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Nicholeto Chordiman Directory 18
Page 01
Once started in the launch _Rimac_, we went through interesting channels, outlets of the main stream being often noticeable on either bank, cutting wide passages through the forest and forming one or more shallow lakelets, with innumerable aquatic plants on the surface of the water. As we went farther it became easy to understand how islands were constantly forming in the river. Quantities of large and small logs of wood were continually floating down the stream; the banks were gradually being eaten away by the current. Whole trees fell down with their immense branches and polypi-like roots, and formed a barrier arresting the progress of the floating wood. Particles of earth deposited by wind and by water saturated with impurities settled there. Soon grass would begin to grow on those deposits, which quickly collected more deposits of flying and floating particles. The soft bottom of the river, disturbed by the deviated current, piled up mud against the submerged branches resting on the river-bed. Quickly an island was then formed; more wood accumulated, more grass, more mud; the base of the islands would increase rapidly, and in the space of a few years islands several kilometres in length rose above the water.
I have no heart for continuing this article, and if I had, I have nothing of interest to say. No one's literary career can have been smoother or more unchequered than mine. I have published all my books at my own expense, and paid for them in due course. What can be conceivably more unromantic? For some years I had a little literary grievance against the authorities of the British Museum because they would insist on saying in their catalogue that I had published three sermons on Infidelity in the year 1820. I thought I had not, and got them out to see. They were rather funny, but they were not mine. Now, however, this grievance has been removed. I had another little quarrel with them because they would describe me as "of St. John's College, Cambridge," an establishment for which I have the most profound veneration, but with which I have not had the honour to be connected for some quarter of a century. At last they said they would change this description if I would only tell them what I was, for, though they had done their best to find out, they had themselves failed. I replied with modest pride that I was a Bachelor of Arts. I keep all my other letters inside my name, not outside. They mused and said it was unfortunate that I was not a Master of Arts. Could I not get myself made a Master? I said I understood that a Mastership was an article the University could not do under about five pounds, and that I was not disposed to go sixpence higher than three ten. They again said it was a pity, for it would be very inconvenient to them if I did not keep to something between a bishop and a poet. I might be anything I liked in reason, provided I showed proper respect for the alphabet; but they had got me between "Samuel Butler, bishop," and "Samuel Butler, poet." It would be very troublesome to shift me, and bachelor came before bishop. This was reasonable, so I replied that, under those circumstances, if they pleased, I thought I would like to be a philosophical writer. They embraced the solution, and, no matter what I write now, I must remain a philosophical writer as long as I live, for the alphabet will hardly be altered in my time, and I must be something between "Bis" and "Poe." If I could get a volume of my excellent namesake's "Hudibras" out of the list of my works, I should be robbed of my last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothing about this, but keep it secret, lest some worse thing should happen to me. Besides, I have a great respect for my namesake, and always say that if "Erewhon" had been a racehorse it would have been got by "Hudibras" out of "Analogy." Some one said this to me many years ago, and I felt so much flattered that I have been repeating the remark as my own ever since.
At Piriatingalini and Puchalini we found light cable suspension bridges, very shaky, which swung to and fro as you rode over them. Most of them were not more than four feet wide and had no parapet at all. I cannot say that I felt particularly happy when my mule--sure-footed, I grant--took me across, the bridge swinging, quivering, and squeaking with our weight on it, especially when we were in the middle. The rivers were extremely picturesque, with high mountains on either side, among which they wound their way in a snake-like fashion over a rocky bed, forming a series of cascades. We went that day 25 kil., and arrived at the _tambo_ of Azupizu, which was in charge of a deserter from the French navy. He was an extraordinary character. He had forgotten French, and had neither learnt Spanish nor the local language of the Campas Indians.
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