Note 9 — Chapter V · EL RIO META
Reading edition
Every reader is familiar with the story that has long been in circulation regarding monkey bridges, and, in his youth, was, no doubt, entertained by pictures of such imaginary bridges. It is quite safe to say that no one ever saw such bridges in any part of South America or elsewhere. And yet the tale regarding their existence has had currency since the time of Acosta, who visited the New World in 1570. “Going from Nombre de Dios to Panamá,” he writes, “I did see in Capira one of these monkies leape from one tree to an other, which was on the other side of a river, making me much to wonder. They leape where they list, winding their tailes about a braunch to shake it; and when they will leape further than they can at once, they use a pretty devise, tying themselves by the tailes one of another, and by this means make as it were a chaine of many; then doe they launch themselves foorth, and the first holpen by the force of the rest takes holde where hee list, and so hangs to a bough and helps all the rest, till they be gotten up.” Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Bk. IV, Chap. 39, Grimston’s Translation, London, 1604.
The fable about the monkey bridge belongs to the same class as those that obtain in certain parts of South America regarding the “great devil,” or “man of the woods,” a near relative of Waterton’s “Nondescript.”
Kingsley, in the following passage from Westward Ho!, referring to some of the things seen and heard by Amyas Leigh and his companions during their voyage up the Meta, paints a picture that is doubtless before the mind’s eye of most people when they think of the forest-fringed banks of this river, but which is about as far from the reality as could well be imagined. “The long processions of monkeys,” he writes, “who kept pace with them along the tree tops and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle, and grunt and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of the jaguar and the rustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear.” Chap. XXIII. ↑