OFF ON THE LONG DRIFT
[Illustration: SLOWLY THE RAFTS SANK UNDER THE WEIGHT.]
A long line of half-naked Leccos trotted across the grass-covered bluff
and disappeared over the edge and down the steep path to the river,
where our clumsy rafts swung and eddied in the boiling current. They
grunted and sweated and laughed as they threw the heavy packages of our
outfit on their shoulders, for they could swing a hundred and fifty or
two hundred pounds as carelessly as you could handle a valise. Steadily
the raised platforms on the rafts piled higher with the accumulating
baggage, while slowly the rafts sank under the weight, until the logs
were entirely covered by the muddy current. As the last package was put
aboard, the Leccos began lashing the cargo in place with our spare rope
and the long vines which they used for towing the rafts up-stream. They
used as much care in throwing and tightening the lashings as though
stowing the pack on a "bad" mule for a mountain-trail, rather than a
cargo raft that was only to drift with the current. It seemed absurd.
"Here, good," grunted a Lecco, waving a hand toward the mill-race
current; "below, very bad, patrón, _muy peligroso_--yes."
When later we struck the "bad places," and waist-deep in the boiling,
angry waters of the cañons, clung to those same lashings, to keep
ourselves from being washed overboard, the need of lashing for the
baggage was plain.
[Illustration: THE SHREWISH LEATHER-SKINNED INDIAN WIFE.]
The _intendente_, the jefe _politico_, and the only postmaster for many
leagues of this virgin interior came down to tender us his farewell
embraces; for as a strict matter of fact those three functionaries
resided in the single person of that one short, stocky Cholo half-breed,
who had given all the hospitality in his power during the dreary weeks
of waiting in his little palm-thatched domain, but whose Aymará wife had
viewed us with such sullen hospitality. Officially he noted with
approval that we had already complied with the Bolivian regulations in
regard to navigation, and at the bow floated the green, yellow, and red
flag of Bolivia, and with much curiosity he viewed our American flag
fluttering at the stern. It was the first he had ever seen. It gained,
too, much approval from the Leccos, its decorative scheme of stars and
red and white bars drawing admiring comment, and we could have sold it
many times over as dress goods or as strictly high-class shirting. As a
special mark of favor the shrewish, leather-skinned Indian wife of the
Cholo jefe came down to see us off, and while we patted her lord on the
back in our mutually polite embracings, she fluttered in the background,
clacking unintelligible, but cordial, Aymará farewells.
When first we had dismounted in this tiny settlement of Mapiri this
Aymará woman had borne us a fierce dislike that was kept from literal
and open war only by the strong hand of her Cholo lord. A little later,
unfortunately, one of our men, in making his offering of candles in the
little mud-walled chapel, had ignited a saint. When I saw the saint
shortly after, his vestments were charred shreds, he was as bald as a
singed chicken, and his waxen features had coagulated into limp
benevolence, out of which his sole remaining glass eye stared mildly. He
had been placed on a little table up against a mud wall, and the Indian
women were weeping and wailing before him in abject apology. They were
hastily offering flowers, candles, and libations, but with this last
straw the Aymará lady's dislike had become even a more fixed, fanatical
hatred.
Shrewish, unattractive, and savage though she was, she was devoted in
her love for her Cholo husband. Some time after the burying of the
saint, one night their son developed a difference with his father in
which each tried to kill the other. The father had just reached his gun
and would have been successful when, being thick-necked, violent, and
full-blooded, he toppled over in a stroke of apoplexy. There being no
doctor, not even an Aymará _yatari_ within three hundred miles, the old
lady turned to us in a panic, and, probably despite our amateur efforts,
the Cholo pulled through. In the meantime the poor old woman fluttered
about in an agony of helpless fear and love, eagerly hanging on the slow
words of translation that came to her, for she spoke nothing but Aymará,
and everything had to be translated first into Spanish and then into her
own tongue. That very night she burned a box of candles before the
charred saint, while in the morning we had for our breakfast a fine
chicken apiece. Her gratitude endured, and in the quivering furnace heat
she had come to see us depart, and as we waded aboard she followed us
and laid on the cargo a pair of live chickens as a final gift.
The Cholo handed us a small sack of mail, asking us to distribute it on
our way down the Rio Mapiri, these irregular trips being the sole means
of mail communication with the rubber _barracas_ of this far interior;
the Leccos cast off the vine ropes that moored us, and a few strokes of
their heavy paddles swung us out into the full, swift current of the
river. As we struck it there was no feeling of speed or even of motion,
but immediately the green walls on each side of the river began flitting
past in a shimmering ribbon of confused green jungle. In a moment, far
behind, came the crackling of rifle-shots. It was the Cholo and his
Winchester in salute; even while we were pulling our guns to reply he
and his wife had dwindled to tiny dots that the sound of our guns could
have reached only as a faint echo. Then a bend in the river hid them
from view, and my river voyage had begun.
The balsas were slender rafts of very buoyant logs spiked together with
heavy pins of black palm; they had a rough bow made by the crooked
center log, which turned up in a snout-like projection, giving the
affair a curiously animal-like and amphibious expression. For the return
voyage three of these balsas were lashed side by side with cross-logs
and strips of the inner bark of some tree. The _callapo_, as this
combination is called, is entirely submerged and except for the cargo
platform and the turned-up snouts, nothing is visible above the muddy
river.
As we disappeared around the bend in the swift current, the hills
against the background seemed to close in upon us, and as they narrowed,
the muddy river snapped and crackled in peevish, little waves. The banks
grew steeper, and the air damp and cool, and although directly overhead
there was the glaring blue sky of the forenoon, yet we moved swiftly
through an atmosphere of evening. Long, trailing creepers drooped from
the overhanging trees into the current near the banks and cut the water
like the spray from the bow of a trim launch; the soft murmur of rapidly
moving water rose, and was broken only now and then by the shrill cries
of parrots flying high overhead; sometimes a pair of macaws, with their
gaudy plumage flashing in the high sun flitted across the gorge. But
though the river doubled and twisted among the hills, there were yet,
according to Lecco standards, no "bad places," and they passed the
bottle of _cañassa_ sociably around among themselves, inspecting their
passengers with interest and chuckling over their own comments. They had
never seen a man with eye-glasses before, and I was a matter of fine
interest and guesswork. What were those panes of glass for? Cautiously
they would make a little circle with their fingers and thumbs and peer
through it to see what effect of improvement might result. I received my
name, "the four-eyed patrón," promptly.
[Illustration: THERE WERE, ACCORDING TO THE LECCO STANDARDS, AS YET NO
"BAD PLACES."]
The whole crew of Leccos was amiably drunk; it is the custom of the
river, and it seems in no way to impair their efficiency. It has become
their right by long custom, and one that it is not prudent to disregard;
for a trader, being of a thrifty turn and not caring to buy the cañassa,
decided to run the river on a strict prohibition platform. Every one of
his callapos was curiously enough wrecked in the same rapids on the day
after he announced his thrifty principles. The general allowances is
about two quarts a day for three men, and perhaps, if the day has been a
hard one, a small teacupful each in the camp. Money to them has no value
compared with cañassa. Once, when trying to buy a fine bead neckband
from a Lecco, I offered him money up to a dollar, Bolivian, the
equivalent of eight bottles of cañassa, and he refused, for his Lecco
sweetheart had made it; then I began to barter all over again by
offering him a bottle of cañassa, and at once he handed me the neck-band
without question.
While the current was swift, from eight to ten miles an hour, we had not
come to the bad rapids. Sometimes the river would open out into broad
shallows, where the callapo would bump and scrape along over the bottom,
and then would close up into another gorge that in its turn would merge
into tortuous cañons with bluff walls of rock. Drunk though the Leccos
were, yet their river skill did not seem to be affected. When we floated
along the quieter reaches, they would play like silly children.
Occasionally one would be tumbled into the river, and would swim
alongside in sheepish embarrassment until he decided to climb aboard,
amid the pleased cackles of the rest.
[Illustration: LECCOS LOWERING THE CALLAPO THROUGH SHALLOWS.]
One, a young Lecco about seventeen or eighteen years old, who handled
one of the stern paddles, accidentally stepped off backward into the
river. The others shrieked with delight as the Lecco struck out for
shore. We saw him land, pull his machete out from under his shirt, and
start chopping down some saplings. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, in the
next milder stretch of river, down came the Lecco like a cowpuncher on a
pony, only his pony was a bundle of mere sticks lashed together with
vine, and in place of a rope he swung a bamboo pole, using it as a
paddle. He was standing up like a circus-rider on his frail raft,
shifting it with his pole over to where the current was swiftest, and he
coasted down the inclined glissade between rocks, avoiding every little
eddy and catching only the roughest and swiftest places, until presently
he had worked his way alongside and stepped aboard again. His little
bundle of sticks did not number ten, and not one was as thick as your
wrist, while merely two bits of vine at each end held them together.
[Illustration: THE LECCO OF THE TWIG RAFT.]
I asked what would have happened had the vine lashings broke. When that
was translated to the Leccos, they roared with laughter. That, it was
explained to me, was what they were hoping for, so that then he would
have had to swim. Swim! A fine joke to swim rapids and whirlpools that
looked like sure death or worse mangling. But I found later that any one
of them could have done it on even worse passages. If they are sure to
be caught in a whirlpool, they will dive, and the fury of the rapid
itself troubles them not the least. A Lecco once, to avoid a whipping by
his rubber boss, threw himself into the river and swam six miles in the
worst section of the river without a thought. A German later attempted
to swim the mildest of these, and his broken body was picked up in an
eddy three miles below.