THE FATAL "TAMBO NO. 9"
We were three weeks at _tambo_ No. 9 before the sharp tooth of
necessity began to rouse us to the precarious situation. Occasionally
a lucky shot would bring down a _mutum_ or a couple of monkeys and,
on one occasion, a female tapir. Thus feasting to repletion, we
failed to notice that the lucky strikes came at longer intervals;
that the animals were deserting our part of the forest. During these
three weeks we were not wholly idle. The Chief had the men out every
day making excursions in the neighbourhood to locate the caoutchouc
trees. As soon as a tree was found, they set to work bleeding the
base of it to let the milky sap ooze out on the ground where it would
collect in a small pool. Then they would fell the tree and cut rings
in the bark at regular intervals so that the milk could flow out. In
a few days when the milk had coagulated, forming large patches of
caoutchouc, they would return for it. The pieces were washed in the
creek and then tied into large bundles ready for transporting.
In all they located more than 800 caoutchouc trees. At this time too I
made my remarkable discovery of gold deposits in the creek. It seems
to me now like the plot of some old morality play, for while we were
searching eagerly for the thing that we considered the ultimate goal
of human desires--wealth, the final master, Death, was closing his
net upon us day by day. Our food supply was nearly gone.
While strolling along the shores of the creek in search of game, I
noticed irregular clumps or nodules of clay which had accumulated in
large quantities in the bed of the stream, especially where branches
and logs had caused whirlpools and eddies to form. They had the
appearance of pebbles or stones, and were so heavy in proportion to
their size that my curiosity was aroused, and throwing one of them
on the bank I split it open with my machete. My weakened heart then
commenced to beat violently, for what I saw looked like gold.
I took the two pieces to my working table near our _tambo_, and
examining the dirty-yellow heart with my magnifying glass, I found the
following: A central mass about one cubic inch in size, containing
a quantity of yellowish grains measuring, say, one thirty-second of
an inch in diameter, slightly adhering to each other, but separating
upon pressure of the finger, and around this a thick layer of hard
clay or mud of somewhat irregular shape. It immediately struck me
that the yellow substance might be gold, though I could not account
for the presence of it in the centre of the clay-balls.
I carefully scraped the granules out of the clay, and washing them
clean, placed them on a sheet of paper to dry in the sun. By this
time the attention of the other men had been attracted to what I was
doing, and it seemed to amuse the brave fellows immensely to watch
my painstaking efforts with the yellow stuff. I produced some fine
scales I had for weighing chemicals for my photographic work, and
suspended these above a gourd filled with water. Then I went down to
the creek and collected more of the clay-balls and scraped the mud of
one away from the solid centre of what I took to be grains of gold. A
fine thread I next wound around the gold ball and this was tied to
one end of the balance. After an equilibrium had been established,
I found that the weight of the gold was 660 grains. Next I raised
the gourd until the water reached the suspended ball, causing the
opposite pan of the scales to go down. To again establish equilibrium,
I had to add 35 grains. With this figure I divided the actual weight
of the gold, which gave me 18.9, and this I remembered was close to
the specific gravity of pure gold.
Still a little in doubt, I broke the bulb of one of my clinical
thermometers and, placing the small quantity of mercury thus obtained
in the bottom of a tray, I threw a few of the grains into it, and
found that they immediately united, forming a dirty-grey amalgam. I
was now sure the substance was gold and in less than five hours I
collected enough to fill five photographic 5 × 7 plate-boxes, the
only empty receptacles I could lay my hands on. I could have filled a
barrel, for the creek was thick with the clay-balls as far as I could
see; but I had a continuous fever and this, with the exhaustion from
semi-starvation, caused me to be indifferent to this great wealth. In
fact, I would have gladly given all the gold in the creek for _One_
square meal. If the difficulties in reaching this infernal region
were not so great, I have no doubt that a few men could soon make
themselves millionaires.
The deadly fever came among us after a few days. It struck a young
man called Brabo first; the next day I fell sick with another serious
attack of swamp-fever, and we both took to our hammocks. For five
days and nights I was delirious most of the time, listening to the
mysterious noises of the forest and seeing in my dreams visions of
juicy steaks, great loaves of bread, and cups of creamy coffee. In
those five days the only food in the camp was howling monkey,
the jerked beef and the dried farinha having given out much to my
satisfaction, as I became so heartily disgusted with this unpalatable
food that I preferred to starve rather than eat it again. At first I
felt the lack of food keenly, but later the pain of hunger was dulled,
and only a warm, drugged sensation pervaded my system. Starvation
has its small mercies.
I became almost childishly interested in small things. There was a
peculiar sound that came from the deep forest in the damp nights;
I used to call it the "voice of the forest." To close one's eyes and
listen was almost to imagine oneself near the murmuring crowd of a
large city. It was the song of numerous frogs which inhabited a creek
near our _tambo_. Then I would hear four musical notes uttered in a
major key from the tree-tops close by, soon answered by another four
in a similar pitch, and this musical and cheerful(!) conversation was
continued all night long. The men told me that this was the note of
a species of frog that lived in the trees.
One day the jungle took the first toll from us. Young Brabo was very
low; I managed to stagger out of my hammock to give him a hypodermic
injection, but he was too far gone for it to do him any good. He
died in the early afternoon. We dug a grave with our machetes right
behind our _tambo_. No stone marks this place; only a small wooden
cross tied together with bark-strips shows where our comrade lies--a
son of the forest whom the forest claimed again.
The arrival of Death in our camp showed us all how far we were in
the grasp of actual, threatening danger. We stood about the grave in
silence. These men, these Indians of the Amazon, were very human;
somehow, I always considered them equals and not of an inferior
race. We had worked together, eaten and slept and laughed together,
and now together we faced the mystery of Death. The tie between us
became closer; the fraternity of common flesh and blood bound us.
The next day I arose and was able to walk around, having injected my
left arm with copious doses of quinine and arsenical acid. Borrowing
thus false strength from drugs, I was able, to some extent, to roam
around with my camera and secure photographs that I wanted to take
home with me to the States.
I had constructed a table of stalks of the _murumuru_ palm-leaves,
and I had made a sun-dial by the aid of a compass and a stick, much to
the delight of the men, who were now able to tell the hour of the day
with precision. The next day I had another attack of fever and bled
my arm freely with the bistoury, relieving myself of about sixteen
ounces of blood. Shortly after nine o'clock in the morning I heard
a shot which I recognised as being that of Jerome's muzzle-loader;
soon afterward he made his appearance with a splendid specimen of a
jet-black jaguar, killed by a shot behind the ear. He skinned it after
first asking me if I wanted to get up and take a photograph of it,
but I was too weak to do it and had to decline.
The Chief one day brought into camp a fine deer and a _mutum_ bird,
which relieved our hunger for a while. As we were preparing a luxurious
meal, Jerome returned with two red howling monkeys, but we had all
the meat we could take care of, and these monkeys were rejected and
thrown away.
By this time the Chief informed us that enough caoutchouc trees had
been located to justify our return to the Floresta headquarters
with a satisfactory report--of course, excepting the death of
poor Brabo. Furthermore it was decided that owing to the lack of
provisions we should separate. He directed that the men Freitas,
Magellaes, and Anisette should take a course at a right angle to the
Itecoahy, so as to reach this river in a short time, where they were
to procure a canoe and secure assistance for the rest of us. This,
of course, was a chance, but under the circumstances every step was
a chance. The Chief himself, Jerome, and I would retrace the route
which we had lately travelled and reach Floresta that way. The evening
before our departure I did not think myself strong enough to carry
my load a single step, but the hypodermic needle, with quinine, which
had now become my constant stand-by, lent me an artificial strength,
and when the packing was done the next morning, I stood up with the
rest and strapped the load on my shoulders.
We parted with the other three men before sunrise, with clasps of the
hand that were never to be repeated, and so turned our faces toward
the outer world. My only hope was to retain sufficient strength in
my emaciated, fever-racked body to drag myself back to Floresta, and
from there, in the course of time, get canoe or launch connection
to the frontier down the river, and then wait for the steamer that
would take me back to "God's Country," where I could eat proper food,
and rest--rest.
The jungle no longer seemed beautiful or wonderful to me, but
horrible--a place of terror and death.
In my drug-dazed sleep on that back-track, I started up in my hammock,
bathed in a sweat of fear from a dream; I saw myself and my companions
engulfed in a sea of poisonous green, caught by living creepers
that dragged us down and held us in a deadly octopus embrace. The
forest was something from which I fled; it was hideous, a trap, with
its impenetrable wall of vegetation, its dark shadows, and moist,
treacherous ground.
I longed for the open; struggled for it, as the swimmer struggles up
for air to escape from the insidious sucking of the undertow.
Starving, weak from fever, oppressed by the thought of death, but
lashed on by stimulants and the tenacity of life, I headed with my
two comrades out of the world of the unknown, toward the world of
men--to _Life_.