LIFE IN THE BOLIVIAN WILDERNESS
Santa Cruz de la Sierra, capital of all the vast department of eastern
Bolivia, owes its fame largely to its isolation. Like those eminent men
of many secluded corners of South America, it is important only because
of the exceeding unimportance of its neighbors. The only tropical city
of Bolivia, it stands some 1500 feet above sea-level on the 18th
meridian, very near the geographical center of the republic, so far from
the outside world that mail deposited on January 7th reached New York on
March 11th. Of its 19,000 inhabitants, 11,000 are female. The emporium
and distributing point of all this region and of the rubber districts of
the Beni, its commerce is chiefly in the hands of Germans, though the
two houses that all but monopolize the trade pose as Belgian, with
headquarters in Antwerp. There are few Bolivian, and only three cruceño
houses of importance, and these for the most part buy of German
wholesalers in Cochabamba. Three or four native families have as much as
$150,000, a fortune by cruceño standards, won from rubber, or from
cattle ranches roundabout the city. Yet there is much primitive barter,
even in the town,—an ox for a load of fire-wood, and the like, with no
money concerned in the transaction. Santa Cruz is the place of birth of
those famous Suarez brothers who are kings of the rubber districts of
the Amazon.
It is a city of silence. Spreading over a dead-flat, half-sandy, jungled
plain, its right-angled streets are deep in reddish sand in which not
only its shod feet—by no means in the majority, though the upper class
is almost foppish in dress—but even the solid wooden wheels of its
clumsy ox-carts make not a sound. There is no modern industry to lend
its strident voice, though the town boasts three “steam establishments”
for the making of ice, the grinding of maize, and the sawing of lumber,
and every street fades away at either end into the whispering jungle.
Narrow sidewalks of porous red bricks, roofed by the wide overhanging
eaves of the houses, often upheld by pillars or poles, line most of the
streets. But these are by no means continuous, and being commonly high
above the street level and often taken up entirely, especially of an
evening, by the families, who consider this their veranda rather than
the pedestrian’s right of way, the latter generally finds it easier to
plod through the sand of the street itself. In the rainy season, which
begins with the new year and lasts through April, there are many muddy
pools and ponds in the outskirts, along the edges of some of which the
streets crawl by on long heaps of the skulls of cattle, bleached
snow-white by the sun, and the larger of which, almost lakes, somehow
carried the mind back to Kandy, Ceylon. Frequently the streets in the
center of town are flooded for an hour or more, until the thirsty sand
has drunk up a tropical deluge. For these eventualities Santa Cruz has a
system of its own. At each corner four rows of _atoquines_,
weather-blackened piles of a kind of mahogany, protrude a foot or more
above the sand; and along these stepping-stones the minority passes
dry-shod from one roofed sidewalk to another.
The houses, usually of a single story, their tile roofs bleached
yellowish by the tropical sun, present a large room, wide open by day on
the porch sidewalk, and rather bare in appearance in spite of a forest
of frail cane chairs, black in color. From the once whitewashed adobe
walls protrude several pairs of hooks on each of which hangs, except
during the hour of siesta, a rolled-up hammock. On or near the floor
sits a little hand sewing-machine, the exotic whirr of which sounds now
and then; and just inside the door are usually a few shallow tubs, like
small dugout canoes, holding tropical fruits, soggy bread cakes, and
sugar in all its stages; for many, even of the “best families,” patch
out their livelihood with a bit of amateur shopkeeping. Through this
main room, parlor, and chief pride of each family, past which one cannot
walk without glancing in upon the household, a back door gives a glimpse
of the patio, a pretty garden hidden away after the Moorish
fashion—strange that the Arab influence should have reached even this
far-distant heart of South America—airy and bright and large, for space
is not lacking in Santa Cruz, often almost an orchard and blooming with
flowers of many colors. On this open several smaller rooms which, being
out of sight of the public, are often far less attractive than the
parlor.
[Illustration:
A street of Santa Cruz de la Sierra after a shower, showing the
_atoquines_, or projecting spiles by which pedestrians cross from
one roofed sidewalk to another]
[Illustration:
Conscripts of the Bolivian army practicing their first manoeuvers in
the central plaza of Santa Cruz. All who have reached the age of
nineteen during the past year are obliged to report at the capital
of their province on New Year’s Day]
In the outside world the climate of Santa Cruz is reputed obnoxious to
whites; about its name hover those legends, common also to India, of
Europeans being worn to fever-yellow wrecks. As a matter of fact, the
temperature does not rise higher than in southern Canada in July, and a
cool breeze sweeps almost continually across the pampas about it.
Mosquitos are rare, fever all but unknown. It is not loss of health, but
his energetic view of life which the Caucasian immigrant risks.
Especially during this hottest season of January the heat was humid and
heavy, and I found myself falling quickly into the local mood of
contentment just to lie in a hammock and let the world drift on without
me. It took an unusual length of time to make up my mind to do anything,
and then required more will-power than usual to force myself to get up
and do it, particularly to keep on doing it until it was finished. But
it is perhaps as largely due to environment as to the climate that Santa
Cruz is visibly lazy. The region roundabout is so fertile that almost
every staple except wheat and potatoes grow, and the slightest exertion
earns sustenance. There are sugar plantations and sugar- and
alcohol-producing establishments scattered here and there; the province
of Sara to the north supplies food not only to the city but to the
rubber districts as far away as the Acre; coffee, rice, and tobacco can
be produced in abundance; hides already constitute an important export;
the region to the west is reputed rich in oil. Yet Santa Cruz makes
small use of her possibilities, languidly waiting for the arrival of a
railroad and the influx of foreign capital to develop them.
The rumors that seep up out of Santa Cruz of her beautiful pure-white
types are largely of artificial propagation. It is true that she has a
larger percentage of Spanish blood than any other city of Bolivia, but
this is rarely found in its unadulterated form. Some negro and
considerable Indian ancestry has left its mark, and while there is not a
full-blooded African, or perhaps a full Indian, in town, and Spanish is
the universal, if slovenly, tongue, genuine white natives are few in
number. As to the beautiful girls and women of popular fancy, they do
exist, but certainly in no larger proportion than pearls in oysters. The
overwhelming majority are coarse-featured, with heavy noses and sensual
lips, crumbling teeth that hint at degeneration, and little
attractiveness beyond the quick-fading physical one of youth.
Some cynic has said that a wall set about Santa Cruz de la Sierra would
enclose the largest house of ill-fame on earth. So broad a statement is
unkind. Yet not merely are the majority of cruceños born out of
wedlock—that much can be said of all Bolivia—but those who are
accustomed to investigate such matters agree that the seeker after
feminine favors in Santa Cruz need never leave the block in which he
chances to find himself. Plain-spoken foreign residents put it baldly
that virginity never survives the twelfth year, but this is no doubt an
exaggeration. The causes of this lack of social tautness are several.
The overstock of one sex, due largely to the migration of the young men
to the rubber forests of the Beni, often never to return; a widespread
poverty and the lack of any independent means of livelihood for women;
and a tropical apathy, even of character, are perhaps the chief. Then,
too, there is a marked absence of good example. The higher officials and
more wealthy men have, with rare exceptions, at least one irregular
household; not a few have only irregular ones. The story is current of
one of the chief political powers of the department who decided to visit
his daughter at school in Germany. Forewarned, that startled young lady
hastened to write: “If you and mama are coming to Germany, you must get
married first.” The father yielded good-naturedly to this quaint whim of
a favorite daughter, and during the weeks before his departure, spread
the story far and wide as one of his best after-dinner witticisms. The
native priests almost invariably have concubines. Some, using the
transparent subterfuge common to all Latin-America, refer to their
families as “housekeeper” and “nephews.” Not a few frankly speak of “the
mother of my children.” With rare exceptions this runs to the plural.
Among the masses, naturally, these conditions are not improved upon.
Marriage, troublesome, expensive, and conspicuous, hardly bringing even
the advantage of neighborly approbation, is apt to be looked upon as a
nuisance; and it is always hard to go to useless trouble in the tropics.
The nineteen-year-old son of an American resident was pointed out by
both sexes as a curiosity, because he was still without natural
children. The laws of Bolivia recognize three classes of
offspring,—legitimate, natural, and unnatural. The second are
inalienable heirs to one fifth the father’s property. The third division
comprises those born out of wedlock to parents who could not marry if
they wished,—that is, one or both of whom is already married, or has
taken the priestly vows of celibacy. The town has little notion of the
viewpoint of the rest of the world on this subject. Like an island far
out at sea, all but cut off from the rest of mankind, it has developed
customs—or a lack of them—of its own, its individual point of view; and,
like all isolated groups, it is sure of its own importance in exact
ratio to the lack of outside influence; so that barefooted cruceños are
firmly convinced that their ways are vastly superior to those of the
rest of the world, which they judge by the few sorry specimens thereof
who drift in upon them bedraggled by weeks on wilderness trails. The
term “Colla,” used to designate the people of the Bolivian highlands,
and passed on by the masses to the world at large, is here a word of
deprecation.
With few exceptions the foreign residents soon fall into this easy,
tropical way of life. The two “Belgian” firms bring in scores of young
German employees trained in the European main house; and there are
normally some 250 Teutonic residents. The percentage of these is low who
are not established within a month of their arrival in any part of the
region with their own “housekeepers.” The recruit is shown the
expediency of this arrangement by both the precept and the example of
his fellow-countrymen. Celibacy is alleged to be doubly baneful in the
tropics; there are no hotels or restaurants worthy the name; the
pleasure of forming a part of the best native family would soon wear
threadbare, even if the Moorish seclusion of these did not make
admittance impossible. To live with even a modicum of comfort in these
wilds the white man must have a home of his own. The frail walls thereof
are slight protection against theft. Unless he will reduce his
possessions to what he can carry to and from his stool or counter each
day, a “housekeeper” is imperative. Though a neighbor might be induced
to provide meals and such housekeeping as she has time for, the cruceña
brings her personal interest to bear only on those things of which she
is genuinely, if temporarily, a part. To her, wages are neither
customary nor attractive; the reward for her labors must be a
temporarily permanent home. Hence the “servant problem” is most easily
solved by adopting the servant. Whatever principles contrary to this
mode of life the youthful Teuton brings with him from his native land,
they quickly melt away under the tropical sun, and there is commonly
little resistance to the new environment.
Let it not be understood that there is unusual betrayal or persecution
of innocent womanhood in Santa Cruz. Rather the contrary is true. It is
the man who runs the most constant gauntlet of temptation. The arrival
of a new clerk is sure to cause a crowding of young women about the door
of the establishment, and to swamp it with pretended purchasers. Report
has it that a daughter of almost the “best families” may be won by the
employee who will remain a few years and buy her a house or leave her a
small income at his departure. With the poorer classes the usual
procedure is to open negotiations with the girl’s family, to give her
mother a present, or win her consent through her taste for strong drink.
In the wilder regions of the interior the gift of a rifle, or something
equally coveted, to the father is usually sufficient. Daughters are
easily acquired, but rifles are scarce. Coming under short contract, the
recruit, grown to a darker-skinned bookkeeper or sub-manager, goes his
way, or is transferred, and leaves behind whatever family may have
befallen him, frequently recommending his “widow” to a newly arrived
compatriot. Though there is said to be less taking of “housekeepers”
than formerly, in a given group of thirty Germans, twenty had female
companions, six had German wives, and four, legal cruceña wives. At the
time of my stay in Santa Cruz, 49 native women were calling monthly upon
the cashier of a single commercial house for the pension granted them
for the rearing of their from one to six half-German children; and these
were the abandoned mates only of such as were still employees of the
firm elsewhere, or of the rare few who had themselves left some stipend
for their offspring. The point of view of the Teuton on this subject is
that he is no worse, but merely more free from “hypocrisy” than the
Anglo-Saxon. Even the German women accept the condition with little
protest, often joining in the celebration at the baptism of the
illegitimate infant of a compatriot. In an isolated corner of the
department I found a well-educated, likable German keeping house with a
jet-black negro girl; and not only was his wife in Germany aware of the
arrangement, and amused by his letters concerning his companion, but
advised him to keep her as long as he remained in Bolivia, that he might
have “some one to look after him and keep him in health.”
Were the results of these attachments an improved human stock, there
might be less to condemn. For in its present stage of progress, tropical
Bolivia is more amenable to economic than to “moral” improvement; and
the country is sorely in need of population. But the foreign blood
injected into cruceño arteries is as nothing against the environment.
The sons of Europeans may be an improvement upon the natives, at least
in those rare cases where the father has remained to add the vigor of
his training; but the succeeding generation is only too apt to
degenerate quickly into the most native of natives. The assertion of
scientists that new blood must constantly be brought to the tropics if
these regions are to progress, is plainly demonstrated in Santa Cruz.
Throughout the department may be seen to-day in the flesh those
conditions which, centuries ago, followed the coming of the
Conquistadores without their own women or the Puritan’s point of view,
which have made Latin-America from end to end the abode of a chiefly
mongrel race.
Attempted improvement of the status quo meets with as little approval as
in all other centers of the universe. The American directress of the
government girls’ school found herself balked at the outset in the
simplest matters. Her edict that pupils must not come to school without
some other nether garment than the customary skirt was bitterly opposed
both by mothers and by her assistants, on the ground that “it is so hot
in Santa Cruz.” Cruceños blame the heat for most of their shortcomings,
as the gringo miners of the Andes sweepingly “lay it to the altitude.”
In the school in question there were 300 girls of the “best families” of
Santa Cruz. One in every four of them was of legitimate birth. The
teachers were in many cases decrepit grand-dames, yet no one with a
relative or a friend in the government offices could be removed, because
these saw to it that no report against their protegees ever reached
higher officials. In the faculty meetings it was impossible to criticize
a pupil, whatever her delinquency, for she was sure to have at least one
relative among the teachers to precipitate an uproar.
On New Year’s Day I had taken up my abode with the only permanent
American resident of Santa Cruz. “Juan” S. Bowles, born in Ohio—a
cavalry troop of which state he had commanded from Atlanta to the
sea—had come to Brazil nine years after the war and ascended to Santa
Cruz by way of the Amazon, in the years when 80 days of hard labor were
required to cover the 280 miles now served by the Madeira-Mamoré
railroad. He had never since seen his native land. His ice-plant was for
many years the only producer of that exotic commodity in tropical
Bolivia, where, in the early days, it ranked as a luxury at 25 cents a
pound. Under his unwilted American energy and indifference to local
caste rules the plant still produced its daily quota, if at something
less than that regal reward. On his back veranda stood a leather bed—an
ox-hide stretched on a wooden frame on legs—just the place to spend a
cruceño night, and his stories of “Johnny Rebs” alone made the week I
spent there well worth while.
Sometimes, though with difficulty, his reminiscences could be staged in
Bolivia. After Santa Cruz had drunk and died of swamp water savored with
dead cats for some three centuries, this energetic new resident imported
machinery and drove an artesian well, coming upon excellent water some
fifty feet below the surface. This he offered for sale, putting out of
business the friars who, watching the barometer, successfully prayed to
the Virgin for rain. The first woman to arrive with her _cántaro_ on her
head asked the son in charge if he were not “ashamed to sell the water
God gave.”
“But he didn’t give the pump or drive the well,” retorted the boy;
“There is plenty of God’s free water over there in the swamp.”
To-day the former captain of cavalry has ten wells to his credit and is
trying to get the municipality to let him install an “aeromotor.”
For all his long residence, the Ohioan had by no means reconciled life
to the cruceño point of view. His criticisms on this subject were
biting. Though the town swarmed with “educated” loafers, well-dressed
according to their ideals, it was all but impossible to get native
assistants. The youths, egged on by their mothers, flocked to the
already overcrowded white-fingered professions, rather than become
mechanics or learn to run an engine, two occupations sadly needed in
Santa Cruz. As the old man put it, “They won’t come here and learn a
good, useful trade, with pay while learning; yet if you throw a stone at
a dog anywhere in town and miss him, you are sure to hit a priest, a
lawyer, or a doctor—with nothing to do.” The boys he could hire, of the
most poverty-stricken families, would not work where anyone could see
them. Agapito would tote bricks within the patio without a protest, but
he would take his discharge rather than carry a parcel to or from the
post-office. The mothers would rather have their daughters earn their
living in the local feminine way than have their sons descend to manual
labor. A “caballero,” wearing shoes, without socks, requiring his gun
repaired to go hunting, could not get it to the shop until he could find
an Indian to carry it there.
Bowles was an interesting example of the transplanted American. A man of
education and of shrewd native wit, he had developed here in the
wilderness a quaint, isolated philosophy of his own, and was one of
those rare white men who have spent many years unbrokenly in such an
environment and climate without “going to seed.” Not merely was he a
wide and reflective reader on all subjects from the scientific to the
curious, but still, at seventy-five, produced in the interstices of his
labors as chief mechanic of the region authoritative articles for the
Buenos Aires, London, and American periodicals. How great a feat this is
only those can understand who know the enervating effect on both mind
and body of long tropical residence. His staunch individualism and
independence of the verdict of the world was little short of startling
to those of us who live more nearly in it. Set away in the fastnesses of
the earth, with only his own mind to feed upon, instead of having his
opinions delivered at his door each morning by the newsboy, he had
developed a thinking-machine of his own that grasped firmly whatever it
took hold of, and a hard, unsentimental common sense fitted to his
environment. His speech carried one back to the Civil War, and his
vocabulary had quaint, amusing touches; for the words he had added to it
since his migration had been chiefly from books, with rare and brief
intercourse with English-speaking persons. Thus his pronunciation of
many terms unknown to the world in the seventies had been evolved from
his own mind amid his Spanish-tongued environment. He spoke of
“alumeénum,” and called the recently discovered cause of all earthly
ills “Mee-crów-bays.” Words like “poligamic,” rarely heard from any but
scientific mouths, appeared in the same sentence with “ketched,” the
past participle of Civil War days. Edison’s noisy invention he called
“pho-nó-graph,” but the word “leisurely” he pronounced correctly, not a
common American feat.
This New Year’s Day was notable to Bowles for another reason. His
youngest son and last effective assistant made his first appearance in
the uniform of a Bolivian soldier, and moved from home to the cuartel.
Conscription is theoretically universal in Bolivia. On the first day of
each year every youth within the republic who has reached his nineteenth
birthday must report at the capital of his department, ready for
service. Those that are not physically unfit, or have not sufficient
influence, are given three months training, after which they draw lots
to serve two years at 40 centavos a day. During my time there the plaza
of Santa Cruz was overrun with lank country boys and sallow city youths,
in most cases still in their civilian garb of baggy, road-worn linen or
near-Parisian _gente decente_ attire, awkwardly practicing the right and
left face under the commands of youthful officers. By Bolivian law a
child born in Bolivia is a Bolivian, whatever the nationality of the
father. The Civil War veteran, who had strictly kept his American
citizenship, though married to a Bolivian wife, had appealed in vain to
the American minister in La Paz. Prospective immigrants to this, as to
several other South American countries, should not overlook this point
in the future of their children. As Bowles expressed it, “Fifteen
hundred bolivianos for every son born in the country is too much tax to
pay for the privilege of living in it.” When the time came for choosing
by lot the recruits needed to make up the peace quota of the Bolivian
army, Teutonic in its discipline and formation, this useful son of an
American “drew unlucky” and was obliged to serve two years, though fate
had left behind in Santa Cruz many a worthless native loafer.
But the then most widely-known gringo sojourner in Santa Cruz was an
Englishman who chose to call himself “Jack Thompson.” His habitat was
the departmental prison. His story was well-fitted to the “Penny
Dreadful” or the cinema screen. Some years ago “Thompson” and a
fellow-countryman had drifted out of the interior of Brazil into
Corumbá, and offered to sell their rights to a rubber forest they had
discovered. The Teutonic house that showed interest asked them to await
a decision, and meanwhile offered them employment in the escort of a
party of German employees, peons, and muleteers carrying £7000 in gold
to a branch of the establishment in the interior of Bolivia. On the
trail a German of the escort drew the Englishmen into a plot to hold up
the party. A week or more inland, at a rivulet called Ypias, the trio
suddenly fell upon their companions and killed three Germans, a
Frenchman, a Bolivian muleteer, and the chola “housekeeper” of the chief
of the expedition. The rest scattered into the jungle; except one old
Indian arriero who, unable to run, managed to crawl up into the branches
of a nearby tree. There he witnessed the second act of the melodrama.
For a time the trio remained in peace and concord, washed, drank, and
concocted a meal over jungle brush. But soon the question of the
division of the gold became a dispute. The German asserted that, as
author of the plan, he should take half. The Englishmen insisted on an
equal division. The dispute became a quarrel. At length, late in the
afternoon, when the unknown observer was ready to drop to the ground and
a quick death, from exhaustion, fear, and thirst, the Englishmen fell
upon their confederate with a revolver, two rifles, and a sabre. Even a
German must succumb under such odds. Leaving the body where it fell, the
pair divided the gold, and each swinging a pair of saddlebags over a
shoulder, struck off into the trackless jungle, for some reason fancying
this a surer escape than to mount mules and dash for safety in Brazil.
[Illustration:
Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra]
[Illustration:
Through the open doors of Santa Cruz one often catches a glimpse of
the patio, a garden gay with flowers]
Meanwhile some of the refugees had reached nearby settlements. Several
search parties were made up and, having buried what the vultures had
left, took up the scent. The natives of these jungle regions are not
easily eluded in their own element. For four days the Britons struggled
through the tropical wilderness, half-dead from thirst—for it was
September, at the end of the dry season—and soon reduced to a few native
berries as food. The gold became too heavy for their waning forces. They
managed to climb to the summit of a jungle bluff and bury most of it. On
the fifth day a search party came upon them resting in a shaded thicket.
A volley killed his companion and slightly wounded “Thompson.” Leaving
the corpse for the vultures, the pursuers tracked the wounded man all
night and next morning caught him at bay. Having pointed out the
hiding-place of the gold, he was set backward astride a mule with his
hands tied behind him and, amid such persecution as the savage,
half-Indian Bolivian can invent, was escorted to San José, and later
driven through the jungle and lodged in the departmental prison.
All this had occurred three years before. Twice “Thompson,” who was a
Mason, as are some of the officials of Bolivia, “escaped.” The first
time he was found drunk in the plaza before his evasion was known; the
second, he walked the 160 leagues to Yacuiva through the jungle without
once touching the trail, only to celebrate too early what he fancied,
for lack of geographical knowledge, was his escape into the Argentine,
and be forced to walk all the way back. Finally, after more than a year
in prison, he had been tried—on paper, as in all Spanish-America—and
within another twelve-month had coaxed the judge to deliver his verdict
and sentence him—to be shot. The supreme court and the president had
still to pass upon the matter, and another year had drifted by.
Of late years it is not easy to gain admittance to the prison of Santa
Cruz. About its doors swarm ragged sentinels who scream frantically
“Cabo de Guardia!” (“Corporal of the Guard”), and swing their aged
muskets menacingly whenever a stranger pauses to speak to them. But a
note from the prefect brought me the attention of the haughty superiors
of the “Policía de Seguridad,” who saw fit to permit me to wade across
the first patio of the prison. There an insolent half-negro in the
remnants of a faded khaki uniform felt me carefully over for firearms,
and at length deigned to open a wooden-barred door. Beyond another
mud-floored anteroom and through another wooden gate, I found myself in
a bare patio some forty feet square, with a deep open well and signs
that the entire yard became a pond whenever it rained. This was
surrounded on all sides by an ancient low building of adobe, under the
projecting eaves of which, on the ground or in hammocks, and inside
squalid cell-like rooms, loafed a score or more of men and several women
of all known human complexions and degrees of undress. A single boy
soldier of simian brow, with a disproportionately heavy loaded rifle on
his shoulder, paraded in the shade of the eaves. He looked, indeed, like
one to whose ingrown intelligence could safely be trusted matters of
life and death!
My errand made known, several of the prisoners, without rising, began to
shout, “Don Arturo!” By and by a voice came back, “’Stá bañandose!” I
crossed to one of the cells, a small room filled with sundry junk,
chiefly the tools of a mechanic, of which the wooden-barred door stood
ajar. Inside, on a piece of board laid on the earth floor, stood
“Thompson,” in the costume of Adam, pouring a bucket of water over his
head. I explained that I was drifting through Bolivia and fancied he
might be glad to hear his native tongue again. He was, having had only
two such visitors during the year just ended. Wrapping a towel about his
loins, he stood and chatted, while an anemic half-negro in what had once
been khaki leaned against the door-post watching our every movement, and
several other prisoners crowded round in the customary ill-bred South
American fashion.
“Thompson” was an unattractive man in middle life, rather thin, with the
accent and bad teeth of the Englishman of the mechanic class, and the
uninspired and rather hopeless philosophy of life common to that caste.
Otherwise his attitude was in no way different from what it would have
been had we been a pair of tramps met on the road. He smiled frequently
as he talked, and was neither more sad nor more cynical than the average
of his class. He made no secret of his part in what he referred to as
“our stunt,” and gave me detailed information on how to find the graves
along the trail “where we pulled it off,” in case I should continue to
the eastward. He plainly regretted the crime, but only because he had
been caught. Knowing he had already published a doctored account of the
occurrence in an English monthly and had found the remuneration
exceedingly useful in eking out his existence in a Bolivian prison, I
suggested the writing of the whole story.
“Aye, but they ’re not going to give me time,” he answered, rolling and
lighting a cigarette. “I just got word from Sucre that they have
confirmed the sentence. Now as soon as the president signs it, they’ll
call me out and ...”
“Oh, I don’t believe Montes would do that to a gringo,” I remarked
encouragingly. “He is a Mason, too—”
“Well, I don’t care a rap whether they do or not,” he replied, with
considerable heat, “I’m perfectly willing they do it and have it over
with. Even if he commutes the sentence, it means ten years more of
this”—he pointed to the slovenly yard and dirtier inmates—“and it’s
quite as bad as the other; I don’t know but worse.”
When he had dressed and stepped outside to pose for a photograph, he
presented rather a “natty” appearance, though his low-caste face could
not be disguised. Together we wandered through the prison. “Thompson,”
in his striving to be “simpático” amid his surroundings, had become
quite a “caballero” in his manner, and spoke Spanish unusually well for
one of his class and nationality. The prisoners found it as necessary to
earn their own living inside the prison as outside, for though the
government theoretically furnishes food, it would not have kept the
smallest inmate alive for a week. “Thompson” asserted that he had not
touched prison fare since his incarceration. His “cell” was fitted up as
a workshop, with a bench, a small vise, and such tools of a mechanic as
he had been able to collect, and he earned a meager fare and other
necessities by mending watches and at the various tinkering jobs that
reached him from outside. Shoe-making was the favorite occupation of his
fellow-jailbirds. More than a dozen had their open “cells” scattered
with odds and ends of leather and half-finished footwear. Formerly, the
public had passed freely in and out of the prison, and prisoners,
underbidding free labor, since their lodging was already supplied them,
had always earned enough to satisfy their appetites. Now, the rules had
become somewhat more strict, at least to outsiders, and with less
opportunity to sell their wares more than one inmate suffered from
hunger.
We passed into one of the two large common rooms, foul-smelling mud dens
in which “Thompson” had seen as many as 37 persons of both sexes and all
degrees of crime, age, and condition sometimes _locked in_ for an entire
month by some whim of _carcelero_ or judge. The room being completely
innocent of any convenience whatever, the conditions of prisoners and
prison when the door might finally be unlocked needs no description.
Just now the room was open, and there were but 26 inmates, men and women
mixed indiscriminately, for there were no rules, even at night, as to
the sleeping-places of the two sexes. The female prisoners, in fact,
earned their food as do so many cruceñas outside, from such of the male
inmates and soldier guards as could reward their favors, and had
advanced to a point where even privacy was no longer requisite. Even
then several slovenly couples reclined together on the uneven floor in
half-amorous attitudes, and on a species of crippled bed in a corner sat
an evil-eyed fellow of some negro blood, on the floor at whose feet, her
uncurried head resting affectionately between his legs, squatted a
native woman in the early thirties, who might years before have been
almost beautiful. She had killed the “Turk” with whom she had been
living, and was for a time under sentence to be shot. The president,
however, after making her two accomplices draw lots for fifteen years’
imprisonment and execution respectively—by Bolivian law two persons
cannot be executed for the same crime—the supreme penalty falling upon a
Chilian, had commuted her sentence to ten years. Outside the prison the
rumor was prevalent that her lenient treatment arose from the fact that
she had borne a son to the prosecuting attorney.
During my stroll my companion ceremoniously introduced me to several of
the six “gringo” prisoners. One was a German-Peruvian, eight months
before the manager of a local bank, and since then in prison, still
untried, on the charge of disposing of bad drafts. When a powerful
company does not feel it has sufficient evidence to convict a man whose
arrest it has caused, it is the Bolivian custom to see that the judge
does not bring the case to trial. Nearly every government official
semi-openly having his price, the prisons are apt to hold chiefly those
who have underbid in the contest for “justice.” “Thompson” asserted—and
he was corroborated by many outside the cárcel—that for some £200 he
could make his escape. The savage half-Indian conscripts serving as
carceleros vented their hatred of the gringos at every opportunity, and
made their lives constantly miserable by watching for the slightest
breaking of the rules to give them an excuse to shoot. In former times,
when rubber was high in price, the Intendente de la Policía frequently
sold prisoners to the “rubber kings” of the Beni at 1000 bolivianos a
head, and it was a rare victim of this system who did not end his days
as a virtual slave in the Amazonian forests.
As we shook hands at the gate of the inner patio, “Thompson” remarked:
“If Montes signs it, I’ll have forty-eight hours left with nothing to do
and I’ll write you something. I believe the thoughts of a man waiting to
be shot”—it was the only time he used that word during the
interview—“would make interesting reading. The ending would be all right
if these Indians could make a good job of it, but they’ll end by bashing
in my head with the butts of their muskets, as they have all the
others.”
If I have inadvertently given the impression that there are no stern
laws and rules of personal conduct in Santa Cruz de la Sierra let me
hasten to disavow it as quickly as I was disabused in the matter myself;
for it was here that I tarnished my hitherto spotless record for
non-arrest in South America. I had come to give “Thompson” a bundle of
American weeklies and was leaving the prison again, when a German who
had ridden in from Cochabamba asked me to serve as interpreter while he
procured a gun license. As we stepped into the comandancia, an anemic,
yellow-skinned half-Indian youth in uniform shouted in the most insolent
tone at his command, “Take off your hats!” The German quickly snatched
his close-cropped bullet head bare, but the tone aroused my antagonism
in spite of myself; moreover, a dozen unwashed natives lounged about the
miserable mud hall with their hats on. To obey the orders of this class
of Latin-American officials requires a certain degree of humility, of
which, thank God, I have not a trace. At the second command I retorted,
“What for?”
“In respect for the Bolivian government!” shrieked the evil-eyed,
ill-smelling official behind the main desk.
“But I have no respect whatever for the Bolivian government,” I
protested, warding off with an elbow the boy soldier who was attempting
to snatch the hat from my head; and I stepped out into the street. There
I was legally immune. There is no law requiring one to uncover in the
streets, even in straight-laced Santa Cruz. But the legal aspect of a
case is easily overlooked in Bolivia. The official screamed, “Cabo de la
Guardia!”, and there poured out upon me five boy soldiers with loaded
muskets, who, clutching at me like cats, began pushing me back into the
prison. I had been long enough a policeman myself to know the folly of
resisting arrest, however unjustified; moreover, there was an entire
regiment of these little brown fellows in town, most of whom would be
only too happy to give vent to their dislike of gringos.
Once I had entered an empty mud room on the first patio, the door was
quickly bolted behind me and I stood looking out through the
wooden-barred window upon the mud-hole yard, back and forth across which
marched the jeering little soldiers and several loungers, grinning at me
nastily behind their blackened stumps of teeth. I was in great
danger—that I should be late for the dinner to which I had been invited
at eleven. For though my arrest was not legal, those responsible for it
had the very simple old Latin-American expedient of holding me
“incomunicado” and keeping everyone outside ignorant of my plight. I sat
down on the window-ledge and fell to reading the Spanish paper edition
of Ernst Haeckel I was so fortunate as to have with me. A half-hour
passed. Meanwhile that dinner was a bare hour away, and formal feasts
are not so frequent in tropical Bolivia as to be missed without regret.
Luckily, I caught Tommy’s eye as he dodged under the eaves to escape a
new cloud-burst and, beckoning him to the window, managed to say, before
he was driven off by three soldiers with fixed bayonets, “Go tell the
prefect ...”
The matter never got as far as the prefect. No sooner did the comandante
of the prison learn that a man, who only yesterday had been hobnobbing
with the supreme chief of the department, had been visited with the
indignity of imprisonment, than he hastened to order me set at liberty.
Before we leave Santa Cruz, the story of “Thompson” permits a bit of
anticipation. Months later, in far southern Chile, I chanced to pick up
a newspaper, among the scant foreign despatches of which my eye fell
upon:
“Bolivia, 14 May—In Santa Cruz de la Sierra was shot to-day the criminal
’Thompson,’ of English nationality, condemned to the supreme penalty for
having assassinated the conductors of money of some local houses.”
Another half-year passed before there reached me in Brazil local papers
and letters giving details. According to these, the judge wept when he
read the sentence, but “Thompson” shook hands with him, telling him the
sentence was just, and that the only criticism he had to offer was that
the execution had been so long delayed. As his last favor, he asked that
jail conditions be improved, that his friends might be more humanly
housed. On his last night he got permission to have a few of these—all
jailbirds—to dinner with him, but refused to touch liquor himself, “so I
shall be able to take in every detail clearly.” In the morning he
informed friends that he had parents, brothers, and sisters in London,
and a wife and son in the United States. To these he had been writing
since his arrest that he was engaged in an enterprise that would in time
make him rich, if luck was with him. On the evening before his execution
he wrote bidding them all farewell, saying he had suddenly contracted a
tropical disease the doctors despaired of, and would be dead by the time
they got the letter. He was shot at noon, while the bells of the
cathedral were striking, so that nothing should be heard outside the
prison.
In Santa Cruz Tommy fell victim to that loathsome ailment popularly
known as “cold feet.” An attack of fever and a hazy promise of
employment for his trusty trowel were no doubt among the causes; it is
probable, too, that he had not entirely lost faith in the attractiveness
of sandy hair. But the inoculation was chiefly due to the replies to our
inquiries about the road ahead. These were not exactly reassuring. It
was characteristic of Tommy, however, that he pretended to be eager to
push on, while secretly planning to remain behind.
There is one of the sand streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra which does
not run out to nothing in the surrounding jungle, but dwindles to what
is known locally as the “camino de Chiquitos,” and pushes on to the
Paraguay river, some 400 miles distant. “Road” in the cruceño sense,
however, means anything but a comfortable highway. As usual, the town
was scornful of the suggestion that two lone gringos could make the
journey on foot. Disheartening stories assailed us of the dangers from
snakes and “tigers,” of the unending pest of insects, of the almost
total lack of sleeping-places and even of supplies. For the first week
we must carry all food with us; in this rainy season the route was sure
to abound with chest-deep mud-holes and miles of swamps; the last twenty
leagues, near the Paraguay, would be completely inundated and impassable
for months, until the waters subsided. Or, if the rains did not come on
at their accustomed time, there was as much danger of the country being
wholly waterless for long distances. Moreover, beyond the Rio Guapay,
eight leagues east of the capital, stretched the notorious Monte Grande,
a dense, unbroken forest in which roamed wild Indians given to shooting
six-foot arrows of _chonta_, or iron-heavy black palm, from their
eight-foot bows, with such force that they pass clear through a man at
fifty yards. This was said to be quite painful. Nor were these mere idle
rumors; we had only to drop in on one of several men in town to be shown
arrows taken from the bodies of victims, and a sojourning
fellow-countryman had several relics of the tribe he had had the good
fortune to see first while prospecting on the banks of the Guapay.
Reading Tommy’s real opinion of the journey behind his face, I laid
plans to continue alone. Experienced travelers asserted that boiled
water, a careful diet, a selected medicine-kit, waterproofs, a tropical
helmet, and a woolen cholera-belt for night chills were prime
necessities. I had all but six of this half-dozen requisites. By choice
I should have turned rural native entirely and worn a straw hat, a
breechclout, a pair of leather sandals, and a towel. But life can seldom
be reduced to such charming simplicity. Two things at least were
indispensable,—a cloth hammock and a _mosquitero_ to hang over it; for
the only sleeping-place on most of the journey would be that which the
traveler carried with him. Then I must “hacer tapeque,” as they say in
Santa Cruz, or “pack” a bag of rice and some sheets of sun-dried beef,
to say nothing of distributing about my person a kodak, revolver,
cartridges, and money in various forms of metal. Add to this a few
indispensable garments, sealed tins of salt and matches, kitchenette,
photographic and writing materials, and the other unavoidable odds and
ends for a scantily inhabited 400-mile trip of unknown duration, and it
will be readily understood why, after mailing the developing-tank and
even my coat, razor and accessories, I staggered heavily across town on
January 8th, to begin the longest single leg of my South American
journey.
Fortunately, the German who had sought my assistance in the matter of
the gun license, was bound for at least a few days in the same
direction. Heinrich Konanz, born in Karlsruhe, had served the last of
three years as a conscript in the expedition against the Chinese Boxers,
and had since worked as a carpenter in China and California, until he
had concluded to seek a permanent home as a colonist in some region
where population was less numerous. He was largely innocent of
geography, spoke habitually a painful cross between his once native
tongue and what he fondly fancied was English, with a peppering of
Chinese, and knew almost no Spanish. The mule that had carried him from
Cochabamba he found it necessary to turn into a pack-animal for the
tools, materials, and provisions he had purchased in Santa Cruz, and was
to continue on foot. He had been placidly making plans to push on alone,
when rumors in his own tongue suddenly reached him of the Monte Grande
and its playful Indians. His first inclination had been to throw up the
sponge and return to Cochabamba. But his capital had been greatly
reduced and his hotel room was heaped with the supplies sold him by his
local fellow-countrymen, who would not have taken them back at a fourth
of the original cost. He made a virtue of necessity, added a new rifle
to his revolver and shotgun, and offered to find room on the mule for
the heavier portion of my baggage in return for the reassurance of my
company.
[Illustration:
Konanz seated on our baggage in the _pelota de cuero_, or “leather
ball” in which we were both carried across the Rio Guapay]
[Illustration:
The force of one of the four _fortines_, or “fortresses,” with which
the Bolivian government garrisons the Monte Grande against the
savages]
It was a brilliant day when I shouldered the German’s rifle, my own
revolver well oiled and freshly loaded, and led the way out of town.
Mud-holes, along which we picked our way on rows of the whitened skulls
of cattle, soon gave place to a great pampa, with tall, coarse grass and
scattered trees, across which lay a silent sand road so utterly dry that
we had already suffered long from thirst when we reached the first
“well,” a mud-hole thick with green slime, attesting by its taste the
also visible fact that all the cattle for miles around made it their
loafing-place and protection from the swarms of flies and insects. Here
we not only drank, but filled the German’s water-bag. When the liquid
mud in this gave out, my companion took to lapping up that in the
cart-ruts and the footprints of cattle along the trail. I held out until
I overtook a boy carrying on his head a pailful of guapurú
(wah-poo-roó), of which I bought a hatful for a _medio_. This is a fruit
cruelly like a large luscious cherry in appearance, growing without a
stem on the trunk of a gnarly pampa tree, of a snow-white meat not
particularly pleasant to the taste, but a welcome antidote for tropical
thirst.
Twice during the day we met a train of heavy, crude ox-carts roofed with
sun-dried ox-hides, that recalled the “prairie-schooners” of pioneer
days, eight oxen to each, creaking westward with infinite slowness. In
the afternoon the forest closed in about us, and we plodded on through
deep sand alternating with mud-holes. Soon all the woods about us were
screaming like a dozen suffragette meetings in full session and,
fancying the uproar came from edible wild fowls, I crept in upon them,
rifle in hand. To my astonishment, I found a band of small monkeys
shrieking together in a huge tree-top. Even a monkey steak would not
have been unacceptable. I fired into the branches. Instantly there fell,
not the wherewithal for a sumptuous evening repast, but the most
absolute silence. The little creatures did not flee, however, but each
sprang a limb or two higher and watched my slightest movement with
brilliant, roving eyes. A qualm came upon me and I hurried after the
German.
That night we camped in a clump of trees about a water-hole. The native
who pointed out the trail to it did so in a surly, regretful manner, as
if he resented the consumption by strangers who should have remained in
their own country of a priceless treasure insufficient for home
consumption. Down at the bottom of a deep hole in the sand, strongly
fenced with split rails, was an irregular puddle barely four inches
deep, full of fallen leaves, wrigglers, and decayed vegetable matter;
yet from it radiated trails in all directions. The blocks of crude brown
sugar we had purchased that morning had melted during the day and
smeared everything within reach; the boiled leg of mutton already
whispered its condition to the nostrils. The breeze a slight knoll
promised treacherously died down, and the swarms of insects that sung
about us all night frequently struck home, in spite of the close-knit
_mosquitero_ that kept us running with sweat until near dawn.
Monkeys were already howling in the nearby woods when we pulled on our
clothes, wet and sticky, in a soggy morning that soon carried out its
promise of rain; and parrots now and then screamed at us in dull-weather
mood. A heavy shower paused for a new start and became a true jungle
deluge. My poncho would have been useless; besides, it was wrapped, in
Australian “swag” style, around my possessions on the mule. Past
experience told me that the only reliable waterproof in the tropics is
to let it rain—and dry out again when opportunity offers. We settled
down to splash on indifferently, soaked through and through from hat to
shoes, dripping at every seam. The weather was not over warm either, and
only the heaviest moments of the storm dispersed the swarms of ravenous
mosquitoes.
In dense woods punctuated with mud-holes, a yellow youth in two cotton
garments overtook us well on in the afternoon, and asked if we would
need a “pelota.” We would. He stopped at a jungle hut some distance
beyond and emerged with an entire ox-hide, sun-dried and still covered
with the long red hair of its original owner, folded in four like a
sheet of writing paper, on his head. For a mile or more he plodded
noiselessly behind us. Then suddenly the forest opened out upon the
notorious Guapay, or Rio Grande, a yellow-brown stream, wide as the
lower Connecticut, flowing swiftly northward to join the Mamoré on its
journey to the Amazon. We splashed a mile or more up along its edge, to
offset the distance we should be carried downstream before striking a
landing opposite. Here two men of bleached-brown skin, each completely
naked but for a palm-leaf hat securely tied on, relieved our companion
of his load and set about turning it into a boat. These “pelotas de
cuero” (“leather balls”) are the ferries of all this region, being
transportable, whereas a wooden boat, left behind, would be stolen by
the “indios bravos.” Around the edge of the hide were a dozen loopholes
through which was threaded a cord that drew it up into the form of a
rude tub. To add firmness to this, the hat-wearers laid a corduroy of
green poles in the bottom. Then they piled our baggage into it, set the
German atop, and dragged it down the sloping mud bank into the water,
while the youth coaxed the mule into the stream and swam with it for the
opposite shore. This seemed load enough and to spare. But when I had
fulfilled my duties as official photographer of the expedition, I, too,
was lifted in, as they would no doubt have piled in Tommy also, had he
been with us, and away we went, easily 500 pounds, speeding down the
racing yellow stream, the naked ferrymen first wading, then swimming
beside us, clutching the pelota, the “gunwales” of which were in places
by no means an inch above the water. Had the none-too-stout cord broken,
the hide would instantly have flattened out and left us—for an
all-too-brief moment—like passengers on the magic carpet of oriental
fairy-tales.
Before and high above us, where the _peloteros_ coaxed the crazy craft
ashore, stretching like a Chinese wall of vegetation further than the
eye could follow in either direction, stood an impenetrable forest, the
famous Monte Grande, or “Great Wilderness,” of Bolivia. Here was the
chief haunt of the wild Indians of the penetrating arrow, a region
otherwise uninhabited, through which the “road” to the Paraguay squeezes
its way for hundreds of miles almost without a shift of direction. We
swung our hammocks on the extreme edge of the river, where the breeze
promised to blow—and failed of its promise, like most things
Latin-American. For though the day was not yet spent, the journey
through the Monte Grande is fixed in its itinerary by the four
“garrisons” maintained some five leagues apart by the Bolivian
government as a theoretical protection against the nomadic Indians. At
dusk a man swam the river with his clothing and possessions in the brim
of his hat, and soon afterward the stream began to rise so rapidly that
it is doubtful if we could have passed it for several days.
Almost at once, in the morning, we met a train of nine enormous roofed
carts of merchandise from Europe by way of Montevideo, each drawn by
eight yoke of gaunt, way-worn oxen, straining hub-deep through the mire
at a turtle’s pace. The forest crowded them so closely on either hand
that we must back into it, as into the shallow niche of an Inca wall,
and stand erect and motionless until the train had crawled by, the
wilderness bawling and echoing a half-hour with the cries of the dozen
drivers with their long goads dodging in and out, knee-deep in mud,
among the panting brutes. We met no other person during the day.
Travelers through the Monte Grande go always in bands, and the
ox-drivers stared at us setting out alone, as at gringo madmen.
We deployed in campaign formation. Our revolvers loose in their
holsters, the German marched ahead, closely followed by his affectionate
“mool,” while I brought up the rear with his new Winchester. Mine was
the post of honor and most promise, for the Indians of the Monte Grande
do not face their intended victims, but spring from behind a tree to
shoot the traveler in the back, and dodge back out of sight again. They
shoot seated, using the feet to stretch the bow, a slight advantage, in
point of time, to their prey. Rumor has it that the tribe is by nature
peaceful; but they were long hunted for sport and are still shot on
sight, with no questions asked, and so have come to look upon all
travelers as tribal enemies. They are said to be entirely nomadic, to
wear nothing but a feather clout, and to bind their limbs in childhood,
so that the forearm and the leg below the knee become mere bone and
sinew with which they can thrust their way through the spiny undergrowth
without pain. This improvement on nature draws the foot out of shape,
and the footprint of a savage, showing only the imprint of the heel, the
outer edge of the foot, and the crooked big toe, is easily distinguished
from that of the ordinary native. However, that was not my lucky day,
and I caught not so much as a kodak-shot at a feather clout, though I
glanced frequently over my shoulder all the day through.
But if the Indians failed us, there were other visitations to make up
for them. Every instant of the day we fought swarms of gnats and
mosquitos; though the sun rarely got a peep in upon us, its damp, heavy
heat kept us half-blinded with the salt sweat in our eyes. The road was
really a long tunnel through unbroken forest meeting overhead, into
which the thorny undergrowth crowded in spite of the ox-cart traffic.
All day long, mud-holes, often waist-deep for long distances, completely
occupied the narrow forest lane. The region being utterly flat, the
waters of the rainy season gather in the slightest depression, which
passing ox-carts plough into a slough beyond description; while the
barest suggestion of a stream inundates to a swamp all the surrounding
territory. For the first mile we sought, in our inexperience, to tear
our way around these through the edge of the forest. But so dense was
this that it barred us as effectually as a cactus hedge. We took to
wading, now to the knees, now to the waist, sometimes slipping into
unseen cart-ruts and plunging to the shoulders in noisome slime.
[Illustration:
Jim and “Hughtie” Powell, Americans from Texas who have turned
Bolivian peons]
[Illustration:
A jungle hair-cut]
It grew monotonous, but so does life under the best of conditions.
Moreover, whatever gloom our surroundings created was more than offset
by the German. Not that he was gay, nor, indeed, cheerful under
adversity. But the genuine comedian, like an Italian Hamlet, has no
inkling of his humor. Konanz was at his best when he fancied himself
most tragic, putting me frequently to excruciating labor to preserve
outwardly that solemn gravity that was indispensable to peace between
us. He insisted on speaking “English.” This astounding tongue he had
concocted by the simple rule of learning the corresponding English for
each German word, and jealously retaining the German grammar and form;
all this with so guttural an accent that the hearer could not
distinguish “lake” from “leg.” Thus I was informed that “He put it his
hat in,” and “He set him by a boat the river over.” Our snow-white
pack-mule was of that affectionate nature that craves constant
companionship. But the Teuton had no affection to spare, and whenever
the animal chanced to stray a yard from the spot in which he had left
her, he fell upon the poor brute with a bellow of rage:
“Oh, py Gott, Mr. Mool! Ven I don’t hat to lug myself der loat all to
San Yozay, I rhight avay shoot her der head through. To-morrow, py Gott,
I bind her der dree on, der ...”
At sunset we waded through a barred gate into the _pascana_, or tiny
natural clearing, of Cañada Larga, the first of the four _fortines_.
Five miserable thatched huts, some without walls and the others of
open-work poles set upright, were occupied by eight boyish soldiers in
faded rags of khaki and ancient cork helmets of the same color, and a
slattern female belonging to the lieutenant. The latter was a haughty
fellow of twenty-five, sallow with fever and gaunt from long tropical
residence, a graduate of the Bolivian West Point in La Paz, and
permanently in command of all the garrisons of the Monte Grande. The
others were two-year conscripts between nineteen and twenty-one,
assigned to the forts for a year, usually to be forgotten by the
government and left there months longer.
Our official paper ordered the commander to “give us all facilities,
wood and water, and to sell us food—_provided there was any_.” He waved
a hand in a bored, tropical way, and two of the handsomest children in
uniform brought us wood, and soon came lugging a huge bucket of water on
a pole across their shoulders. What food could he sell us? Not a thing.
Some yucas, at least? Señor, we have only half rations of rice for
ourselves. But the prefect said we could depend.... The prefect, señor,
has not sent us any supplies for more than a month. There was nothing
left but to cook some of our own rice and charqui, and try to be
thankful for even that miserable substitute for food. Its staying powers
were slight. Twice during the night I ate a large plate of it cold, and
spent most of the time hungry at that. Not that I got up to eat; much of
the night I wandered up and down the pascana, fighting the mosquitos and
a tiny gnat whose bite was out of all proportion to its size, and which
the fine gauze mosquitero designed for the purpose by no means kept out,
though it did effectually any breeze that stirred.
The lieutenant insisted on sending along a soldier to “protect” us from
the savages. He was a girlish-looking boy of Indian features, armed with
an ancient Winchester of broken butt, thick with rust inside and out.
Most of the day he lagged far behind, for the sun-dried stretches of
road between the swamps and mud-holes hurt even his calloused feet. We
tramped unbrokenly for seven hours, the endless forest-wall close on
either hand, without sighting another human being, until the jungle
opened out slightly on the little pascana of Tres Cruces. The sergeant
in command dragged himself out a few yards to meet us, a rifle-shot
having warned him of our approach. He had four soldiers and a
gnat-bitten female. They called the bucketful they brought us from a
swamp, “excellent water.” It _was_ clear, to be sure, and a decided
improvement on what we had drunk from the mud-holes during the day, the
swampy taste not quite overwhelming. But it was lukewarm from lying out
under the sun, and had at least a hundred tadpoles swimming merrily
about in it. One dipped up a cupful, picked out the tadpoles gently but
firmly, and forced as much of their vacated bath as possible down the
feverish throat.
The gnats of Tres Cruces quickly got wind of the arrival of fresh
supplies and attacked us in battalions. The previous camp had been
gnatless compared to this. Known to the natives as _jejenes_, they are
almost invisible, yet they can bite through a woolen garment or a cloth
hammock so effectively that the mosquito’s puny efforts pass unnoticed
in comparison. Wherever they alight they leave a red spot the size of a
mustard-seed that itches and burns for days afterward. What such a host
of them had hoped to feed on, had we not unexpectedly turned up, I
cannot guess; surely they were taking long chances of starvation here in
the unpeopled wilderness. Under no circumstances did they give us a
moment of respite. Even the soldiers, tropical born and long accustomed
to them, ate their supper plate in hand, marching swiftly up and down
the “parade-ground” and striking viciously at themselves with the free
hand. We could not leave off fighting them long enough to lift a kettle
off the fire, without a hundred instantly stinging us in as many
distinct spots. In bookless Santa Cruz I had had the luck to pick up a
paper edition of Nietzsche in Spanish, but even in that tongue the
journey through an entire sentence was impossible. I could not write a
word or speak a sentence without pausing to slap savagely at some
portion of my anatomy. My notes of those days are all short and choppy.
A long sentence was impossible. It seemed unbelievable so tiny a thing
could bite so. The mosquitero was useless. They could bite through
sheet-iron. A real dinner would have been a joy, but an hour’s relief
from these incessant pests would have outdone a week of banquets. One
wanted to run and dance and scream, but tired feet forbade. Much as we
needed rest, we must keep walking swiftly up and down the pascana,
wondering how long a man would last on charqui and rice, walking day and
night. “Oh, py Gott!” cried Konanz, attempting in vain to slap himself
between the shoulder-blades. “In China py der Boxer der mosquito he
pinch is very much, aber here!”
Tramping doggedly back and forth in the dusk, I heard the sergeant in
his hut singing and apparently happy. I raced to his door. Eureka!
Necessity is the mother of invention, even among the uninventive. He was
swinging swiftly back and forth in his hammock. I grasped a pack-rope
and was soon rushing swiftly through the half-arc of a circle. The
relief was startling. But to work incessantly with the arms was little
better than tramping the pascana. If only the inventor of perpetual
motion had not put his invention off so long. The relief from torture
quickly made me drowsy. But if the swinging flagged for an instant, the
jejenes at once brought me wide awake. Before long, too, a few hardy
gnats solved the problem of catching their prey on the fly, like
experienced “hoboes.” More and more learned the trick, until I gave up
in despair and took once more to tramping the parade-ground; kept it up,
indeed, most of the brilliant, moonlit night.
In the morning I found that ants had eaten into decorative fringes the
edges of my leather leggings. Vampire bats had smeared our white mule
with her own blood. For a long time I could not make the German
understand what had happened to the animal, until I dug up out of the
depths of memory the word “Fledermaus.” To watch him pack was always
amusing—also a torture. He had learned to do everything in the German
style of systematized routine, in which the longest way round is always
the shortest way between two points; and he knew nothing of
“efficiency,” of that dovetailing of work in such a way as to hasten the
process. Instead of lighting a fire first and having his breakfast ready
by the time he was dressed, he must be entirely garbed before touching a
stick or a pot; and so on clear through the loading. However often he
made up the pack, each detail must be laboriously thought out again, and
as he could never think of more than one thing at a time, the operation
was endless. Bring him what he needed to load next, and he stared
stony-eyed at me, as if wondering why I was trying to disturb his
meditations. Though we rose at dawn, we were fortunate to be off before
the sun had surmounted the jungle tree-tops.
The sergeant insisted, languidly and tropically, on sending one of his
armed boys along. We refused. Should anything have happened to the
child, such as a sprained ankle in “protecting” us from the savages, we
could never have forgiven ourselves. All day long we tramped due
eastward through unbroken forest. Monotonously the swamps and mud-holes
continued. It would not have been so bad could we have waded all the way
barefoot; but the sun-dried stretches between made shoes imperative.
Never a patch of clearing, never a sign of human existence—though I
still glanced frequently over my shoulder—never the suggestion of a
breeze to temper the heat or to break the ranks of the swarming insects!
We threw ourselves face-down at any mud-hole or cart-rut, gratefully, to
drink. “It was crawlin’ an’ it stunk, but”—anything that can by any
stretch of the word be called water is only too welcome in tropical
Bolivia. The red-hot poison with which the gnats of days past had
inoculated us from head to foot itched murderously. Amateur wilderness
travelers have a theory that “dope” smeared over the body will afford
protection in such cases, but it would be a strong concoction indeed
that could rout the jejenes of the Monte Grande. The only method is to
get bit and heal again, as one gets wet and dries again, or goes astray
and finds oneself again. The one absolute rule is, _Don’t scratch!_ Not
to scratch may drive the sufferer mad, but to do so will drive him
doubly insane; and swamp water is infectious to any abrasion of the
skin, and an open sore is the greatest peril of tropical travel.
Let it not be fancied, however, that life was sad even with these
drawbacks. The song of the jungle was unbroken, the brilliant sunshine
joyful, for all its heat. In places the road was completely veiled by
clouds of beautiful white butterflies. Sweating freely, there was a
spontaneous play of the mental spirits and a sense of splendid physical
well-being, not the mind-paralyzing gloom of our northern winters. Up on
the high plateau the mind might work as freely, but with this
difference: there it seemed to be using itself up, each period of
exaltation being followed by the feeling that one was much older, much
more worn out, while here there were no such after effects. Though we
drank water which, in civilization, would have caused us to die of
cramps within an hour, the constant sweating carried off its evil
effects, and though gaunt and gnat-bitten, we both looked “the picture
of health.” The main rule for keeping well in the tropics is to live on
the country, to avoid canned food and dissipation, and above all to get
plenty of hard exercise and exposure to the elements. Unfortunately,
where food is most needed, it is most difficult to obtain.
A toilsome eighteen miles ended at Pozo del Tigre—there was something
fetching about the name of this third fortín,—the “Tiger’s
Drinking-place.” Here were four boys, a cossack post in command of a
corporal; also at last there was something for sale, for some one had
planted a patch of corn back in the forest. Two soldiers brought us
_choclos_ and _huiro_,—green-corn for ourselves and stalks of the same
for the mule. The conscripts preferred coffee and rice in payment, for
money is of slight value beyond the Rio Grande, but demanded five times
what the stuff was worth. It was not sweet-corn, and was either
half-grown or overripe, but was welcome for all that. We threw the ears
into the fire and raked them out, to munch what was not entirely burned
or still raw. The jejenes made it impossible to hold them over the fire
to toast. We squatted so closely over the blaze it all but burned our
garments, yet the relief was so great, in spite of the smoke in our
eyes, that we all but fell asleep into the fire.
The life of these garrisons is dismal in the extreme. The soldiers had
absolutely no drill or other fixed duty. In most cases they were too
apathetic to plant anything, even to dig a well, however heavily time
hung on their hands, preferring to starve on half-rations, to choke in
the dry season and drink mud in the wet, rather than to exert
themselves. Each “fort” had in the center of the “parade-ground” a crude
horizontal-bar made of a sapling. But it was used only for a languid
moment, when utter ennui drove some one to it. The impossibility of
“team-work” among Latin-Americans was never more clearly demonstrated
than by the fact that each soldier cooked his own food separately three
times a day over his own stick fire. There was not faith enough among
them even to permit division of labor in bringing fire-wood. Each set
his _marmita_, a soldier’s tin cook-pot shaped to fit between the
shoulders, on the ends of burning sticks and sat constantly on his heels
beside it, lest it spill over as one of the fagots burned away. The
fellows were astonished to learn the use of Y-shaped sticks for hanging
their kettles.
Toward morning I slept an hour or two from utter exhaustion. It was
astonishing how one recuperated for all the day ahead with so short a
rest. After all, tramping is not like mental labor; a brief repose is
all that is necessary. The savages having deceived us for three days, we
lessened our burdens by fastening rifle and shotgun within quick reach
on the mule, though still keeping our revolvers handy. Wild animals are
commonly hidden away in the silence of the forest, even in such
wildernesses, and rarely cross a path used by man; but they are not
always unseen. We were tramping side by side when I pointed excitedly at
the narrowing vista of the road ahead.
“Deer!” I cried.
The German, his mind perhaps on Indians, all but sprang over his mule.
Some two hundred yards ahead a reddish fawn stood grazing, and fresh
meat would have been more acceptable just then than eternal riches. As a
three-year soldier it was surely my companion’s place to shoot; besides,
the rifle and cartridges were his. But he marched stolidly forward. With
no officer behind to give a stentorian command, his mind refused to
work. Every step was increasing the probability of seeing a splendid
venison repast for ourselves and for the soldiers ahead bound away into
the trackless forest.
“Schüsse doch!” I cried, in a hoarse whisper.
Alas! I had overlooked the preliminary routine of “Ready! Load! Aim!”
The German snatched hastily and blindly at the pack, leveled a gun, and
fired. A discharge of bird-shot sprinkled the nearby tree-trunks, and
the startled deer sprang with one leap into the unknown. Konanz had
caught up the shotgun instead of the rifle!
It must not be gathered, however, that he was not an effective hunter,
given prey fitted to his abilities. All this region is noted for its
_petas_, a large land-turtle, with the empty charred shells of which any
camping-ground is sure to be scattered. During the afternoon the German
actually ran one down.
Tied on the pack, it arrived at the fourth and last _fortín_ of the
Monte Grande, Guayritos, a larger clearing surrounded by _matorrales_ or
palm-tree swamps, and noted for attacks by the savages. The corporal
ordered one of his three men to prepare the turtle. He split it open
with a machete and, removing all the meat, spitted the liver, the chief
delicacy, on a stick, while I set the rest to boiling. When it had
cooked for an hour, the addition of a handful of rice and a chip of
salty rock made the most savory repast of several days. All through the
cooking Konanz had sat moodily by, fighting clouds of jejenes and
smoking furiously for protection. When the meal was ready he refused to
touch it. Evidently turtle is not eaten in the German army. But for once
the inner man all but overcame the iron discipline of years. It may have
been the smoke that brought tears to his eyes as I fell upon the mess;
at any rate he moved away from the fire and went to tramp gloomily up
and down the edge of the pascana. The thick muscles, that in life are so
strong that a man cannot pull a leg from its shell by main force, were
of a dark-red meat far superior to the finest chicken—unless appetite
deceived me—and almost boneless. The comatose condition induced by the
feast lasted with only an occasional break all night, so that I slept
considerably, even though the gnats roared about my net like a raging
sea on a distant cliff-bound coast, and a few hundred managed to gain
admittance.
A tropical shower was raging when we finished loading. Even the soldiers
were in a snarling mood. The going was so slippery that it was painful.
For long distances there were _camelones_ or _barriales_, as the
interminable corduroy-like mud ridges with troughs of slime between them
are called. Every step was perilous, until we were splashed and soaked
from hat-crown down; after that a misstep and a sprawl did not matter.
Skeletons of oxen were numerous along the way. When the rain ceased, the
day remained thick, and the heat was heavy enough to cut with a spade.
For long stretches we waded waist-deep through swamps of long green
grasses. A few slight pascanas began to break the endless forest. In one
of them, and scattered far beyond, we met the first travelers since
entering the woods,—four rusty and mud-plastered wagons, hopelessly
mired, others with their several yokes of oxen lying indifferently in
water, mud, or on dry land.
That afternoon our journey seemed to have come ignominiously to an end.
An immense swamp or lake a half-mile wide spread across the trail and
far away in both directions into the now thinner forest, the notorious
“curiche de Tuná.” We attempted to flank it, only to have a faint side
path end in the impassable tangles of an even greater swamp. Wandering
in this for an hour, we regained the road at last, and, putting
everything damageable in our hats and strapping our revolvers about our
necks, attempted the crossing. The lake proved only chest-deep, but the
glue-like mud-bottom all but swallowed up the mule, and the pack emerged
streaming water from every corner.
The sun was getting low when we sighted a little wooded hill above the
sea-flat forest ahead. The road dodged the hillock, however, and we
slushed hopelessly on through endless virgin forest. Night was coming
on. The insignificance of man in these primeval woods was appalling.
Suddenly a large, rail-fenced cornfield appeared in a clearing beside
the “road,” but this plunged on again into the wilderness without
disclosing any other sign of humanity. Darkness was upon us when a man
in white rode out of the gloom ahead, and all but fell from his mule in
astonishment. We had passed unseen the branch trail to the scattered
hamlet of El Cerro, a score of thatched huts, constituting the first
civilian dwelling of man beyond the Rio Grande.
[Illustration:
The old stone and brick church and monastery of San José, erected by
the Jesuits, typical of the architecture of their “reductions”
throughout “Guarani Land”]
[Illustration:
The fatherly old cura of San José standing before the Jesuit sun-dial
in the patio of the ruined monastery, now the free abode of
travelers. The all-but-horizontal shadow across the dial shows 6:30
A. M.]