A NEW CREW AND ANOTHER BATALON
One night we made no camp at sunset, but steadily paddled in the
darkness; for the journey was nearly over for the Tacanas, and their
paddles dipped in happy, eager rhythm. Then the canoe was beached under
what, in the dim starlight, appeared to be a cliff; the crew carried the
cargo up the high bank, and there, in scattered groups of twinkling
lights, spread the settlement of Riba Alta. It is purely a
trading-center where the big rubber houses have their headquarters in
widely scattered, high-fenced compounds. There was a church of mud, with
a tiny bell; a small detail of Bolivian soldiers and their officer, who,
wonderful to relate, spoke English; there were enormous warehouses
stacked with goods at startling prices, with French, German, and English
clerks who could chatter with the natives in half a score of primitive
dialects, and then, in the cool evenings, sip huge gin cocktails from
high tumblers and indulge in local slanders. In the room of each was a
huge pile of accumulated newspapers from home that they carefully read,
one each day, following the successive dates--and the latest was three
months old! It was as isolated as a Hudson Bay post of a century ago.
I presented my letters and had a room, a hammock, a shower bath, and
filtered water to drink in place of the coffee colored river, and I was
disappointed, for the clear, crystal fluid was insipid and tasteless
after the long weeks on the Beni. The Tacanas were to rest there a few
days and then begin their long slow return to Rurrenabaque and, during
that time, I arranged for the last stage of this interior journey on
down over the Falls of the Madeira where a river steamer was to be met
and the actual frontier had its beginning, or ending. From Riba Alta the
Beni becomes the Madeira River, by the addition of the Madre de Dios,
the Orton, the Mamoré and the Abuna. And a day's journey beyond Riba
Alta are the first of the Falls of the Madeira. There are fourteen of
them scattered along the river for two or three hundred miles, and
ordinarily only two can be run, the others being weary portages, and
fourteen portages with a heavy mahogany canoe is no light, frivolous
trip.
The last canoe that had come up over the falls reported that a steamer
from Manaos would arrive and leave the village of San Antonio, at the
foot of the last falls, in less than a fortnight, and every effort must
be strained in order to make it. If I missed that, there would be six
long weeks in that unkempt Brazilian village before the next transport
from civilization would arrive. A railroad has now been built around the
falls, starting from near San Antonio, and steamers are a little more
frequent. Now that road is completed it opens up one of the greatest
virgin territories of rubber in the world.
A German rubber-trader in Riba Alta was fortunately leaving for Europe,
and we were to join forces. He hunted up a little canoe, about fifteen
feet long, but with a disproportionately wide beam that made it look
like a coracle. It was as heavy as a scow, and we stowed a block and
tackle to drag it over the portages. We needed four paddles and a pilot,
for speed and safety cannot be secured without a pilot. His wages were
equal to those of our whole crew, a bonus of the cargo space for the
return trip, a rifle, and cartridges and also the amount of alcohol
necessary to get him into this amiable frame of mind. He knew the
cataracts and their condition in the varying stages of high and low
water like a book, he could take advantage of the speed of the current
and then swing into the portage at the last moment; he shot the possible
passages and chose the right bank for a portage; to miss the latter and
then work slowly up stream far enough to make a crossing and not get
caught in the falls is slow work; while an error of skill in choosing
the cataract that may be run may fairly be considered as fatal.
The crew had to be rationed for a six weeks' trip, down and back, while
the persistent rumors of savages made a rifle and cartridges a necessity
for their return. The traders in the settlement regarded it as hazardous
for us to attempt the trip over the falls with so small a party, but my
German friend felt that in the speed with which we could pass each
cataract with a light boat there was security, and the crew were
indifferent, or confident in the presence of white patróns, and so we
started.
In Riba Alta there were two young savages that had been captured in a
recent raid far up one of the tributary rivers. One was an Araona and
the other was a Maropa. Reared in the dim twilight of the jungles, their
eyes were unaccustomed to the brilliant tropic light of the open, and
since their capture they would hide in the houses by day and venture
forth only in the evening. Their skins were rough and calloused from the
jungle growths, and clothing was a delightful novelty, though only a
toy. They would array themselves in any garments they could for short
play-spells, and then discard them and step blissfully forth in their
comfortable nothing.
The tribes of this part of South America are among the most primitive in
the world. Though they had no knotted muscular development, each of
these savage children already possessed the strength of a man, and in
their aimless play could shift boulders that would tax the strength of a
Lecco or Tacana. They could scale any one of the branchless trees in the
compound like a monkey, and with as little apparent effort. Sometimes
when they were not watched too closely, they would use bow and arrow
with native skill; like a flash the arrow would be loosed and a lizard
would be split as it ran, or a fleeing chicken skewered. I was told that
after a savage child is captured, the greatest care must at first be
used in feeding it, as it is totally unaccustomed to salt, and even the
slight amount used in bread has a poisonous effect upon it. The Maropa
had ulcers that were attributed to this fact. The food, _platanos_, is
rubbed in ashes to slowly accustom them, and after about six months
there is no further difficulty.
The night before we left Riba Alta an Indian was brought around to tell
me an experience. He was a rubber scout who hunted up possible new areas
of rubber trees; he corresponded to a "timber cruiser" in our own
Northwest. Somewhere, about a couple of hundred miles back in the
interior from this settlement, he had come across the trail of an animal
unfamiliar to him--and from his savage infancy such forest lore had been
his sole academic curriculum; it was a trail "like a snake--but not a
snake." It was approximately three feet in width judged by his gesture
of measurement, and there were feet marks on either side of the trail
like a turtle's flippers--but only two. He had not followed it for he
was afraid. About a week later in the shallow lagoon of one of the great
lakes that are known to exist in that part, although no white man has
yet penetrated to them, he saw a long neck raise itself out of the
water--a long neck! And it had a head on it. A snake's neck, he was
asked. No, he insisted it was not a snake, he knew snakes, it was a neck
with a head on it, something new. Then he fired at it, and it
disappeared--and that was all.
He had described, in the combined circumstances, a possible plesiosaur.
What he saw I do not know, but when an Indian wants to romance, his
animals have the regulation iridescent eyes and spout flames. No
combination of two overlapping trails could deceive him, he was adept on
animal trails, nor would such a common place incident as an overlapped
trail stir his imagination. He had never seen a circus poster, or an
illustrated treatise on paleontology, but he indicated the existence of
some animal closer, at least, to the plesiosaur than any known and
distant descendant.
The crew had been gathered that same night and slept on the beach beside
the monteria so that we were able to start with the dawn. Our first day
was unlucky. The heavy canoe, with scarce eight inches of freeboard, was
swept on a snag that started one of the planks. The inner bark of a tree
that is used for calking, and which is always carried for such
emergencies, could not keep the water down, and we were forced to beach
the canoe for repairs. This delay, with the constant vision of a lost
steamer below the falls, kept the German and myself toiling in the
blazing sun by the side of the crew emptying cargo, patching and then
reloading. The canoe still made water, but we hoped farther down the
river to exchange it. That night we had to camp on a sand-bar, and it
was not until the next day that we made the first of the falls,--or
_cachuelas_, the Falls of Esperanza.
At this cataract is the headquarters of the largest single rubber
{baron} in South America. His _batalones_ and even tiny river steamers
ply from Esperanza throughout the enormous watershed gathering the
rubber and sending it out over the falls in large expeditions. Here he
has little machine shops, a fair sized village of employees all under
his control, while off in one corner by the edge of the jungle is a
marble shaft surrounded by a little rusted iron railing that he has
erected to the memory of his wife. The shaft and its pedestal have been
slowly dragged around the portages in a labor that lasted months, and,
as it stands, the tender tribute represents somewhere near its weight in
silver bullion. A little tramway of his runs around this cataract and by
its use we saved many hours of portage; even the monteria was hoisted
with borrowed labor on the tiny car and hauled around.
At this Cachuela Esperanza I observed that it was not a falls such as we
picture in connection with the word, a veritable Niagara or Victoria
where the water drops sheer in a mass of foaming thunder; it is a gorge
or a series of little cañons channeled through mountains of buried rock
lying at right angles to the course of the river. The series of the
Falls of Madeira seem to be all of this character--parallel
mountain-chains of rock at irregular distances from one another, which
come near enough to the surface to act as dams until the ages of
insistent current have worn their narrow channels. In high water the
rock is often entirely covered, and nothing shows but the shift and coil
of great eddies and whirlpools to mark the choked gorges beneath. Each
main cataract is guarded by a smaller one above and a second one below,
often quite as dangerous, and making an average of twenty portages
necessary.
In three days we reached Villa Bella, a tiny settlement on the peninsula
formed by the Mamoré River joining the Madeira. In this little
wilderness town, a sort of half-way between Riba Alta and San Antonia,
the few streets were already laid out with rectangular primness, each
house was compelled to keep a light burning outside until the late hour
of 9 P. M., and there was a street-cleaning department of one, whose
duty included keeping the weeds out of the streets. There were also
rudimentary sidewalks.
The night of our arrival there was a dance given in the cane-walled
house that combined the functions of club, café, billiard-room, and
hotel. The sole music was by an accordion, and stately, shuffling,
swaying dancers simpered and coquetted and performed all the polite
maneuvers to its jerky rhythm, while the dust rose from the corrugated
floor of split palm-logs, and the smoking kerosene lamps and tallow
candles battled and triumphed over the soft evening atmosphere. Every
chink and crevice and window held its glittering, enraptured Indian eye,
and even the élite caught their breath at the reckless pop of warm
imitation champagne at ten dollars a bottle. Truly it was a grand
affair. Ice for the champagne had been hoped for, and the gentleman who
owned an ice-machine, as he fondly believed, showed it to me and asked
my assistance in operating it. Naïvely he had bought an ice-cream
freezer, but so far it had proved obdurate to his labor, and had brought
forth no ice.
We exchanged our leaking canoe for a sound one, a trifle larger, and
pushed on. A few hours below over the Falls of the Madeira proper--a
minor one of the series guarding the little rapids at the head we ran,
while a short portage brought us into the clear river again. Three
_batalones_ were running their cargo of rubber through the gorges at the
side of the cataract. The _bolachas_ of rubber were threaded on long
ropes, like a string of beads; one of the crew would take the end of the
rope in his teeth, and, swimming or wading, guide it through the eddies
near shore. Often he would have to let go, and with a rush it would be
sucked into the cataract like a long, knotted, water-snake, while others
of the crew would swim out and recover it below.
[Illustration: THE BOLACHAS OF RUBBER ARE THREADED ON LONG ROPES.]
At this cataract the lightened batalones themselves could be run
through, and the whole of three crews would be concentrated in one for
the passage. Out into the eddies it would sweep with thirty paddles
straining over the high freeboard, giving it, in the distance, the
appearance of some huge and absurd water-bug. Six weeks it would be
before they would land in San Antonio, and then two, perhaps three
months more with their cargo of merchandise working back against the
river. With the killing work in the blazing sun, swimming or portaging
from the crack of dawn until dark, and a palm mat thrown on the sand-bar
at night, it is small wonder that rarely a crew comes back from a trip
with its full roster. Even their rugged animal physique is not proof
against the continuous exposure and hardship. In addition, there are the
savages. One expedition is still talked of where out of three batalones
that started with their crews, only three men returned.