abcdefghijk
It was, unfortunately, useless. Later I tried the alphabet in
Portuguese form, and I saw with joy that we need not trouble at all
about the rolls of explanation which Camille Velasquon had brought, and
which were laid on the table beside us, but that I had really hit on the
right solution--at the very start--without a glance at those cipher keys
that had come to us from Mexico. The Jesuits had first merely reversed
the order of the letters, and instead of writing "A" when they should
have done, they had put "Z" in its place, and so on right through the
alphabet, making the language of the base Portuguese, and not Spanish or
English, as we had all expected at first.
The cunning old sons of St Ignatius of Loyola had, however, not left
their secret quite so plain as that. They had also added to it, to
disguise it the better, a trick which most of us learn when we are boys
at school. This consisted in adding to every syllable another rhyming
with it but beginning with "p." Thus to put "Venha Ca" (come here) they
wrote "Venpenhapa Capa," or if in English, "comepum herepere," and this,
when written to any extent, is really quite bewildering to any student
of manuscripts unaccustomed to it.
Luckily, I was well up to it, and so there and then I caught hold of the
first manuscript that came to hand, and although I was as ignorant of
Portuguese as the man in the street I managed in a very few hours to
write out the text of the documents, and this in turn was translated by
Mr Cooper-Nassington, who had, it seemed, learned the language when a
youth, his father having been consul in Lisbon.
To our surprise the communication turned out to be a letter from the
Father Provincial of the Monastery of St Stanislaus in the city of
Mexico, and was addressed to a firm of merchants in the interior, at
Xingu, a settlement we found marked on a map. As it is a very good
specimen of Jesuit composition and politeness I will give here the
English translation of it. Thus:
"_AMDG_.
"_Friends and Gentlemen, Loyal Sons of the Church_.
"_From many years' experience of your methods, and from much pleasant
and profitable intercourse with your honourable and honoured house, I
know that it is always agreeable for you to have an opportunity of
showing your hospitable and generous feelings towards strangers in
general, and more particularly to those who visit our country for the
purpose of making discoveries and of extending the sphere of their
knowledge. I do not hesitate, therefore, to take advantage of the
opportunity which the journey of our good Father Thomas Bonaventure and
his three worthy companions presents to recommend them to your
friendship and protection in the scientific and business enterprise
which they have undertaken, in order to obtain those natural productions
and wealth which render our province a classic land in the history of
animals and plants, no less than in the record of hardly-won gold_.
"_Hence it comes about that in this illustrious enterprise to Tangikano,
which the illustrious (elites) travellers have undertaken, I much wish
that they may find in you all that the limited resources of the place
allow, not only that whatever difficulties they encounter may be
removed, but that you may be able to render less irksome the labours and
privations which they must necessarily endure. Indeed, for men like
them, devoted to our Holy Faith, stars of knowledge, pioneers of fortune
to be used for the good of the souls of others, it must in a country
like ours be easy to find amongst our most exquisite productions means
to gratify them_.
"_I, therefore, hope, and above all pray, that you may be led to fulfil
my wishes in the attentions you pay to Father Thomas Bonaventure and his
three companions, and thus give me another proof of your esteem and
friendship_.
"_So I remain, Your friend and obedient Servant, Joao (Father
Provincial), LDS_."
"Well, there is not much in that, is there?" said Jose, with a queer
little grimace as he finished taking down the translation from the
Prior's rapid and incisive dictation.
"No," I observed; "it only shows that the Jesuits got wind of the
existence of great wealth at Tangikano, and so, with their customary
subtlety, they fitted out an expedition to recover it under the guise of
a noble quest for science. Still, that is something, isn't it? It
proves to us the thing was thought worth doing centuries ago by men on
the spot who must have had a better knowledge of what the district
contained than any of us to-day can have."
"True," replied the Prior thoughtfully, passing a hand reflectively
across his forehead. "It shows us, too, that we are on the right track,
and that their musty-looking old manuscripts may have a very real
message about the sacred lake, so I vote that, although the night is so
very far advanced, we push on with our researches. Do you agree,
Glynn?"
"Yes," I replied at once, for my interest too was now most keenly
excited, and thereupon we all three of us bent down to work again and
tackled the next document.
This proved to be an account of the journey of the same Father Thomas
Bonaventure and his three companions mentioned in the letter when they
had passed Xingu and had drawn within a few miles of the wonderful lake
itself. It was written in the same kind of cipher as the other and in
the same florid terms. In our opinion it was put on record at the
Monastery of St Stanislaus in the city of Mexico at the same time as
the Father Provincial's letter.
Stripped of its verbiage, it related how the four explorers had duly
arrived at the village of Tangikano, and, in order not to excite
suspicion, had pretended they had come for a missionary effort which
would last several weeks. By this means they won the entire confidence
of the settlement, the population of which consisted of about forty
persons, of whom twenty were slaves, and the remainder free Indians and
negroes in the employ of the principal resident, a Spaniard named Pedro
Barra, who kept them engaged attending to a large number of cattle and
horses.
The priests, indeed, gave a very pretty picture of the state of things
in existence on this estate. It was as follows:--
"_The slaves appeared contented and happy, as slaves generally do.
Every evening at sunset they came to bid good-night to Senhor Pedro and
ourselves, a similar salutation taking place when they first met us in
the morning. As a rule, the master would be seated in a comfortable
easy-chair on the verandah, and each passed with a salutation suited to
his age or station. The Indians would be generally content with `Boa
noite' (good-night), the younger ones and most of the women and
children, both Indians and slaves, would hold out their hand, saying:
`Sua bencao' (your blessing), to which he would reply, `Deos te bencos'
(God bless you) making at the same time the sign of the cross. Others--
and these were mostly the old negroes--would gravely repeat: `Louvado
seja of nome do Senhor Jesu Christo' (Blessed be the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ), to which he would reply with equal gravity: `Para sempre'
(for ever). Children of all classes here (they went on) never meet
their parents in the morning or leave them at night without in the same
manner asking their blessing, and they do the same invariably of every
stranger who enters the house. In fact, it is there the common
salutation of children and inferiors, and has a very pleasing effect_."
But all the time they lingered here, however, it was easy to see that
the four Jesuits ached to be off to the sacred lake. Even when they
described these idyllic scenes they harked off to this one all-absorbing
subject, and recounted their conviction what fine guides these same
slaves would make, and, later, told openly how they hastened to bargain
with the Senhor Pedro Barra for the services of some of them to row them
in a canoe up the river that led to the foot of the lake itself. Even
the sight of this muddy and pestilential stream stirred in them emotions
of admiration and awe. They might have been near the Amazon itself,
have gazed on the stream of this mighty and far-famed river, and have
let their imaginations wander to its sources in the distant Andes, to
the Peruvian Incas of old, to the silver mountains of Potosi, and the
gold-seeking Spaniards and wild Indians who once inhabited the country
about its thousand sources rather than the sluggish stream of Tangikano.
"Yet this is all proof of what fabulous wealth they were sure the lake
contained," argued Casteno. "Let's bear with the laboured way they
recount their adventures. After all, if what we have heard here in
England is true there were riches enough ahead of them to justify all
their impatience and enthusiasm."
So we bent to the rather tedious work of translation again, and learned
how at length Father Thomas Bonaventure and his companions, having
arrived at the height of the dry season, heard that at length the waters
of the sacred lake were sufficiently low to justify them to travel
thither on an excursion, the ostensible reason of which was to kill
alligators. They found that there were two ways to reach the place--
overland in nearly a direct line, or by a zigzag course up the river,
which way was the one they chose.
Accordingly, they were aroused at midnight, and got into the canoe with
three negroes, who worked their craft steadily day after day, until at
length they reached the narrowest part of the stream. Hitherto they had
been charmed with the beauty of the vegetation, which surpassed
everything they had ever seen before. Here is the description:
"_At the water's edge were numerous flowering shrubs, often completely
covered with convolvuli and passion flowers, whilst every dead or half
rotten tree was clothed with parasites of singular forms or bearing
beautiful flowers. Nor were there wanting animated figures to complete
the picture, for brilliant scarlet and yellow macaws flew continually
overhead, while screaming parrots and paroquets were passing from branch
to branch in search of food_.
"_Now, however, the scenery was much more gloomy; the tall trees closed
overhead so as to keep out every sunbeam. Even the palms were twisted
and bent in various contortions, so that we sometimes could hardly pass
beneath, and sunken logs often lay across from bank to bank, compelling
us to get out of the canoe and to use all our exertions to force our
clumsy craft over_.
"_After some hours and hours of very hard and disagreeable work we
reached the end of the navigable water. Then we left the negroes and
immediately set off on foot over an extensive plain, which was in some
places completely bare, and in others thinly clothed with low trees.
There could not have been a greater contrast than between the scene on
the river and that which we then entered upon. The one was all
luxuriance and verdure, the other as brown and as barren as could be--a
marsh now parched up by the burning sun and covered with tufts of a wiry
grass, with here and there rushes and prickly, sensitive plants and a
few pretty little flowers occasionally growing up amongst them_.
"_In the end we arrived at the lake just as the day was fading. The
only building there was a small reed shed, and this we promptly took
possession of, unfastening the baggage we carried and piecing together a
hand-dredger. We were now half frantic with excitement to put to the
test all the wonderful stories we had heard about the bed of the lake,
and so we immediately set to work on its slimy depths, and quickly
passed our net arrangement over a space of a hundred yards at a point
where the water seemed to have receded the most. Then we drew up and
examined our captures_.
"_To our amazement and delight we discovered that we had, amongst other
things of course, actually retrieved a number of golden ornaments of a
very ancient pattern, including a frontlet and a tiny statue, which the
most casual examination showed was wrought out of solid gold_!"
So the information they had had was really true! The Lake of Sacred
Treasure was really worthy of its name, and in its slimy depths were
actually deposited the riches of countless generations of ignorant yet
devoted heathens!
Breathless with delight, they again fitted up their apparatus. Again
they essayed to test the wonders of that strange and silent pool, but
they got no farther than the brink of the water.
All at once, the parchment record stated, a loud commanding voice rang
out across its misty expanse, and an Englishman suddenly appeared in the
twilight in front of them in a magnificent boat rowed from stem to stern
by Indians.
"Begone! begone!" he cried; "all this water is mine. I have bought it.
I will let none of you touch it--no, not one!"
And before the Jesuits could utter a word in answer they found
themselves suddenly surrounded by Indians, who had crept up to them
unawares, and they were dragged rapidly into the depths of a dark, and
seemingly impenetrable, network of caves some distance off.
And that was the last they saw of the lake of submerged treasure.