City, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, Cartagena, Bogota, and Maracay (Venezuela), where he touched ground on January 29, 1928.
Although Caracas was the capital of Venezuela, the president, General Juan Vicente Gómez (see here and here) had made his home in Maracay, about 75 miles west. And that is where Lindbergh landed and where he was met by Gómez. But, first, he had flown over the capital city where enormous crowds had gathered in plazas, streets, and balconies, cheering loudly and waving frantically. In this, Venezuelans behaved like Parisians, Londoners, and New Yorkers.
Along with the crowds from Maracay and multitudes from Valencia, Puerto Cabello, and Caracas, innumerable automobiles invaded the roads converging towards the airport, creating Venezuela’s first massive traffic jam, immovable since the early afternoon. Many of the cars’ hoods displayed the national colors of Venezuela and the United States. By the time the plane landed, the airport was encircled by vast and loud multitudes, who gave the Águila Solitaria (Lone Eagle) an apotheotic reception.
The president himself walked to the hangars urging the crowds to give distance to the plane. Colonel Lindbergh had stayed a few minutes in the hangar, checking his plane’s fuselage and engine. The president’s entourage, seeking favor (a common phenomenon in all countries), expressed “concern” to the chief of staff that the American was being rude. But the chief brushed them aside, reminding them that President Gómez respected a man who “first took care of his horse”. This was true of Gómez. He was known to enjoy and to converse and seek good counsel on ranching and cattle breeding.
Two of Gómez’s daughters came forward and handed a magnificent bouquet of tropical flowers to the the famous aviator. “Are they natural?”, he asked. The president replied, “Yes, they are, but they are recognized and come from good families.”
This anecdote quickly made the rounds throughout the country, as the president had 74 children from numerous concubines. Lindbergh was referring to the flowers; however, depending on context, natural also refers to the status of children, in which case the word alludes to offspring of an unmarried couple. These become “legitimate” once the couple marries. It was in this sense that Gómez had understood the question, and he wanted to make clear that he “recognized” his daughters, having given them his name. But Gómez genuinely liked Lindbergh and no offense was taken, as none was intended.
The next day had been declared a national holiday, with Lindbergh being feted and honored in Maracay and Caracas, where he laid flowers adorned with Venezuelan and US flags at Simon Bolivar’s grave. Upon exiting the National Pantheon, he was instantly greeted with deafening ovations by the thousands who had gathered to see the American hero. The festivities culminated in a sumptuous banquet and dance in Caracas. Lindbergh did not dance, but, as in Paris and London, he was a gracious guest.
On January 31, 1928, the third day after having arrived, he took flight again and, after visits to St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Port-au-Prince, Havana, he flew back to St. Louis.
Upon Lindbergh’s departure, Presidents Coolidge and Gómez exchanged warm greetings by diplomatic cable and Lindbergh himself wrote the following farewell:
I wish to give my thanks to President Gómez, to the officials of the army, to the functionaries of the government, and to the people of Venezuela, for the heartfelt reception they have so graciously given me during my visit and I also wish to express my gratitude to the press for their cooperation.
I am very impressed with the efficient manner in which the Corps of Venezuelan Aviation prepared the landing field and for the warm manners and gracious behavior of the people of Venezuela towards me.
Colonel Lindbergh returned to Venezuela in September of 1929, inaugurating the first experimental flight of Pan American Airways on a Sikorsky S-38.
The Spirit of St. Louis was donated by Charles Lindbergh and is displayed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The aluminum exterior of the plane reflects the national ensigns of all the countries visited by the young man. Among those ensigns is the flag of Venezuela.
With the President of Venezuela, General Juan Vicente Gómez, January 29, 1928 Charles A. Lindbergh, 1902-1974 North of Paris, May 21, 1927 Arriving in England, 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh posing with the Spirit of St. Louis Pan American Airways, Sikorsky S-38
I recently read a fascinating book, Vida de Hacienda en Venezuela (Hacienda Life in Venezuela), by José Rafael Lovera. The author performed meticulous research into the lives, customs, and mores of Venezuelans from the early days of her colonial era to the mid 20th century, when haciendas had largely disappeared (see the series on ranchitos, here, here, here, here, here, and here.). I found it to be an absorbing study.
A section of the book focuses on the wars, earthquakes, plagues, heartbreaks, and deaths that ravaged Venezuela. They were events which, added to the hard work, would seem to have made life unbearable, if not impossible.
As an example, this post addresses one of the many disasters that the haciendas, their owners, laborers, and slaves confronted for about a decade in the latter half of the 19th century. Locusts may be something we read about in the Bible, but it is a plague most of us know little about experientially.
The first extract is from a letter written by the English Baroness, Lady Annie Brassey, who made a brief visit to the port of La Guaira and Caracas in 1883 and who, on her way from the port to the capital, encountered a locust invasion. Let us see how she described this:
At each step, the landscape changed, till we finally came to an open space, sown with sugar cane, bananas, sweet potatoes, and other crops. Here we discovered the source of some extraordinary noises which, mixed with the far more harmonious birdsong, we had been hearing during our ascent. A vast cloud of locusts was fluttering, and, as is also done by the peoples of Chile and Peru — actually in all of South America where these plagues ravage the land — the inhabitants were beating drums, tin trays, pots, pans, and any other like objects they might have at hand, besides screaming and calling out and blowing horns and firing weapons, to drive away the swarms of these cruel devastators, whose brightly transparent wings trembled agitatedly in the sunlight reflected thereon, like silver snow caps.
As beautiful as it might be to see them so, the damage that these insects cause is terrible to behold. At that moment the traces of their visit were very obvious in the great banana leaves, reduced to their naked veins; the sugar canes and other crops slashed to the ground, and all trees stripped of their leaves, sprouts, and small branches.
Even the robust plantain … with her glossy yellow stalk and her scarlet flowers — like to an ancient galleon — were reduced to naked trunks and branches.
Elizabeth Gross, the wife of a German businessman, was in Venezuela in 1883 and 1896, and in a letter to her friend, told of her travel by mule back to the interior regions:
It was almost impenetrable, since the trees were very near to one another, covered with vines, parasitic plants, and others which hung picturesquely from them. The vegetation beneath the trees consisted of palms and other magnificent tropical plants, within and between which slid snakes, lizards, and perhaps also, towards the deeper interior, monkeys and tigers.
We observed as an interesting fact how the lower plants were covered with small, brown creatures, like grasshoppers. It was a depressing discovery, because as these grow and lift flight, they can travel as far as Maracaibo where, about seven years ago, they caused a total devastation.
[Mrs. Gross, now back in Maracaibo, writes her friend a few months later]….
… the locusts that we had seen in … the jungle are already here. A while ago I wanted to go shopping in the afternoon, with Mrs. Lüdert and her husband told us to not delay because it looked very dark over the lake [Lake Maracaibo], as if rain was threatening, even though we are not in the rainy season.
We had visited two stores when, suddenly, it became night and nothing could be seen. Clouds of locusts obscured the daylight. They came with such density that we had to defend ourselves with our umbrellas in order to advance. It was somewhat disgusting how these frightful critters slapped against our faces. They demolished absolutely everything.
After a half hour, the beautiful coconut trees had become brooms. The locusts had devoured all the greenery in the gardens. Despite our having closed all shutters and windows, two men had to dedicate three hours to kill the locusts which had slipped into our house. They got into everything: in closets, in the seat backs, and in the smallest corners. Five of them penetrated through my mosquito screen and were on my bed in the morning. They had also begun to eat the socks that were on the chair in front of my bed, as also the hairdresser cushion. They eat everything that has any starch whatsoever. They got into my dresses.
It was something truly disgusting. When it becomes dark, they fall where they are, thereby dirtying our roof. Tens of thousands of them were swimming on the lake….
The repulsive spectacle described by Mrs. Gross during her stay in Maracaibo was seen across other cities in Venezuela. We’ll conclude by citing a French traveler in Caracas in 1886. He writes of resting near a window of Hotel St. Amand where he was residing:
Suddenly, an infernal noise compels us to rush outside. Gunshots sound from all sides. In this country of endless revolutions, were we about to witness yet another? No, we see a cloud of locusts. It comes bleakly, threateningly, darkening the daylight, and stinking the air.
Everyone immediately arms himself. Some with wire plates, others with iron pots or cauldrons, or whatever might be at hand, metal or not, to make the most noise as possible. They also fire weapons into the air, they light fires everywhere and all this is done to somehow prevent the cloud from falling over Caracas.
For more than two hours this cloud has overflown the city which is submerged in a grey darkness. The amount of locusts was such that, the cloud having passed, there were three centimeters of excrements on the streets. In certain points outside the city, where the tail of cloud fell, we have walked over a thickness of two to three centimeters of dead locusts.
In a twinkling of an eye, the yellow ground has turned black. We could hear a horrible crunching sound of insects as they moved their jaws. All vegetation had disappeared in a few minutes. Not even a leaf remained on the trees. The branches bent down under the weight of the mass of insects. It was a lamentable spectacle, a ravaging even worse than our hail.
Such eloquent descriptions require no further commentary. They transmit the horror that the inhabitants of major cities fought against and the ravages that the numerous conucos, small farms, and haciendas endured. The losses were immense.
The United States has also had its share of this plague in the mid 19th century, perhaps the most (in)famous being the Rocky Mountain Locust Invasion of 1874 of which Laura Ingalls Wilder would write in terms similar to those used by the travelers cited above, including descriptions of the critters invading the houses and the horrible sound of “millions of jaws biting and chewing….”
And the desperate defense measures taken by the Americans mirrored those of the Venezuelans, including fires, shotgun blasts, and beating of metal plates or anything that would make noise.
As Job tells us, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” So, Venezuelans and Americans, like folks around the world have done throughout history, arose, shook the pests and dust off, and carried on.
Lake Maracaibo Plaza Baralt, Maracaibo, Venezuela, mid-19th century Plaza Baralt late 20th century Caracas in the early 19th century Plaza Mayor in Caracas, mid-19th century Aftermath Somewhere in Africa Aftermath of the Jerusalem Locust Plague of 1915 The Rocky Mountain 1874-1875 Locust Invasion
A dear family friend celebrated her 90th birthday recently in Caracas. She and my mother were born a few months’ apart in the same year: 1930.
I replied to our friend, “Ah, Mrs. A.! How good are the memories that this brings to mind! I will see my mother next week, God willing, and will share with her. Thank you.”
I did share with my mother and sister this week and we had a conversation marked by genuine thankfulness for friends who remained friends unto the third and fourth generations. Matthew Henry notes, “It is a duty we owe our parents, when they are gone, to love their friends and consult with them. Solomon’s son undid himself by forsaking the counsel of his father’s friends.”
How fortunate we have been to have had our father’s and mother’s friends as our friends also! Those of you who have been so blessed fully understand the sentiment. Many are now gone, but the aroma of their company and the bracing nature of their hearty counsel remains. Yesterday, I looked up and said to my mother, “When I am here, I often think of Mrs. E. I miss her.”
My mother understood.
As for the piece below, the composer was Juan Vicente Torrealba, also a well-regarded harpist, who died in May, 2019, at the age of 102. His compositions reflected Venezuela’s plains (llanos) and the folks who scratched out a living therefrom, mostly from cattle. His songs also called forth the rivers, fauna, and flora of those vast regions of the country.
The piece linked below is Concierto en la Llanura and is a good representation of his compositions, especially the use of the harp.
Americans in the mining camps appreciated this genre of music. I think they still would.
