behind a tree to shoot the traveler in the back, and jump back out of sight again. But this was not our lucky day, for though I glanced not infrequently over my shoulder, I did not once catch even a kodak-shot at one of their feather clouts. But if the savages failed us, there were other things to make up for them. Every instant of the day we were fighting swarms of gnats and mosquitos, and though the sun rarely got a peep in upon us, the heavy, damp heat that pervaded even the shade of the unbroken forest walls above kept us half blinded with the salt sweat in our eyes. The region being utterly flat, the waters of the rainy season gather in the faintest depression, which passing ox-carts churn into a slough beyond description, while the barest suggestion of a stream inundates to a swamp the entire surrounding region. All day long mud-holes, often waist-deep for long distances, completely occupied the narrow road. In the first miles we sought, in our inexperience, to escape these by attempting to tear our way around them through the forest, but so dense was this that passage was commonly impossible and forced us to turn back and take to wading. Now and then we slipped into unseen cart-ruts and plunged to the shoulders into noisome. slime. At sunset we waded through a barred gate into the pascana, or tiny natural clearing, of Cañada Larga, the first of the fortines with which Bolivia garrisons the Monte Grande. Five miserable thatched huts, some without walls and the others of open-work poles set upright, were occupied by half a dozen boyish conscripts in faded rags of khaki and one slattern female. Our government order called upon the commander to "give us all facilities, wood and water, and sell us supplies provided they had any." But the Government had so long forgotten their existence that the soldiers themselves had barely a scant ration of rice, which each cooked in his own tin pot lest a fellow rob him of a grain or two. They were too apathetic to dig a well or plant anything, however heavily time hung on their hands, preferring to starve on half-rations and to choke in the dry season and to drink liquid mud in the wet. The gnats quickly got wind of the arrival of fresh supplies and attacked us in veritable platoons. Known to the natives as jejenes, they are almost invisible, yet can bite through a woolen garment so effectively that the mosquito's puny efforts pass entirely unnoticed in comparison, and leave a tiny red spot that itches cruelly for days to come. days to come. In no circumstances did they give a moment of respite. We could not leave off fighting them long enough to lift a kettle off the fire without a hundred instantly stinging us in as many spots, and to lie in a hammock was next to impossible, as they soon found their way through the mosquitero even when they did not bite up through the bottom of our swinging beds. Born though they were in this. region, or at least accustomed to the pests. for a year or more of military service, the soldiers one and all ate their food marching constantly up and down the "paradeground," striking viciously at themselves with the free hand. ing beds. Day after day we slushed on through endless forest and mud swamps, halting every night at one of the "fortresses," each of which grew worse, if possible, as the distance from the capital increased. Frequently after walking all day we paced back and forth half the night in vain attempts to escape the torturing jejenes, and continued in the morning with an all but unconquerable tendency to fall on our faces from sleepiness while in full march. On the afternoon of the fifth day beyond the Guapay, we sighted a little wooded hill. bulging slightly above the forest ahead, and at nightfall took possession of a galpón, or roof on legs, in the hamlet of El Cerro, the first suggestion of civil habitation. But the long-anticipated feast was scanty. El Cerro had little to sell and less desire to sell it. Konanz was so worn out that he threw himself down supperless without even swinging his hammock, and only after a long hut-to-hut canvass did I coax a native to sell a pound of freshly killed beef and an empanisado, or huge block of crude, dark-brown unpurified sugar. It was the second day thereafter that I got Konanz started eastward again. From El Cerro the landscape changed, leaving the dense Monte Grande, with its glue-like loam, behind, and showing the first palm-trees and frondous vegetation characteristic of Chiquitos. The forest thinned somewhat, and birds large and small, from herons to parrakeets, enlivened the often-flooded wilderness. The road was wider, so that the sun beat in upon us incessantly, and though we paused to drink from any cart-rut or stagnant swamp pool and to wash the sweat out of our eyes, these quickly filled again. Twice we halted at collections of huts for the night, but commonly reached only some gnat-inhabited pascana, these small natural clearings being so important on the trans-Bolivia route that each has a name solemnly engraved on the map of the republic. The natives built all-night smudge-fires before the small open doors of their mud huts, forming a curtain of smoke through which few gnats passed. All the night through they swung incessantly in their hammocks. What secret process the people of this region have to keep swinging while to all appearances they are sleeping soundly I was never able to learn; but more than once I watched a full hour their constant movement, lying all but on their backs, one bare leg hanging over the leg of the hamaca, as if these children of the wilderness had long since solved the problem of perpetual motion that civilization has so far sought in vain. The early Spaniards named the region Chiquitos because the low doors as a protection against insects and other pests forced the inhabitants to make themselves chiquitos (tiny) to crawl through them. ONE day late in January we left the main road and struck off by a trail through a half-open country to visit the ranch of Henry Halsey, an American dwelling in complete isolation in almost the exact geographic center of South America. The day was brilliant, and I let the German and his mule draw on Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra ahead until they were lost to view. That morning we had hung on the pack a whole bunch of the fat, silky little bananas of the region. Gradually hunger intruded itself through my dreams, and almost at the instant it grew tangible a fresh banana appeared in the, trail before me. For an hour or two I came upon one of them as often as hunger returned, as nicely proportioned to my requirements as manna to the Israelites. But hour after hour passed without a sight of Konanz. was not accustomed to lead the way for so prolonged a period, and I pushed on more rapidly, not entirely free from visions of savages falling upon him. The sun stood high overhead, casting down its rays like the contents of an overturned melting-pot, when I at last sighted him some distance ahead. He lay, running with sweat and panting, in the scant shade of a bush, to another of which the mule stood tied, eying him suspiciously. It was some time before he gathered breath to relieve my anxiety. "O you mool!" he gasped at last, shaking his fist at the animal so savagely that it all but tore itself loose. "Ven I don't haf to carry der pack I right avay now shoot you through der head. You Expurgated of its adjectives, his bitter tale ran that, having been beaten and kicked during all the loading that morning, the animal had suddenly taken fright when the German started up from a log on which he had rested a moment and had run away. For hours he had pursued her, losing sight of her entirely, and tracking her only by the trail of bananas she had dropped at intervals for my benefit. Finally, frightened no doubt at finding herself completely alone in the trackless wilderness, "she come valking pack against me, chust like a vomans, py Gott; rhunned avay, an' den gum schneaking pack pegause she haf to haf der home un' der master. Oh, you-" Beyond the rancho of Pablo Rojo the pampa gave place to monte, dense jungle and tangled growth some ten feet high, not tall enough to shade us from the blazing afternoon sun, yet high enough to cut us off in the trough-like trail from every breath of breeze until our tongues and throats were parched and as dry as charqui, and the sand burned our feet through our worn shoes. Konanz could only be coaxed along a mile at a time, but the sun was still above the horizon when the endless jungle was broken by the welcome sight of a thatched house set in corn and bananas, before which were working three apparent natives in long-uncut hair and beards, barefoot, in leather jojotas, and with the native dress of two thin and faded cotton garments, topped by sunfaded straw hats of local weave. But all were Americans, Halsey himself and two of the sons of a couple that had immigrated to Chiquitos from Texas not long after the Civil War. These youths were as truly peons as any of the natives, subject to the same "slavery" of all the region, in that they took an advance in Born hiring out, and continued to get themselves deeper and deeper into debt to their employer. One was then "working out" a rifle and the other a saddle-steer. in the region, they had all the diffidence of the native peon, spoke English, of the "white trash" sort, only when forced to, lamely and without self-confidence, and ending every sentence with an appeal to their aged and bedraggled old mother, "Ain't thet right, Maw?" Four days I swung in my hammock under one of the great trees of 'Halsey's estate, reading belated magazines of the light-weight order, the neurotic artificiality of which seemed particularly ridicu lous against this background of primitive nature. It was easy to understand how even the white man can drop out of the race here in the perfect tropics and let life drift on without him. Halsey pointed out the beginning of a trail that led some fifteen miles back to the Bolivian cross-country road, and I prepared to push on alone; for the German would go no farther, but planned to explore the country round about until he found a spot worth settling upon as soon as the fever that now racked his bones daily had left him. THE faint path through thick prairiegrass and low bush died out even sooner than I had feared. I pushed on in the direction I knew I must go, south and a shade east. A big wooded bluff standing. above the jungle landscape like the Irish coast from the sea gave an objective point. But to keep a due course in the trackless jungle is not so easy as to set it. I was soon among heavier bushes that cut down my progress as a head wind cuts that of a sailing-vessel, then head high in. undergrowth that made every step a struggle, then in thick forest, with the densest jungle overrunning everything and snatching, clinging, tearing at me for all the world like living beings determined to stop my advance at any cost. Vines inwrapped my head, chest, waist, and feet at every step, requiring as often a wild struggle to tear my way through; countless thorns and brambles gashed and rended "Don Cupertino" (third from left), one of the chief residents and officials of eastern Bolivia, with his family and two servants. my sweat-rotted clothing; a bush reached forth and snatched a sleeve out of my shirt; wild pineapple-leaves tore at my legs, laying bare my knees through my breeches; the entangled growth poured blinding sweat into my eyes, broke my boot-laces, and treacherously tripped me, so that I fell, smashing headlong into jungle bushes where no one knew what might be sleeping or lurking. Every such plunge left me so breathless from the incessant struggle that I was several minutes gathering strength to crawl to my feet and tear my way onward. The scent of wild animals was pungent, and signs of their passing and lairs were frequent, but not one did I see or hear. Now and then I fell into a short path or the recent sleeping-place of some beast. Half dead with thirst, noon found me still fighting nature with might and main and with the growing conviction that I should still be struggling when night came upon me. The blue headland of Ypias had long since been lost to view, and I found I was indeed going around in a circle, like the heroes of fiction, until I drew out my compass and insisted that nature let me through the way it indicated. The man on the right is a German At last, when thirst seemed no longer endurable, I broke out into a small space clear of jungle, though the giant grass made the going almost as laborious, and finding a small swamp in its center, I threw myself down to drink half dry the first pool of it. From it radiated in all directions through the tall grass the paths by which the wild animals came down to drink, and every inch of the wet sand was marked with their footprints, as fresh as if they had that moment passed. I recognized those of the deer, the heavy anta, the cat-clawed jaguar, while those of at least a score of smaller species were plainly visible. To cut short an endless story, I tore on all the blazing afternoon, hunger completely lost beneath the weight of a thirst like a raging furnace within me. Then suddenly, toward sunset, when I had concluded the jungle had no end, I fell out of it into a broad, sandy road, sprawling on hands and knees, for it was worn several feet deep into the sandy soil of the dense wilderness through which its way had been chopped. It soon brought me to the uninhabited pascana of Ypias. Luckily the rains had been delayed, or I might have been held for months in the hilltop hamlet of Santiago until the floods common to the twenty leagues or more west of the Paraguay subsided. As it was we passed day after uninhabited day through the same succession of mud-holes and clouds of jejenes, swinging our hammocks at night in tiny pascanas. I say "we" because I had fallen in with two American surveyors, returning from Santiago, mounted on huge mules, the extra one of which I bestrode. But such a route was harder mule-back than afoot. On the last morning we awoke at two to find the moon brilliant, and pulling on our soggy garments, we pushed eagerly on. On the right the Southern Cross stood forth brightly whenever a fleck of cloud veiled the moon. Away in the forest monkeys wailed their everlasting plaint. Great masses of green vines, covering irregular giant bushes, looked like German castles in the moonlight. The first flush of dawn showed in the V-shaped opening ahead the shoulders of the advance horseman cutting into the paling sky. Then day "came up like thunder" out of the endless wilderness, and somehow it seemed wasteful to keep the moon still burning after the tropical sun had flooded all the scene. Tall, slender palms, all possible forms of trees, festooned and draped with vines in fantastic web and lace effects, stood out against the sky. Masses of pink morningglories soon shrunk under the sun's glare; lively, brown moor-hens, flicking their black tails saucily, foraged about mudholes and flew clumsily, like chickens, with little half-jumps, as we passed. Beyond the pascana Tacuaral, with its myriads of slim tacuara palms, the coun try that should have been flooded at this season was waterless, though our thirsty animals all but fell down in the enormous sun-dried cart-ruts in the road. Hour after sun-baked hour we jogged on. An occasional hut with a banana-grove appeared in a tiny place shaved out of the hirsute forest; in mid-afternoon we sighted through the heat rays ahead a wide street, with red-tiled buildings and open water beyond, backed far away by more low wooded ridges, and the Port of Suarez and the end of Bolivia was at hand. It was two months to a day since Tommy and I had set out from Cochabamba. Dawn was just beginning to paint red. the humid air between jungle and sky across the lagoon of Cáceres, formed by the river Paraguay, when I descended to its edge and by dint of acrobatic feats of equilibrium managed a bath and left in the mud and slime, like fallen and abandoned heroes of many a campaign, the remnants of my tramping garb. As I climbed the bank new-clad, there persisted the subconscious feeling that I had heartlessly left behind some faithful friend of long standing. The gasolene launch chugged more than two hours across the muddy lagoon until there rose from the jungle, on a bit of knoll, the modern city of Corumbá, in the State of Matto Grosso, Brazil, to the residents of which the appearance of a lone traveler from out the ferocious wilds and haunts of bugres beyond the lagoon that ends their world. was little less wonder-provoking than the arrival of one from a distant planet. Here at last was civilization-expensive civilization-and steamers every few days to Asunción and Buenos Aires. |