Using smaller boats that could be hauled over the rapids, Wallace and his Indian
paddlers ascended the celebrated falls of the Rio Negro, going further and further
into relatively unknown territory until they reached the village of Arawak. Wallace
describes the raging torrents that flowed down the river and one day in particular when
they had to cross from one side to the other:
Beds and ledges of rock spread across the river, while through the openings between them
water rushed with terrific violence, forming dangerous whirlpools and breakers below. Here
it was necessary to cross to the other side, in order to get up. We dashed into the current,
were rapidly carried down, got among the boiling waves, then passed suddenly into still
water under shelter of an island, we at length reached the other side, about a mile across.Arawak was Wallace’s first sight of a completely uncivilized indigenous village,
full of naked children and their near-naked parents – the Baniwa. We can only guess at
what the Indians thought at their first sight of this tall, skinny, strangely dressed white
man, with his wire spectacles and an incomprehensible mania for collecting birds
and insects. Here, Wallace’s aim was to reach the remote rocky haunts of the ‘gallo’,
or cock-of-the-rock bird. This orange
and red bird shone out like a brilliant
flame in the dark forest, especially when
the male birds gathered to perform their
courtship dances. He offered the Baniwa
good money for every bird captured, and
those who knew their nesting grounds led
him on a long jungle journey, carrying
their blowpipes and poisoned darts for
the hunt. The Baniwa slipped easily
through the jungle, while Wallace got
caught up on every branch and thorned
vine. He wrote: ‘I have no doubt they
looked on me as a good illustration of
the uselessness and bad consequence of
wearing clothes upon a forest journey’.
The group managed to return after nine
days in the jungle with twelve cocks-of-
the-rocks and Wallace describes when
he first held a specimen of the brilliantly
plumaged bird: Painting of the cock-of-the-rock, Smithsonian Library
112 Where Australia Collides with Asia
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