A cold night on this big river though we are getting south now after
our thousand miles in our little boat; so we got ashore and supped
on grebe which reminded one of red herrings. Found a little grass
hut built by a woodcutter possibly, and three of us snuggled up on
the floor, just big enough, with a candle and part of a book. Heaven
knows where the man got it. Well, we went to sleep and the bookman
knocked the candle over and the fire ran up the hut luckily one of
us woke and put it out and the others never knew and told the fireman
next noon that "he had been dreaming"; is so, why that black streak?
Another morning we found a big jaguar and cub had passed a yard from
A's head. They were grunting all night close to us in the jungle, and
could not have been hungry as there were five of us to choose from.
Got aboard and got lost on the Chaco side of the river. This gran
Chaco is an endless maze of creeks and little islands covered with
trees and jungle, no birds or beasts seemingly and the fish won't bite
often. There are some hostile Indians but the chances are greatly in
favor of starving to death, a desolate place but the wind brought us
to the river again and when the cox wanted to go about, it blew so
fresh that mast and big lateèn sail went. Two of us jumped and held on
to it but it was hard on finger nails and as there was quite a little
sea our small boat was tumbling about. We all had our trousers rolled
up to our knees except Maria, who was a Paraguayan woman and wife of
Salvador, a Portuguese, who we called Joe. Fortunately there was a
little island on to which we drifted. Maria was frightened and knelt
down a few yards off, with her skirt over her head, for five minutes,
like an image. Then she rose up and said: "It is a bad wind; we shall
not get to Rosario alive," and set to work like a little man. We
fixed our mast up with fish lines and whatever we had. Drifting again
on the Chaco side where the jungle is not as thick as on the other,
with more trees. We ran in to look at what turns out to be boughs bent
over in a half-circle, once a tiny hut four feet high. Now the thatch
is gone and there is two or three inches of water and rotten leaves,
sitting in which and leaning against the boughs is a skeleton and a
worm-eaten flint lock musket alongside, the skull has rolled or been
blown off and lies there. What a death! miles of dark silent forest
behind, in front the immense river, the wash of which is the only
sound. Poor devil, wonder who it was once! We left it sitting there
and I do not suppose anyone will come across it again.
[Illustration: A Dismal Swamp--Hundreds of Miles of It. Ye Gran Chaco.]
[Illustration: Shipwrecked.]
[Illustration: A Lonely Skeleton.]
[Illustration]