“One day, when I was in the class of poetry, and which was about two years before I left the college for good and all, he called me up to his room. ‘Charles,’ said he to me, in a tone of voice perfectly irresistible, ‘I have long been studying your disposition, and I clearly foresee that nothing will keep you at home. You will journey into far-distant countries, where you will be exposed to many dangers. There is only one way for you to escape them. Promise me that, from this day forward, you will never put your lips to wine, or to spirituous liquors.’ ‘The sacrifice is nothing,’ added he; ‘but, in the end, it will prove of incalculable advantage to you.’ I agreed to his enlightened proposal; and from that hour to this, which is now about nine-and-thirty years, I have never swallowed one glass of any kind of wine or of ardent spirits.”
After leaving college Waterton stayed at home with his father, and enjoyed fox-hunting for a while. To the end of his days he liked to hear of a good run, and he would now and then look with pleasure on an engraving which hung in the usual dining-room at Walton Hall, representing Lord Darlington, the first master of hounds he had known, well seated on a powerful horse and surrounded by very muscular hounds. In 1802 he went to visit two uncles in Spain, and stayed for more than a year, and there had a terrible experience of pestilence and of earthquake:—
“There began to be reports spread up and down the city that the black vomit had made its appearance; and every succeeding day brought testimony that things were not as they ought to be. I myself, in an alley near my uncles’ house, saw a mattress of most suspicious appearance hung out to dry. A Maltese captain, who had dined with us in good health at one o’clock, lay dead in his cabin before sunrise the next morning. A few days after this I was seized with vomiting and fever during the night. I had the most dreadful spasms, and it was supposed that I could not last out till noon the next day. However, strength of constitution got me through it. In three weeks more, multitudes were seen to leave the city, which shortly after was declared to be in a state of pestilence. Some affirmed that the disorder had come from the Levant; others said that it had been imported from the Havanna; but I think it probable that nobody could tell in what quarter it had originated.
“We had now all retired to the country-house—my eldest uncle returning to Malaga from time to time, according as the pressure of business demanded his presence in the city. He left us one Sunday evening, and said he would be back again some time on Monday; but that was my poor uncle’s last day’s ride. On arriving at his house in Malaga, there was a messenger waiting to inform him that Father Bustamante had fallen sick, and wished to see him. Father Bustamante was an aged priest, who had been particularly kind to my uncle on his first arrival in Malaga. My uncle went immediately to Father Bustamante, gave him every consolation in his power, and then returned to his own house very unwell, there to die a martyr to his charity. Father Bustamante breathed his last before daylight; my uncle took to his bed, and never rose more. As soon as we had received information of his sickness, I immediately set out on foot for the city. His friend, Mr. Power, now of Gibraltar, was already in his room, doing everything that friendship could suggest or prudence dictate. My uncle’s athletic constitution bore up against the disease much longer than we thought it possible. He struggled with it for five days, and sank at last about the hour of sunset. He stood six feet four inches high; and was of so kind and generous a disposition, that he was beloved by all who knew him. Many a Spanish tear flowed when it was known that he had ceased to be. We got him a kind of coffin made, in which he was conveyed at midnight to the outskirts of the town, there to be put into one of the pits which the galley-slaves had dug during the day for the reception of the dead. But they could not spare room for the coffin; so the body was taken out of it, and thrown upon the heap which already occupied the pit. A Spanish marquis lay just below him.
“Thousands died as though they had been seized with cholera, others with black vomit, and others of decided yellow fever. There were a few instances of some who departed this life with very little pain or bad symptoms: they felt unwell, they went to bed, they had an idea that they would not get better, and they expired in a kind of slumber. It was sad in the extreme to see the bodies placed in the streets at the close of day, to be ready for the dead-carts as they passed along. The dogs howled fearfully during the night. All was gloom and horror in every street; and you might see the vultures on the strand tugging at the bodies which were washed ashore by the eastern wind. It was always said that 50,000 people left the city at the commencement of the pestilence; and that 14,000 of those who remained in it fell victims to the disease.
“There was an intrigue going on at court, for the interest of certain powerful people, to keep the port of Malaga closed long after the city had been declared free from the disorder; so that none of the vessels in the mole could obtain permission to depart for their destination.
“In the meantime the city was shaken with earthquakes; shock succeeding shock, till we all imagined that a catastrophe awaited us similar to that which had taken place at Lisbon. The pestilence killed you by degrees, and its approaches were sufficiently slow, in general, to enable you to submit to it with firmness and resignation; but the idea of being swallowed up alive by the yawning earth at a moment’s notice, made you sick at heart, and rendered you almost fearful of your own shadow. The first shock took place at six in the evening, with a noise as though a thousand carriages had dashed against each other. This terrified many people to such a degree that they paced all night long up and down the Alameda, or public walk, rather than retire to their homes. I went to bed a little after midnight, but was roused by another shock about five o’clock in the morning. It gave the bed a motion which made me fancy that it moved under me from side to side. I sprang up, and having put on my unmentionables (we wore no trousers in those days), I ran out, in all haste, to the Alameda. There the scene was most distressing: multitudes of both sexes, some nearly in a state of nudity, and others sick at stomach, were huddled together, not knowing which way to turn or what to do.
—‘Omnes eodem cogimur.’
However, it pleased Heaven, in its mercy, to spare us. The succeeding shocks became weaker and weaker, till at last we felt no more of them.”
A courageous sea-captain at last sailed away in safety, though chased by the Spanish brigs of war, and after thirty days at sea Waterton landed in England.
Another uncle had estates in Demerara, and in the autumn Waterton sailed thither from Portsmouth. He landed at Georgetown, Demerara, in November, 1804, and was soon delighted by the natural history of the tropical forest. In 1806 his father died, and he returned to England. He made four more journeys to Guiana, and, in 1825, published an account of them, entitled “Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, in the years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824; with original instructions for the perfect preservation of birds, &c., for cabinets of natural history.” The two first journeys are now reprinted from the original text. The book at once attracted general attention, became popular, and has taken a place among permanent English literature. Unlike most travellers, Waterton tells nothing of his personal difficulties and discomforts, and encumbers his pages with neither statistics nor information of the guidebook kind. His observation of birds and beasts, written down in the forests, and the description of the forests themselves, fill all his pages. The great ant-eater and the sloth were for the first time accurately described by him. He showed that the sloth, instead of being a deformed, unhappy creature, was admirably adapted to its habitat. He explained the use of the great claws of the ant-eater, and the curious gait which they necessitated. The habits of the toucan, of the houtou, of the campanero, and of many other birds, were first correctly described by him. He determined to catch a cayman or alligator, and at last hooked one with a curious wooden hook of four barbs made for him by an Indian.
The adventure which followed is perhaps one of the most famous exploits of an English naturalist.
“We found a cayman, ten feet and a half long, fast to the end of the rope. Nothing now remained to do, but to get him out of the water without injuring his scales, ‘hoc opus, hic labor.’ We mustered strong: there were three Indians from the creek, there was my own Indian, Yan; Daddy Quashi,1