CRUISING SOUTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23707, 14 January 1939, Page 18

CRUISING SOUTH

ODD SIGHTS RECALLED MONKEYS WORN IN THE HAIR THE SENSITIVE PLANT Curiosities odd enough to start an Eden Musee intrigue the traveller who voyages down South America’s west coast, writes Alida Malkus, in the New York Times. Stopping only at the regular ports, a voyager in his progress along that impressive shore of desert and mountain will come to lands where women wear in their hair monkeys no bigger than mice, where men dress as birds, with feathers for clothing. Except for its modern piers, Buenaventura, Colombia, is a forlorn-looking, sub-tropical place, yet there the writer experienced two thrills of a minor sort. Chugging up the Sucre River, past wattled huts occupied by Columbian aboriginals, past dugout canoes, propelled by native fishermen, one suddenly saw a fish leap from the river and skim along upright over the surface.

It was the lisa, dark and eel-like, about three feet long. It is good eating, and'as this quality.is recognised by other fish and by alligators, the lisa has learned to leap for its life. ' Terror will sometimes keep it skimming over the surface of the water for 200 and even 300 feet. This lisa was evidently desperate: only its tail remained in the water, like an outboard motor. ' The fin vibrated so rapidly that it left a little- zigzag wake of its own. A Fish That Leaps : Sometimes, when its fear was great and it was probably on the verge Of being snatched by the tail,; it left the .water completely in frantic leaps- of from two to three feet. Its small forward fins apparently helped it to keep a' balance and 1 even :.tb advance;. It gave a graceful performance and furnished excitement equal even to the suspense created by the' perils surrounding the native fisherman there. These bronzed 'Adams appeared to be standing on the surface'" of the water; their dugouts rode so low that from a distance the men were invisible, however, and it seemed a question as to when one of the deep-laden dugouts would go under, with the ring of alligators closing in. , Beunaventura offered another thrill to our group of travellers. They had heard of the “ sensitive plant,” but had not seen any except “the large conservatory variety, which never performs" at the right time —that is, before company. Perhaps "that was because the keepers did not allow guests to intimidate it; The mimosa of Colombia, a modest little shrub called locally “el dormidero” (the sleepy one), grows along the streets and hillsides of Buenaventura, and it never" fails to oblige. A quick tap of a stick on branch or stem, and, like magic, the whole stem droops as though cracked, at the joint,, and the delicate leaves close, not as though withered,-but as if folding up for the night. Simple Mechanics “It is a simple mechanical device,” an engineer explained. “The cells discharge their sap into the stalk —a matter of hydraulics. The effect is to make the plant appear dead and therefore less appetising.” The scientific explanation does not lessen the wonder of this natural phenomenon. Ship passengers, wandering about the cobbled streets of Buenaventura, amused themselves for a long time by tapping sensitive plants in order to see them go to sleep. It was in Colombia, too, that members of the cruise first heard of jungle monkeys so small that women can and do wear them in their hair. In the Museum of Guayaquil, Ecuador, one sees skeletons of the monkeys. The skull is scarcely larger than that of a mouse. On the Guayas River our party passed a dugout in which sat a native woman, from whose dark braids a wee monkey face peeped out. A close view of one of these tiny monkeys was obtained on a visit to a sugar plantation ,in Peru. The little creature at Hacienda Cartavio looked like a gnome. The Andean Condor

In the sub-equatorial winter travellers may see at close range that somewhat legendary bird, the Andean condor. Having thought of this huge winged creature as living only in the heights of the Andes, one was surprised to learn that he descends at times to the shores of the Pacific. In the high mountains, where it mostly lives and nests, no life stirs in winter. It is then that the condor, which alone, until the coming of aviation, knew the mysteries of the glacial heights, descends to scavenging dead fish upon the coast.

A still stranger change of habitat is that of a Peruvian airplant that resembles a small Spanish dagger. It grows without being rooted, or without any roots or anything resembling roots. This plant blows over the Peruvian coastal deserts, growing as it travels. Without visible means of sustenance, miraculously it absorbs the intangible volatile gases of the atmosphere and becomes a hard, rubbery, spiny plant. One sees it rolling about the desert of Paracas. '

On this desert are also found tombs of mummies. The mummies, seated with knees to chin, are swathed in voluminous folds of cloth. On the high plateau of Bolivia mummies are encased not' in cloth but in neatly woven baskets made of the tortora reed, of which the famous Lake Titicaca balsas are made. The mummy baskets usually have a small opening from which the grisly mummy face peers out. In the quaint little museum at Valparaiso, Chile, are to be seen an earlier type of mummy, suggestive of the Egyptian—the only South American type not in a sitting position. They are crudely masked, laid out like very

early Egyptian forms, and filled with mud. Savages at Magallanes That stepping-off place of the world, the frigid Magallanes, at the Antarctic end of Chile, is still inhabited by savage races whose fight for existence has prevented their advance in civilisation. The Alacalufe Indians live in boats —narrow, long, open craft, deep-sea-going; they have no arts, their lives being taken up with the struggle for mere survival. They neither spin nor weave, dress in skins, and at night lie close to their dogs for warmth. Arriving back in Panama City..once more, the writer was, so fascinated with oddities that she nearly bought a Hibaro head. It lay in a glass case, gruesome, but seemingly a perfect example of the art of the Amazon savages. It appeared to be finer than the museum specimens of the artifici-ally-shrunk trophies of the little Hibaros. The visitor managed at last to give the curio a surreptitious pinch. It was made of rubber, the pure black rubber of the jungle.