Wanderings In South America, Charles Waterton [phonics reader txt] 📗

the headache almost insupportable, especially on looking to the right or left. I now opened a vein, and made a large orifice, to allow the blood to rush out rapidly; I closed it after losing sixteen ounces. I then steeped my feet in warm water and got into the hammock. After bleeding the pulse fell to ninety, and the head was much relieved, but during the night, which was very restless, the pulse rose again to one hundred and twenty, and at times the headache was distressing. I relieved the headache from time to time by applying cold water to the temples and holding a wet handkerchief there. The next morning the fever ran very high, and I took five more grains of calomel and ten of jalap, determined, whatever might be the case, this should be the last dose of calomel. About two o'clock in the afternoon the fever remitted, and a copious perspiration came on: there was no more headache nor thirst nor pain in the back, and the following night was comparatively a good one. The next morning I swallowed a large dose of castor-oil: it was genuine, for Louisa Backer had made it from the seeds of the trees which grew near the door. I was now entirely free from all symptoms of fever, or apprehensions of a return; and the morning after I began to take bark, and continued it for a fortnight. This put all to rights.

The story of the wound I got in the forest and the mode of cure are very short. I had pursued a redheaded woodpecker for above a mile in the forest without being able to get a shot at it. Thinking more of the woodpecker, as I ran along, than of the way before me, I trod upon a little hardwood stump which was just about an inch or so above the ground; it entered the hollow part of my foot, making a deep and lacerated wound there. It had brought me to the ground, and there I lay till a transitory fit of sickness went off. I allowed it to bleed freely, and on reaching headquarters washed it well and probed it, to feel if any foreign body was left within it. Being satisfied that there was none, I brought the edges of the wound together and then put a piece of lint on it, and over that a very large poultice, which was changed morning, noon and night. Luckily Backer had a cow or two upon the hill; now as heat and moisture are the two principal virtues of a poultice, nothing could produce those two qualities better than fresh cow- dung boiled: had there been no cows there I could have made out with boiled grass and leaves. I now took entirely to the hammock, placing the foot higher than the knee: this prevented it from throbbing, and was, indeed, the only position in which I could be at ease. When the inflammation was completely subdued I applied a wet cloth to the wound, and every now and then steeped the foot in cold water during the day, and at night again applied a poultice. The wound was now healing fast, and in three weeks from the time of the accident nothing but a scar remained: so that I again sallied forth sound and joyful, and said to myself:

I, pedes quo te rapiunt et aurae Dum favet sol, et locus, i secundo Omine, et conto latebras, ut olim, Rumpe ferarum.

Now this contus was a tough, light pole eight feet long, on the end of which was fixed an old bayonet. I never went into the canoe without it: it was of great use in starting the beasts and snakes out of the hollow trees, and in case of need was an excellent defence.

In 1819 I had the last conversation with Sir Joseph Banks. I saw with sorrow that death was going to rob us of him. We talked much of the present mode adopted by all museums in stuffing quadrupeds, and condemned it as being very imperfect: still we could not find out a better way, and at last concluded that the lips and nose ought to be cut off and replaced with wax, it being impossible to make those parts appear like life, as they shrink to nothing and render the stuffed specimens in the different museums horrible to look at. The defects in the legs and feet would not be quite so glaring, being covered with hair.

I had paid great attention to this subject for above fourteen years; still it would not do. However, one night, while I was lying in the hammock and harping on the string on which hung all my solicitude, I hit upon the proper mode by inference: it appeared clear to me that it was the only true way of going to work, and ere I closed my eyes in sleep I was able to prove to myself that there could not be any other way that would answer. I tried it the next day, and succeeded according to expectation.

By means of this process, which is very simple, we can now give every feature back again to the animal's face after it has been skinned; and when necessary stamp grief or pain, or pleasure, or rage, or mildness upon it. But more of this hereafter.

Let us now turn our attention to the sloth, whose native haunts have hitherto been so little known and probably little looked into. Those who have written on this singular animal have remarked that he is in a perpetual state of pain, that he is proverbially slow in his movements, that he is a prisoner in space, and that, as soon as he has consumed all the leaves of the tree upon which he had mounted, he rolls himself up in the form of a ball and then falls to the ground. This is not the case.

If the naturalists who have written the history of the sloth had gone into the wilds in order to examine his haunts and economy, they would not have drawn the foregoing conclusions. They would have learned that, though all other quadrupeds may be described while resting upon the ground, the sloth is an exception to this rule, and that his history must be written while he is in the tree.

This singular animal is destined by Nature to be produced, to live and to die in the trees; and to do justice to him naturalists must examine him in this his upper element. He is a scarce and solitary animal, and being good food he is never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly-stinging ants and scorpions and swamps and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes obstruct the steps of civilised man. Were you to draw your own conclusions from the descriptions which have been given of the sloth, you would probably suspect that no naturalist has actually gone into the wilds with the fixed determination to find him out and examine his haunts, and see whether Nature has committed any blunder in the formation of this extraordinary creature, which appears to us so forlorn and miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given to the rest of animated nature; for, as it has formerly been remarked, he has no soles to his feet, and he is evidently ill at ease when he tries to move on the ground, and it is then that he looks up in your face with a countenance that says: "Have pity on me, for I am in pain and sorrow."

It mostly happens that Indians and negroes are the people who catch the sloth and bring it to the white man: hence it may be conjectured that the erroneous accounts we have hitherto had of the sloth have not been penned down with the slightest intention to mislead the reader or give him an exaggerated history, but that these errors have naturally arisen by examining the sloth in those places where Nature never intended that he should be exhibited.

However, we are now in his own domain. Man but little frequents these thick and noble forests, which extend far and wide on every side of us. This, then, is the proper place to go in quest of the sloth. We will first take a near view of him. By obtaining a knowledge of his anatomy we shall be enabled to account for his movements hereafter, when we see him in his proper haunts. His fore-legs, or, more correctly speaking, his arms, are apparently much too long, while his hind-legs are very short, and look as if they could be bent almost to the shape of a corkscrew. Both the fore- and hind-legs, by their form and by the manner in which they are joined to the body, are quite incapacitated from acting in a perpendicular direction, or in supporting it on the earth, as the bodies of other quadrupeds are supported by their legs. Hence, when you place him on the floor, his belly touches the ground. Now, granted that he supported himself on his legs like other animals, nevertheless he would be in pain, for he has no soles to his feet, and his claws are very sharp and long and curved; so that were his body supported by his feet, it would be by their extremities, just as your body would be were you to throw yourself on all-fours and try to support it on the ends of your toes and fingers--a trying position. Were the floor of glass, or of a polished surface, the sloth would actually be quite stationary; but as the ground is generally rough, with little protuberances upon it, such as stones, or roots of grass, etc., this just suits the sloth, and he moves his fore-legs in all directions, in order to find something to lay hold of; and when he has succeeded he pulls himself forward, and is thus enabled to travel onwards, but at the same time in so tardy and awkward a manner as to acquire him the name of sloth.

Indeed his looks and his gestures evidently betray his uncomfortable situation: and as a sigh every now and then escapes him, we may be entitled to conclude that he is actually in pain.

Some years ago I kept a sloth in my room for several months. I often took him out of the house and placed him upon the ground, in order to have an opportunity of observing his motions. If the ground were rough, he would pull himself forwards by means of his fore-legs at a pretty good pace, and he invariably immediately shaped his course towards the nearest tree. But if I put him upon a smooth and well-trodden part of the road, he appeared to be in trouble and distress. His favourite abode was the back of a chair and, after getting all his legs in a line upon the topmost part of it, he would hang there for hours together, and often with a low and inward cry would seem to invite me to take notice of him.

The sloth, in its wild state, spends its whole life in trees, and never leaves them but through force or by accident. An all-ruling Providence has ordered man to tread on the surface of the earth, the eagle to soar in the expanse of the skies, and the monkey and squirrel to inhabit the trees: still these may change their relative situations without feeling much inconvenience;