Note 9 — Chapter VI · APPROACHING THE ANDES

Bongo, falca, and curiara are names given in Colombia and Venezuela to the dugouts or canoes fashioned from a single tree-trunk. They are sometimes large enough to hold from twenty to twenty five persons. Usually, however, their capacity is limited to five or six persons. The curiara is smaller than the bongo or falca. The bongo is generally provided with a covering in the centre called a toldo or carroza. This is made of lattice-work with palm leaves to shelter the traveler from the sun and rain. It is steered and urged backwards and forwards by a man standing at the stern, who uses a kind of oar—canalete—very much as a Venetian gondolier handles his oar for steering and propelling his gondola. When the current does not permit the use of oars those standing near the prow urge the boat forward by poles called palancas. The boatmen are called bogas and the ropes with which they sometimes pull their canoes forward are called sogas. The bongo, especially when the river is high, is a very slow means of locomotion. And owing to the very limited space of the toldo, even in the largest canoes, traveling in a bongo is, at best, very confining and uncomfortable. A journey any distance in one of these long, narrow, crank dug-outs—more unstable than a shell—is a trying experience, and one that all travelers in equatorial America avoid whenever possible. The treacherous craft is liable to capsize when one least expects it. Even a skilled Oxford or Harvard sculler would at times have great difficulty in keeping his balance in one of them. ↑