Rutters as Tools in Natural Science

The rutter as a textual genre is very similar to an “archipelago”, with many “islands” of information of different form, colour and quality. The Roteiro geral com largas informações das grandezas da Bahia de Todos os Santos of Gabriel Soares de Sousa, also known as Notícia do Brasil, or Descrição verdadeira de todo o Estado pertencente à Coroa de Portugal, or still Tratado descriptivo do Brasil, is a very special piece. Written around 1587 and widely considered the most complete rutter of the Brazilian coast, Sousa’s work is the result of many years of data gathering, and not only nautical data.

Gabriel Soares de Sousa spent nearly two decades traveling throughout Brasil, as a very sharp customs inspector and a curious observer of local flora and fauna, as we can see in chapter 115 “In which the nature of different snakes is declared”:

“Surucucu are very large and white snakes that walk through the trees where people walk and live, which have teeth that when they bite, they take a lot of meat, out of the flesh. Of these snakes Indians are good friends and they take them in traps they call Mondeo, and if the male finds the female trapped and dead, he waits there for the man who set the trap with whom he girds, and doesn’t let go until he kills him, and waits there again until another person comes whom he bites only; and with this revenge he leaves that place.”

Lachesis muta, named after the Greek mythological Fate who measured the length of a man’s life, is one of the largest venomous snakes in the world. While it is quite unlikely that its bite could take pieces of flesh, its venom has proteolytic activity, which destroys and causes lesions and necrosis in the tissue, which could bring the unfortunate victim to eventually lose parts of the body. It’s also hard to believe in a snake planning a revenge and with such specific modus operandi, but those animals could definitely be used to set up very dangerous traps.

Although with some limitations, rutters were important tools to transfer knowledge in the field of natural science, and they still provide precious information on presence and distribution of animal and plant species in the world.
[Luana Giurgevich & Silvana Munzi]