THE FALLS OF THE MADEIRA AND HOME
Slowly cataract after cataract was passed Madeira, Misericordia,
Riberon--with three long portages that consumed a day and a
half--Araras, Tres Hermanos, Perdonera, Paredon, Calderon de Infierno
("Kettle of Hell"), which was a series of cool, shaded channels among a
multitude of islands, and finally resulted in but a single portage
around a tiny cascade, although in high water the Calderon de Infierno
lived well up to its name; then came Geraos and Teotonio, two cataracts
that challenged comparison with the rapids below Niagara, though
shorter.
[Illustration: DRAGGING A "BATALON" AROUND A PORTAGE OF THE MADEIRA
FALLS.]
Between two of the cataracts from up a little tributary river there had
been reports of newly discovered rubber forests; the frontier had blazed
as though over a bonanza gold field; tremendous tales of the daily pick
were told, thirty, forty pounds of pure rubber a day! Expeditions
outfitted for a long stay were following one another to claim territory
and we knew at the mouth of that river was a rough headquarters where
there would be company in the night's camp and the pleasant interchange
of rumor. So we made no camp at sunset, though the crew murmured. It was
pitch black, the overcast sky shrouded even the faint starlight. We
literally felt our way close by the high bank, while the paddles slipped
through the water with scarcely an audible drip. The little animals of
the night scuttled on the bank, and out of the darkness would gleam
tiny, scared eyes.
Suddenly from near the bow came the heavy lap of a tongue upon the
current not a paddle's length away. An Indian dashed a paddleful of
water at the sound, and with a startled crash against the brush there
was a heavy leap to the bank above, and there came the low, rippling
snarl of a jaguar and the sound of scattering leaves as its angry tail
whipped the undergrowth. With cocked rifles we waited for the gleam of
eyeballs--to have fired without that much chance would have made the
spring certain--and motionless the crew let the canoe drift past. It
seemed an age!
An hour more, and we came to the mouth of the little tributary. A dozen
batalones were moored along the narrow beach vaguely outlined in the
camp-fires along the bank, and back of them were the rough huts that a
Brazilian had already erected at this point. Here and there the feasting
crews were gorging themselves on monkey and half-burned strips of tapir,
while a tin can of alcohol and a gourd dipper were free to all. A short
distance up the river the savages had appeared that morning, and one of
their men lay dead back in the jungle, while another was in one of the
huts with an arrow-hole through his breast. In the main shack a few rods
off was a woman, white, pure Brazilian, who spoke in the low, soft
modulations of a far-off civilization, and who, by any of the standards
of all the ages, was a beauty. She wore the simple, single gown of the
frontier, with an undergarment; her black hair was coiled in a flowing
mass that curved low over her forehead, and over one ear was the
brilliant blossom of some jungle-flower. She was playing a guitar,
swinging with white, slender bare feet in an elaborate hammock against a
background of rubber-traders, native adventurers, and half-breeds, where
the smoking candles dimly outlined their rifles and belted cartridges. A
drunken, half-savage woman, her maid probably, whined a maudlin,
gibberish, and over all rose the pungent smell of rubber from the
bolachas piled in the farther shadows of the hut. It was like the touch
of fantastic fiction.
At the cataract of Geraos a Brazilian rubber-trader was trying to
portage his batalon and cargo with a half-mutinous, lazy crew of
Brazilian negroes. A couple of the crew would work shiftlessly while the
rest dozed in the shade; it was the last hard portage, and we offered
the Brazilian our block and tackle if his crew would help us.
"Look at them!" he said hopelessly. "Talk to the head-man. If they will
do it, I shall be glad. Two days have they loafed like this, and it will
be two days more." He swore fluently in Portuguese. "If I beat them or
shoot one, they will have me put in jail in San Antonio. I am losing
money, but it is better than jail." Obviously we were nearing
civilization; up-river no lazy mutiny was possible.
The head-man refused surlily unless we would stop and loan _them_ our
crew.
One of the idling crew--it was not a strike; they were just tired and
wanted rest--sauntered over to me. He was a powerful negro, with the
smooth, supple muscles rippling under a skin of oiled coal. He was a man
without a language, although he could be barely intelligible in three.
"Me 'Melican, bahs, _tambien_." He thumped his naked bosom like a
war-drum, but he was friendly; to his mind we were two fellow Americans
greeting in an out-of-the-way place. He pointed to his companion: "Him
B'itish, ho, yaas." Then, like a chieftain chanting, he recounted their
voyage on the river: "Ribber him belly bad. _Muchas_ wark--belly ha'd.
Me bahs him belly ha'd; go far topside ribber. Me seeck; you got him
li'ly rum, cañassa? Wanee catchem li'ly d'ink." And his British confrère
added also a pleading for a "li'ly d'ink."
He insisted that he was an American, although born in the Guianas, but
he admired America so much he had adopted it; and he would translate the
heated gibberish of unknown patois with his friends as his noble defence
of our superior America and wind up with a plea for a "li'ly d'ink."
At this same cataract, in a wretched hut, lived some kind of a broken
down, human derelict, blear eyed and worthless and nondescript, whose
desolate fortunes were shared by a poor, wretched Frenchwoman and their
unkempt, pitiful children. Between them they stood off the savages from
time to time and in the intervals squabbled drunkenly with each other.
Six weeks before a battle between two crews at this portage had been
fought around their shack. One of the crew had stolen a woman belonging
to an Indian of the other outfit and when the trouble died down twelve
men had been shot, together with the woman who was the cause of the
friction. A new crew had to be sent down to help out with the batalones.
But the cataract of Geraos is one of the finest of the whole system. The
buried mountain system of rock lies open to the sky; it has been
channeled in deep cañons, above which the waves are lifted in angry
fangs. Their roar carries through the jungle on each side like the
steady thunder of a storm; whole trees that have lazily swept
down-stream are caught in the clutch of the great cañon, and are tossed
high above the cañon walls as though they were only straws caught in a
thresher.
At the Falls of Teotonio we paddled up to the very brink of the cataract
and beached snugly in a little eddy at the side. Here a broken-down
contractor's railway made the portage an easy matter, even though it was
done in one of the hardest tropical rainstorms that I have ever seen.
The lightning and the thunder were continuous, and the rain drove in a
steady, blinding sheet, like the deluge from a titanic nozzle.
The little news that came up from San Antonio drove us to greater haste
to catch the steamer; the steamer was there, stuck on a mud-bank; it had
gone; it was coming. Every uncertain rumor added to our haste and
desire. We had not stopped to hunt, and supplies were running low.
Coffee was gone, the viscocha can almost empty, platanos and charqui
were running low and it was necessary to keep the crew well fed for
their hard and steady work. Twice we had scared a capibarra from the
bank, each time beyond possible rifle shot, and now we were looking for
even a cayman, for a big meal of baked alligator tail would go a long
way toward helping out the commissary.
Knowing our need, apparently, the game was perverse in its determination
to annoy us by its absence; and then at last, on a playa, far down the
river, the crew made out a little group of three capibarra. It was the
only time I ever knew of the necessity of stalking that simple animal,
and when the capibarra fell, kicking, and the others darted off to seek
the bottom of the river, the problem of our larder was solved.
The rapids at the Falls of Macaos we ran and then below there remained
but the last. We had expected to portage about the Falls of San Antonio,
but as we scanned the distance below, there, against the brilliant green
of the forest, was the rusty funnel of the river steamer, with a
slender, wispy feather of steam rising beside it. Steam was already up,
and how much time had we to portage? If we portaged, it might mean six
long weeks of dreary waiting in a frontier village that had none too
pleasant a reputation. Should we run the rapids? The pilot shook his
head doubtfully, but said he would try. As we paddled along in the
swifter current it did not look bad--a few curling waves crested with
spray and then long, oily stretches of coiling, boiling water. It seemed
possible, and it was worth the chance. We would try, and the pilot swung
the canoe for the crested wave and the channel.
We threw off our shoes, unbuckled our belts, and stripped, to be ready
to swim in an emergency. We emptied our rifles and revolvers in a
fusillade, hoping to attract the steamer's attention and hold it, but no
answering whistle came back. An instant later we struck the long plunge
down the glassy slope of water at the entrance to the rapids, and a
foaming cataract burst over the bow, drenching us with spray. Then came
the slower strain and wrestle with boiling waters that burst upward from
below, while the crew paddled like mad, with the pilot braced in his
cramped quarters aft and chattering at them for still greater effort.
The boiling water threw us broadside on, and the whirlpools caught us in
a grip that the frantic paddling could not seem to break. It seemed as
though we were standing still in the turmoil, and yet a glance at the
rocky, boulder-strewn sides showed that they were shooting past like a
train.
Broadside on we darted for a second glassy slope of water, and only in
the last moment did the canoe swing round so as to take it bow on, while
the wave that broke over us half filled the canoe. Had we been heavily
loaded, we would have had our swim. It was the last of the rapids, and a
second later we drifted out into the calm current, where before us
loomed the high decks of the river steamer. We could have made a portage
without risk, and with ample time, for she did not leave until the next
day.
With San Antonio village fading behind us in the soft, blue distance of
the tropic morning, civilization began slowly to reconstruct itself,
though still side by side with the most primitive. Brazilian ladies
teetered foolishly over the gangplank that was run out to the mud-bank
shore with their high heeled shoes radiant with suggestion of the highly
cultured centers of fashion; again I beheld silks and fancy parasols and
_poudre de riz_ and heard the _frou-frou_ of real garments, immaculate
and bristling with frills. Sallow gentlemen of wealth and haughtiness
came aboard with their retinue of family who, in turn, had their retinue
of half savage servants, to escort their rubber shipments and sling
their hammocks from the stanchions of the cool forward deck along with
mine.
All day we broiled sociably together and in the nights--when we anchored
in the river--slept softly in the balmy night airs. Together we listened
to the Madeira pilots swear as they ran us on a mud-bank and then
clattered aft bossing the dumping of the anchor from the steamer's
dinghy in order to warp us off again. In perfect harmony we used the
bathroom together and splashed in the overhead shower early in the
morning, for later the sun warmed the tank above to a stinging heat, and
threaded our way among the score of turtles that were herded there until
sacrificed to our appetites. Closer we moved to the equator and hotter
blazed the sun. And then, at last, early in the dawn we swung steadily
out of the great mouth of the Madeira River and into the greater waters
of the Amazon, hugging the shore. The little river steamer breasted the
current up to Manaos, while on either side the little dugouts of the
Indians dotted the river in the cool morning shooting turtles with a bow
and arrow for the market at Manaos. And then in that city, still almost
a thousand miles from the Atlantic, there was civilization at
last--trolleys, electric lights, little cafés, with their highly colored
syrups, a theater and gay shops with all the gimcrack luxuries and
necessities, a band and the shimmering, swaying endless parade that
encircled it weaving in the dense black shadows and on into the luminous
mosaics cast by the arclights in the leaves overhead. Dim, in the
background, the chaperons purred together but with an unrelaxed and
rigid vigilance. It was civilization--all but the vernacular.
La Paz seemed half the world away, for it had been three months and
twenty-one days since I climbed the long trail to the high plateau above
that Bolivian capital.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes
--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
--In the text versions only, italicized text is delimited by
_underscores_.
--Corrected some palpable typographical errors; restored apparently
missing words are delimited by {brackets}
--Note that one illustration listed in the contents is missing from the
book as printed.
End of Project Gutenberg's Across the Andes, by Charles Johnson Post