THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF REMATE DE MALES
The social life of the town is in about the same stage of development
as it must have been during the Stone Age. When darkness falls over the
village, as it does at six o'clock all the year round, life practically
stops, and a few hours afterwards everyone is in his hammock.
There is one resort where the town-sports come to spend their
evenings, the so-called _Recreio Popular_. Its principal patrons are
_seringueiros_, or rubber-workers, who have large rolls of money that
they are anxious to spend with the least possible effort, and generally
get their desire over the gaming boards. The place is furnished with
a billiard table and a gramophone with three badly worn records. The
billiard table is in constant use by a certain element up to midnight,
and so are the three eternal records of the gramophone. It will take
me years surrounded by the comforts of civilisation to get those three
frightful tunes out of my head, and I do not see how they could fail
to drive even the hardened _seringueiros_ to an early grave.
Another resort close by, where the native _cachassa_ is sold, is
patronised principally by negroes and half-breeds. Here they play
the guitar, in combination with a home-made instrument resembling
a mandolin, as accompaniment to a monotonous native song, which
is kept up for hours. With the exception of these two places, the
village does not furnish any life or local colour after nightfall,
the natives spending their time around the mis-treated gramophones,
which are found in almost every hut.
The men of the village, unlike the women, are not picturesque
in appearance. The officials are well paid, so is everyone else,
yet they never think of spending money to improve the looks of the
village or even their own. Most of them are ragged. A few exhibit an
inadequate elegance, dressed in white suits, derby hats, and very
high collars. But in spite of the seeming poverty, there is not a
_seringueiro_ who could not at a moment's notice produce a handful of
bills that would strike envy to the heart of many prosperous business
men of civilisation. The amount will often run into millions of reis;
a sum that may take away the breath of a stranger who does not know
that one thousand of these Brazilian reis make but thirty cents in
our money.
The people of the Amazon love to gamble. One night three merchants
and a village official came to the hotel to play cards. They gathered
around the dining-room table at eight o'clock, ordered a case of
Pabst beer, which sells, by the way, at four dollars and sixty cents
a bottle in American gold, and several boxes of our National Biscuit
Company's products, and then began on a game, which resembles our
poker. They played till midnight, when they took a recess of half
an hour, during which large quantities of the warm beer and many
crackers were consumed. Then, properly nourished, they resumed the
game, which lasted until six o'clock the next morning. This was a
fair example of the gambling that went on.
The stakes were high enough to do honours to the fashionable gamblers
of New York, but there was never the slightest sign of excitement. At
first I used to expect that surely the card table would bring forth all
sorts of flashes of tropic temperament--even a shooting or stabbing
affair. But the composure was always perfect. I have seen a loser
pay, without so much as a regretful remark, the sum of three million
and a half reis, which, though only $1050 in our money, is still a
considerable sum for a labourer to lose.
Once a month a launch comes down from Iquitos in Peru, about five
days' journey up the Amazon. This launch is sent out by Iquitos
merchants, to supply the wants of settlers of the rubber estates on
the various affluents. It is hard to estimate what suffering would
result if these launches should be prevented from reaching their
destinations, for the people are absolutely dependent upon them,
the region being non-producing, as I have said, and the supplies
very closely calculated. In Remate de Males, the superintendent, or
the mayor of the town, generally owns a few head of cattle brought
by steamer, and when these are consumed no meat can be had in the
region but Swift's canned "Corned Beef."
Then there are the steamers from the outer world. During the rainy
season, the _Mauretania_ could get up to Remate de Males from
the Atlantic Ocean without difficulty, though there is no heavy
navigation on the upper Javary River. But steamers go up the Amazon
proper several days' journey farther. You can at the present get a
through steamer from Iquitos in Peru down the Amazon to New York.
These boats occasionally bring immigrants from the eastern portions of
Brazil, where they have heard of the fortunes to be made in working the
rubber, and who have come, just as our prospectors came into the West,
hoping to take gold and their lives back with them. Besides passengers,
these boats carry cattle and merchandise and transport the precious
rubber back to Para and Manaos. They are welcomed enthusiastically. As
soon as they are sighted, every man in town takes his Winchester down
from the wall and runs into the street to empty the magazine as many
times as he feels that he can afford in his exuberance of feeling at
the prospect of getting mail from home and fresh food supplies.
On some occasions, marked with a red letter on the calendar, canoes
may be seen coming down the Itecoahy River, decorated with leaves
and burning candles galore. They are filled with enthusiasts who are
setting off fireworks and shouting with delight. They are devotees of
some up-river saint, who are taking this conventional way of paying
the headquarters a visit.
The priest, who occupies himself with saving the hardened souls of
the rubber-workers, is a worthy-looking man, who wears a dark-brown
cassock, confined at the waist with a rope. He is considered the
champion drinker of Remate de Males. The church is one of the neatest
buildings in the town, though this may be because it is so small as
to hold only about twenty-five people. It is devoid of any article
of decoration, but outside is a white-washed wooden cross on whose
foundation candles are burned, when there is illness in some family,
or the local patron saint's influence is sought on such a problem as
getting a job. The religion is, of course, Catholic, but, as in every
case where isolation from the source occurs, the natives have grafted
local influences into their faith, until the result is a Catholicism
different from the one we know.
The administration of the town is in the hands of the superintendent,
who is a Federal officer not elected by the villagers. His power is
practically absolute as far as this community is concerned. Under
him are a number of Government officials, all of whom are extremely
well paid and whose duty seems to consist in being on hand promptly
when the salaries are paid.
The chief of police is a man of very prepossessing appearance, but
with a slightly discoloured nose. His appointment reminded me of that
of Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., in _Pinafore_, who was made "ruler of
the Queen's navee" in spite of a very slight acquaintance with things
nautical. Our chief of police had been _chef d' orchestre_ of the
military band of Manaos. They found there that his bibulous habits
were causing his nose to blush more and more, so he was given the
position of Chief of Police of Remate de Males. It must be admitted
that in his new position he has gone on developing the virtue that
secured it for him, so there is no telling how high he may rise.
The police force consists of one man, and a very versatile one,
as will be seen, for he is also the rank and file of the military
force. I saw this remarkable official only once. At that time he was
in a sad condition from over-indulgence in alcoholic beverages. There
are exact statistics of comparison available for the police and
military forces. The former is just two-thirds of the latter in
number. Expressed in the most easily understood terms, we can put it
that our versatile friend has a chief to command him when a policeman,
and a coronel and lieutenant when he is a soldier. Whether there
is any graft in it or not, I do not know, but money is saved by the
police-military force being one man with interchangeable uniforms, and
the money must go into somebody's pocket. It might be thought that when
the versatile one had to appear in both capacities at once, he might be
at a loss. But not a bit of it. The landing of one of the down-river
steamers offers such an occasion. As soon as the gangplank is out,
the policeman goes aboard with the official papers. He is welcomed,
receives his fee, and disappears. Not two minutes afterwards, the
military force in full uniform is seen to emerge from the same hut
into which the policeman went. He appears on the scene with entire
unconcern, and the rough and ready diplomacy of Remate de Males has
again triumphed.
One of the reasons for the flattering (!) name of the town,
"Culmination of Evils," is the great mortality of the community, which
it has as a part of the great Javary district. Its inhabitants suffer
from all the functional diseases found in other parts of the world,
and, in addition, maladies which are typical of the region. Among the
most important of these are the paludismus, or malarial swamp-fever,
the yellow-fever, popularly recognised as the black vomit, and last but
not least the beri-beri, the mysterious disease which science does not
yet fully understand. The paludismus is so common that it is looked
upon as an unavoidable incident of the daily life. It is generally
caused by the infectious bite of a mosquito, the _Anopheles_, which
is characterised by its attacking with its body almost perpendicular
to the surface it has selected. It is only the female mosquito
that bites. There are always fever patients on the Amazon, and the
_Anopheles_, stinging indiscriminately, transfers the malarial microbes
from a fever patient to the blood of well persons. The latter are sure
to be laid up within ten days with the _sezoes_, as the fever is called
here, unless a heavy dose of quinine is taken in time to check it.
The yellow fever mosquito, the _Stygoma faciata_, seems to prefer other
down-river localities, but is frequent enough to cause anxiety. They
call the yellow fever the black vomit, because of this unmistakable
symptom of the disease, which, when once it sets in, always means
a fatal termination. The beri-beri still remains a puzzling malady
from which no recoveries have yet been reported, at least not on the
Amazon. On certain rivers, in the Matto Grosso province of Brazil,
or in Bolivian territory, the beri-beri patients have some chance
of recovery. By immediately leaving the infested district they can
descend the rivers until they reach a more favourable climate near
the sea-coast, or they can go to more elevated regions. But here
on the Amazon, where the only avenue of escape is the river itself,
throughout its length a hot-bed of disease where no change of climate
occurs, the time consumed in reaching the sea-coast is too long. The
cause of this disease, and its cure, are unknown. It manifests itself
through paralysis of the limbs, which begins at the finger-tips and
gradually extends through the system until the heart-muscles become
paralysed and death occurs.
The only precautionary measures available are doses of quinine and
the use of the mosquito-net, or _mosquitero_. The latter's value as
a preventive is problematical, however, for during each night one
is bound to be bitten frequently, yes, hundreds of times, by the
ever-present insects in spite of all.
But if we curse the mosquito, what are we to say of certain other
pests that add to the miseries of life in that out-of-the-way corner
of the globe, and are more persistent in their attentions than
even the mosquito? In the first place, there are the ants. They are
everywhere. They build their nests under the houses, in the tables,
and in the cracks of the floors, and lie in ambush waiting the arrival
of a victim, whom they attack from all sides. They fasten themselves
on one and sometimes it takes hours of labour to extract them. Many
are the breakfasts I have delayed on awaking and finding myself to
be the object of their attention. It proved necessary to tie wads
of cotton covered with vaseline to the fastenings of the hammock,
to keep the intruders off. But they even got around this plan. As
soon as the bodies of the first arrivals covered the vaseline, the
rest of the troops marched across them in safety and gained access to
the hammock, causing a quick evacuation on my part. Articles of food
were completely destroyed by these carnivorous creatures, within a
few minutes after I had placed them on the table.
I present here a list of the various species of ants known to the
natives, together with the peculiarities by which they distinguish
them. I collected the information from Indians on the Seringal
"Floresta" on the Itecoahy River.
_Aracara_--the dreaded fire-ant whose sting is felt for hours.
_Auhiqui_--lives in the houses where it devours everything edible.
_Chicitaya_--its bite gives a transient fever.
_Monyuarah_--clears a large space in the forest for its nest.
_Sauba_--carries a green leaf over its head.
_Tachee_--a black ant whose bite gives a transient fever.
_Tanajura_--one inch long and edible when fried in lard.
_Taxyrana_--enters the houses like the _auhiqui_.
_Termita_--builds a typical cone-shaped nest in the dry part of
the forests.
_Tracoã_--its bite gives no fever, but the effect is of long duration.
_Tucandeira_--black and an inch and a half long, with a bite not only
painful but absolutely dangerous.
_Tucushee_--gives a transient fever.
_Uça_--builds large nests in the trees.
While convalescing from my first attack of swamp-fever, I had
occasion to study a most remarkable species of spider which was a
fellow lodger in the hut I then occupied. In size, the specimen was
very respectable, being able to cover a circle of nearly six inches
in diameter. This spider subsists on large insects and at times on
the smaller varieties of birds, like finches, etc. Its scientific
name is _Mygale avicularia_. The natives dread it for its poisonous
bite and on account of its great size and hairy body. The first time
I saw the one in my hut was when it was climbing the wall in close
proximity to my hammock. I got up and tried to crush it with my fist,
but the spider made a lightning-quick move and stopped about five or
six inches from where I hit the wall.
Several times I repeated the attack without success, the spider
always succeeding in moving before it could be touched. Somewhat
out of temper, I procured a hammer of large size and continued
the chase until I was exhausted. When my hand grew steady again,
I took my automatic pistol, used for big game, and, taking a steady
aim on the fat body of the spider, I fired. But with another of the
remarkably quick movements the spider landed the usual safe distance
from destruction. Then I gave it up. For all I know, that animal, I
can scarcely call it an insect after using a big game pistol on it,
is still occupying the hut. About nine months later I was telling
Captain Barnett, of the R.M.S. _Napo_ which picked me up on the Amazon
on my way home, about my ill success in hunting the spider. "Lange,"
he asked, "why didn't you try for him with a frying-pan?"