SKIRTING THE GRAN CHACO
We took possession of a _galpón_, a thatched roof on poles, up in the
edge of the jungle. But the anticipated feast was scanty. El Cerro had
little to sell and less desire to sell it. Konanz was so completely worn
out that he threw himself down supperless, without even swinging his
“hang-net.” After a hut to hut canvass I coaxed a cerrito to sell a
pound of fresh beef, which, with rice and some little red beans, made
such a stew as roused even the German from his stupor. We topped it off
with the succulent luxury of an _empanisado_, a smeary block of crude,
dark-brown, unpurified sugar, wrapped in leaves and costing eight times
what it would have in the jungles of north Peru. Of this we each ate
fully a pound, so great was our craving for sweets. Gnats were few in El
Cerro, and we slept such a night as seldom comes to the tropical
wanderer.
Two of them, for that matter. For a time next morning it looked as if I
should have to continue alone, “packing” my own food and possessions.
Konanz liked the appearance of the soil round about El Cerro and was
half inclined to settle there. We went to discuss the matter with the
horseman of the night before, a Spaniard long resident in the region, I
acting as interpreter. But in spite of my over-fairness in trying not to
influence his plans, the German decided to push on a few days further,
chiefly because the best land was largely held by absentee owners. But
he insisted on resting for a day. We removed some of the grime of travel
and dried out ourselves and possessions, and in the end even “fed up.”
For, seeing us by daylight, the people of El Cerro regained confidence
and decided that they had more to sell than they had fancied. For twenty
centavos a woman brought us the first bucketful of clear water we had
seen beyond Santa Cruz. I canvassed the town thoroughly and gleaned some
green plantains, three eggs, and a sheet of charqui, and finally
metamorphized sixty centavos into a spring chicken. Most of the
inhabitants were too apathetic to plant anything to break the endless
monotony of their rice diet, to say nothing of being too selfish to part
with what little they did grow. Their clothing consisted of two calico
garments and a straw hat for the men and a species of flying night-dress
for the women; and their industry was chiefly confined to lying in a
hammock in the shade. The women carried their children astride a hip, as
in the Orient, the Andean custom of slinging the papoose on the back
having entirely disappeared. Each family kept a smudge fire burning just
outside the door, as a protection against the jejenes. Rested up and
somewhat relieved from the “pinch” of insects, Konanz grew reminiscent
and now and then prefaced some characteristically Teutonic anecdote with
some such dreamy remark as:
“In China ve every day chip more ass two hunderd heads from der Boxers
off.”
Beyond El Cerro the landscape changes. The dense Monte Grande with its
glue-like loam gives place to a few suggestions of rocks and hills, and
the palm-trees and _frondoso_ vegetation characteristic of Chiquitos
appear. From the “Panteón,” a bit of clearing in the jungle, with
blackened wooden crosses tied together with jungle creepers standing
over the graves of former residents of El Cerro, we caught a short-cut
through somewhat thinner forest to the scattered hamlet of Motococito,
so named from the _motocú_ with which the roofs are thatched. Then we
went on all day without another sight of humanity. Now and again the
trail undulated over little rocky ridges, where the woods were a bit
more open and the danger from wild Indians—if there ever was
any—decreased. All day the unshaded tropical sun beat down upon us like
molten lead. In the afternoon an enormous _palmar_,—a swamp with a sort
of leaf-and-bulb growth protruding from the water and thickly grown with
slender palm-trees—opened out on our left and we should have had to wade
for miles chest-deep but for a new trail recently cut along the edge of
the stony, wooded hills, not always out of reach of the rising waters.
Birds large and small, from herons to noisy parrakeets, enlivened the
vast, flooded wilderness.
About four, we made out through the salt sweat in our eyes the first
cattle-ranch beyond the Rio Grande, and soon limped into the corral of
the “Estancia Equito,” at the foot of a slight knoll. A large two-story
house in wretched condition faced a yard overrun with swine and carpeted
with the trodden droppings of animals. From the balcony above, a surly
Indian-negro female grumpily gave us permission to spend the night where
we were, and offered no further assistance. Konanz had dropped on his
back in the first patch of shade and could not be stirred, even to
unload the mule; which was as well, for when tired out he was hopelessly
rattle-brained and apt to be of more annoyance than assistance. While I
piled our possessions into a covered cart out of reach of the militant
pigs, he complained of being ill and for the first time accepted some
quinine pills. Evidently these are permitted the Kaiser’s troops, once
they are visibly ailing. The meanness of the _estancieros_ was so
Bolivian that they would not even point out a water-hole. I hobbled
about for some time without finding anything better than a hog-wallow,
which dogs, fowls, and the Indian servants used indiscriminately. The
breath of the cattle corral drove off the insects somewhat, but the
inhabitants, two and four-legged, gave us no peace where I had swung the
hammocks after much effort. I coaxed the German to his feet, and with
half the load on the mule, half on my own back, led the way a few
hundred yards down the road to some abandoned reed-and-mud shacks. It
required a considerable tramp to gather dry wood, and the water, sickly
warm and ill-scented, had to be carried a long distance from a swamp
completely covered with a weedy bulb. Luckily, we had acquired in El
Cerro the “sister” of yesterday’s chicken, which, in spite of having
jolted on the pack all day under the blazing sun, was still half-alive.
By the time I had “chipped” off its head, performed the autopsy with a
dull machete, and finally sat down to supper—quickly to get up again
under the flagellation of insects—black tropical night had fallen, and
it was not easy to fetch more water to wash the dishes, without falling
into the source of supply. The German had not stirred since he had
dropped on his back again—except to drink a pail of soup and eat two
drumsticks and a wing. Then I must fetch another sackful of water, for
the sweat of the day, drying on the body, made the gnat-bitten skin so
many square inches of torture. Under the circumstances bathing was no
easy task. To have calmly disrobed would have been to be instantly
flayed alive by the army of insects. I piled on brush until the flames
blazed high, though artificial heat was not exactly required, then threw
sand upon them until only a heavy smudge remained. Standing astride
this, weeping copiously, mosquitos and jejenes falling furiously in
massed formation upon any patch of skin for an instant unsmoked, I
poured the sackful over me, and finally rolled into my hammock in the
streaming moonlight between two palm-trees.
Under the mosquitero the sweat ran in streams along my itching skin;
outside it millions of insects fought to reach me, not a few succeeding.
Bulls wandered by, bellowing in amorous anger. Now and then one paused
to sniff at me, pawed the earth savagely, and thrust his snout and horns
madly into it. Long rolls of thunder sounded in the east, growing louder
and nearer. The flashes of lightning became almost continuous. But the
sudden coolness and the fleeing of the insects before the rising wind
gave such a relief from torture that I fell quickly asleep. Suddenly
huge raindrops struck me in the face, and before I could snatch down the
hammock and race for one of the ruined shacks, the skies were pouring.
Then I must go back for my possessions, the damageable portion of which
I had taken the precaution to tie in a bundle. Konanz had gone to no
such trouble, so that all he owned was scattered over the surrounding
country, and such things as we were able to snatch in the flashes of
lightning proved in the morning to be those that could best have stood a
wetting. We swung our hammocks again in separate shacks, and enjoyed
some relief from heat and insects. But only a corner of the split-bamboo
roof above me did not leak like a sieve, and that was not sufficient to
cover more than half my length.
The rain had spoiled a tolerable road, tons of which we carried along in
the first fatiguing miles of slipping and sliding with every step. All
day we slapped through “der chungle” with no other sound than the swish
of our footsteps, as monotonously rhythmical as the ticking of a clock.
The mule had transferred her affections to me, perhaps because I did not
use a cudgel on her flanks or torture her ears with a stentorial
guttural bellow at every step, and no dog ever followed a fond master
more closely. Had I climbed a tree, the animal would certainly have got
up after me somehow. Konanz was therefore advanced to rear-guard. The
woods being a bit more open, we managed to dodge some of the sloughs by
crawling around them, though at the expense of being torn and cut by
cactus, wild pineapple leaves, and every known species of thorny
tropical undergrowth, so that each day saw us bleeding from a score of
superficial lacerations and our clothing rapidly becoming a tissue of
tatters. But the mule hated to wet her dainty feet, and must be pushed
bodily into each mud-hole and driven through it with loud words and
well-aimed clods, even then often turning back to follow me through the
underbrush. Once, in mid-morning, when I fancied her well across a
slough, I heard a crashing in the brush behind me and turned just in
time to see the affectionate animal emerge stark naked from between two
trees, the pack stripped completely off her.
[Illustration:
Henry Halsey, the American rancher of tropical Bolivia, and his family]
[Illustration:
Saddle-steers take the place of horses and mules in the muddy parts of
tropical Bolivia. Rate of travel: about two miles an hour]
“Now you see vat you do!” cried the German tearfully.
“What who did?” I demanded. “Is it any fault of mine that the sex
pursues me through thick and thin?”
But he was already studying out which knot of the diamond-hitch to
tackle first in such an emergency.
In a way it would have been easier to carry my own bundle than to work
for and humor the German so incessantly. A species of tropical madness,
familiar to many travelers in the wilds, frequently came upon him. The
simple question of whether or not he wished a block to sit on would
bring from him a roar of rage, as if he who did not know his wishes in
the matter were the king of fools. It was all but impossible to keep up
my notes, to say nothing of lifting myself above the surroundings by an
occasional page of Nietzsche. If I dared draw out pen or book during a
pause in the shade at noonday, steeling myself against the swarming
insects, my companion took to looking askance at such occupation. Like
most illiterates—meaning by that those who _can_, but have not the habit
of reading—he subconsciously resented such action. Perhaps it isn’t done
in the best circles of the German army. He had not heard of Nietzsche,
but admitted during a cheerful mood that it sounded like a German name.
In most cases he quickly found some useless topic of conversation, or
some chore for me to do, going so far as to fly into an open rage if I
ignored these hints. His moods were varied. From the deepest gloom, in
which he would not answer yes or no to the simplest question, he would
grow suddenly bland and garrulous, almost maudlin in his good humor,
from no apparent cause, and a bare half-hour after some fit of rage he
would be bellowing songs of the Fatherland in a voice to call down upon
us all the savages of the region, had the peril not been neutralized by
a lack of tunefulness tending to produce the opposite effect. The German
army ration, he took frequent occasion to specify, consists of exactly
so many grams of this, that, and the other, and Konanz considered any
man who wanted his supplies in any other proportions a pervert, a
weakling, and a rascal.
Once we passed a train of ox-cars laden with boxes of merchandise marked
“Via Montevideo en transito para Bolivia,” suggesting that the Atlantic
was becoming more accessible than the Pacific. Most of them also bore
the information “Ausfuhrgut,” denoting their origin; and all were so old
and weather-worn that they seemed to have been months on the road.
Indeed, goods for Santa Cruz have been known more than once to be two
years en route. The government seeks to make this trans-Bolivian route
more popular by reducing by 15 percent the duty on imports by way of
Puerto Suarez.
Beyond a swamp which we managed only partly to dodge we met a
disorganized band of soldiers, each attended by his chola, who might be,
but probably in most cases was not, his wife, crawling painfully toward
Santa Cruz with strange assortments of odds and ends on their backs,
including the indispensable hammock each and several babies. According
to them, the next settlement was so far distant that we gave up hope of
reaching it that day and camped in the road, where there was barely room
to pile our baggage beside a mud-hole for cooking and drinking. Every
hint of breeze was cut off by the forest walls high above us, and the
night that followed our stew of rice, beans, and charqui was one to be
quickly forgotten—if possible. Stripped naked, the sweat ran off me in
streams, soaking through the hammock. Into this the iron-jawed insects
swarmed in such masses, in spite of the net, that I was forced to
abandon it to them entirely. For a time I tramped up and down the road
in the moonlight. But every few steps I stumbled half asleep. I built a
fire about my hammock and covered it with sand, but the smudge had
little effect on the insects and made the heat and sweat all the more
unendurable, so that I stumbled back and forth in the roadway most of
the night.
We tramped four red-hot hours to Piococa, all but falling on our faces
from sleepiness, and dodging the worst sloughs only by many a struggle
with the jungle. Here, in a small open green backed by rock-faced,
wooded hillocks, was the estancia-house of a cruceño to whom I had a
letter. Only an Indian girl, stupid and filthy beyond words, was there,
however, and we got a guinea-hen and some boiled yuca at last only by
infinite coaxing. At least there was plenty of rich grass for the mule,
and a clear running stream in which I bathed and laundered and lay
emerged most of the afternoon in protection from the gnats. In our
hammocks under the trees the insects were almost as bad as ever. The
only possible relief was to walk swiftly up and down. Had I been alone,
I should have pushed on without a stop until I reached a place of rest,
but the German was so worn out that not even the “pinching” of the
mosquitos could stir him up. There was at least a certain curiosity to
know how long the human frame could hold up under these unbroken
hardships.
At dusk three youths rode up on saddled steers, the chief means of
transportation in these parts. The saddles were not unlike our “Texas,”
and the single leather rein passed from the ring in the nose over the
forehead of the animal, between the horns. Steers cross deep mud more
easily than horses or mules, but are much slower and more easily
exhausted, and the width of their flanks makes long riding painful to
the hips. The motion is mildly like that of the camel. The natives sat
for hours all but motionless, smoking _cigarros de chala_, cigarettes
rolled in corn-husks. Between a few gnat-bitten snatches of sleep I
tramped the yard, pausing now and then to squat beside the fire that
smudged all night before the native hut, forming a veritable curtain of
smoke through which the insects hesitated to pass. The family inside
swung in their hammocks all the night through. What secret means the
people of this region have to keep their hammocks constantly moving,
while to all appearances they are sound asleep, I was never able to
learn. More than once I watched them for a long half-hour swinging back
and forth with no evident means of propulsion, lying all but on their
backs, one bare leg hanging over the edge of the _hamaca_, as if these
children of the wilderness had long since solved the problem of
perpetual motion that civilization has so far sought in vain.
In the morning the tendency to fall down asleep in full march remained.
The road was wider and the forest more open, so that the sun beat upon
us like an open puddling-furnace. We paused to drink from any cart-rut
or swamp, and to wash from our eyes the blinding sweat that quickly
filled them again. A huge hairy spider now and then ran by underfoot.
The natives say they are deadly. We did not halt to investigate. Beyond
the breathless corner of the woods where we cooked the last of our beans
we met a welcome sight,—a woman with a bundle on her head; not merely
the first traveler since passing the soldiers, but a sign that we were
approaching a town. An hour further on we waded a small river, climbed a
gentle slope heavy in sand, and found ourselves in a silent hamlet of
sandy streets and an enormous grass-grown plaza backed by a stone
church, as out of proportion to its surroundings as the Escorial in its
village. We had reached at last the famous old town of Saint Joseph.
The heels of my boots had worn away until they protruded from my ankles
like spurs, and I had been forced to chop them off entirely with the
machete. My hat had been trampled by the German and the mule during the
thunder-storm until it was no longer recognizable. Torn, smeared, and
bewhiskered with twelve days of jungle travel and mud-hole wading,
tattooed from hair to soles with insect arabesques, bleached and faded
by sweat and the raging sun, we were no fit sights for a ladies’ club as
we hobbled out upon the broad plaza. One of the huts facing it was the
home and office of the subprefect. He, however, was “out on his farm” a
few miles away, recuperating no doubt from the rush and roar of the
city. “But all strangers lodge in the monastery.” We hobbled in at a
door under the four-story stone tower of that incongruous church, and
found ourselves in a former residence of the Jesuits. The traveler asks
permission of no one, but goes and takes possession; for the owners are
far away and long absent. Now the ancient monastery is in the last
stages of dilapidation. Under the arched corredores, backed by noisome
ruined pens that were once the vaulted cells of monks, were a score of
hammock-posts. A half-dozen soldiers and their females occupied some of
these. We swung our hammocks in the long space left and picketed the
mule out on the grassy plaza. Here and there on the stone walls were
crude, life-size drawings of Bolivian boy-soldiers shooting Indians clad
in feather clouts and armed with long bows and arrows. Three arched
cells up against the church across the patio had been roughly walled up
to serve as the provincial jail, with an earth floor and a log of wood
as bed or bench, its one window protected by hoop-iron bars a girl could
have pushed off with one hand. In the back arches lived the cura, a
little, dried-up, hare-minded cholo, with the half-dozen of his children
not yet old enough to shift for themselves, and their two mothers. We
learned later that he had twenty-two recognized children, some of them
men of importance in the department. Though he went about pleading
poverty and begging from the Indians, the padre owned nearly half the
carts that ply the road through San José, and no small amount of the
surrounding acreage.
[Illustration:
A German of tropical Bolivia and his “housekeeper.” Showing the
_mosquitero_ with which all beds or hammocks of this region are
covered as a protection against the mosquitos and _jejenes_]
[Illustration:
Santiago de Chiquitos, above the gnat-line, backed by its reddish
cliffs]
San José de Chiquitos is the capital of a province so named because the
early Spaniards found the doors of the native huts so small, as a
protection against gnats and their tribal enemies, that they could only
enter them by making themselves _chiquitos_ (tiny) and crawling in on
all fours. In 1560 Ñuflo de Chaves, ascending the Paraguay river,
founded here the original Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the street plan of
which may still be imperfectly traced in the jungle a league away at the
foot of a rock-faced hill. This first settlement was later removed to
its present site, but in 1695 the Jesuits established here, in what is
to-day Bolivian territory, under the name of San José, one of their ten
“reductions.” Not even the ruins of Paraguay, the republic most
associated with the memory of the Loyalists, give a better notion of the
establishments in which the Indian tribes “converted” by the good
Fathers were gathered to toil for the safety of their souls and the
filling of the coffers of the society in Paris. The mission remains much
as it was when the order was expelled from Spanish territory, too
isolated to be picked to pieces by visitors, its people too apathetic to
make use of its cut-stone for their own buildings.
These “reductions” were all alike in plan,—a large central square was
enclosed by a wall, a ditch, and a stockade, as much to keep the
“converts” from escaping as to protect them from the wild Indians and
the _mamelucos_ of Brazil who came in quest of slaves. An immense
church, in the building of which the Padres made use of their subjects
as freely as the Pharaohs, stood high above all else. The enormous
mission of San José, conspicuous in its grandeur amid the solitude of
the jungle as are the monuments of Egypt in their desert setting, was
built of brick and stone under Spanish artisans, the four-story tower
bearing the date 1748, and a stone sun-dial in the center of the patio,
by which we could still tell the hour, that of 1765. From the summit of
the tower the town below looked like an oasis in a desert of dense
green, stretching ocean-wide on every hand. The huge bells were still
suspended by ropes of _güembe_, a vine used in place of nails in modern
constructions, and so strong and durable that it has held these immense
masses in place more than a hundred years. The tolling of church-bells,
striking even amid the rumble of civilization, was solemn in the extreme
above the utter silence of the trackless _selva_ and savage tropical
solitudes.
The evidence is convincing that the first Jesuits to arrive were
self-sacrificing idealists, filled with a zeal for converts that made
even trickery,—decoy Indians, abundance of food, dances and
festivals—fair play. Conversion was absurdly simple. Catch an Indian,
sprinkle him with holy water, and shut him up within the mission
stockade, and his soul was safely on the road to heaven. But once these
idealists had gathered the Indians together and won their confidence,
they were superseded by astute, hard-headed men of keen business
ability, less interested in “saving souls” than in winning temporal
power and earthly riches for their society. The later Padres lived like
the princes of medieval Europe, surrounded by every luxury the forced
labor of the Indians could buy. With virtually a monopoly in trade,
having neither wages nor taxes to pay, they were almost wholly free from
individual competition. They gave each Indian the education they
considered fitting to his place in life, taught as many trades as the
society had need of, forbade intercourse with strangers or the learning
of the Spanish language, made early marriage compulsory, often mating
couples offhand, as did the Incas, and ruled over their subjects
sternly, requiring all to rise, eat, work, and sleep in unison at the
beating of a bell or drum; in short, they treated the “converts” like
valuable domestic animals. From the cradle to the grave the Indian lived
in complete submission to the Padres. In church and at work there was a
complete segregation of the sexes under the old régime. But by night all
were gathered together, often several families under the roof of a
single _galpón_, with all the degeneration of customs thereby suggested.
Thanks to the careful fostering of the race, there is said to have been
100,000 “converts” in the “reductions” at the height of Jesuit power.
San José is doubly notable historically, for it was here, rumor has it,
that the Loyalists were planning to build the capital of a kingdom of
their own when they were overtaken by the decree banishing them from
Spanish dominions.
The last census in Jesuit days credited San José with more than 2000
inhabitants. To-day it has barely a fourth as many, drowsing through
life in low, mud huts scattered carelessly along the sand streets some
three blocks on all sides of the plaza. Not a few of the original
converts of the Jesuits, suddenly regaining their liberty at the
expulsion of the Padres, “went back to the bush,” which accounts for the
unmistakable signs of European blood in more than one naked savage laid
low by a traveler’s rifle. Even to-day such reversions to type are not
unknown; and this, with the drain of the rubber fields of the Beni, has
done most to reduce the population to its present low ebb. The
inhabitants belong to the same general family as the several tribes of
wild Indians that attack travelers on the road across Bolivia, and which
are even to-day the terror of San José itself, having more than once
assaulted the place with fury. But in the town this Indian blood is
commonly mixed with negro or white, and though Spanish is more general,
the _chiquitana_ tongue, a branch of the Guaraní or Tupy of eastern
South America, is still spoken.
The chiquitano is in features about the antithesis of our inherited
Greek idea of beauty. His head is round, with little or no back to it,
the hair thick, jet-black, and coarse as a horse’s mane, his face wide,
all its features bulky, especially the nose, which recalls the negro, as
do also the thick, prominent lips. His eyes are black and rather small,
his ears plump and prominent, his teeth generally white and strong, the
chin neither prominent nor receding. In color he is light-brown, not
unlike the Hindu—or the tint of a tan shoe after a month of wear and
polish. His body is heavy, thick-set, and muscular, though without what
we call “development” of any particular set of muscles. This
thick-setness is even more noticeable in the women than among the men,
the former being more erect and high-chested from carrying water-jars
and other heavy loads on their heads from childhood. The feet are large,
with strong, well-separated toes. Their clothing is simple and
excellently adapted to the tropics, where the looser the garment the
better the health. The men wear a felt or straw hat and thin cotton
jacket and trousers, loose-fitting and generally white in origin, with a
wide leather belt containing several pockets and frequently decorated
with large silver coins. The women never cover their heads and wear
nothing whatever except the _tipoy_, a single loose gown, thin and white
as a night-dress, without sleeves and with the neck cut as low as is
possible without danger of losing the garment entirely. In these they
frequently march into the stream behind the town—for the inhabitants of
this tropical region are far more cleanly than those of the upper
plateau—rolling up the garment as the water covers them, until it is
folded on the head in the form of a turban. As they arise from the bath,
they unfold a clean gown so skillfully that the sharpest glance will
catch nothing but tipoy and water. As a race the chiquitanos are
extremely independent, and very incommunicative to any than their own
people; like all American aborigines, they show outwardly very little of
their thoughts and impressions. Hurrying is utterly unknown to them,
though at times they work with a leisurely steadiness. They show few
signs of affection, or on the other hand of aversion or anger, being,
indeed, strangely like automatons or lay-figures in their deportment.
There is far less religion, or at least outward sign of it, in these
tropical towns than up on the bleak Andean plateau. Is it because the
highlands, drear and mysterious, like Palestine or the wastes of Arabia,
bring on a dread that is not felt in the tropics, where nature is, or at
least seems, more kindly? When a native dies he is buried at once, then
his family and friends start a “santa novena,”—nine days of mourning in
which they gather together each day to pray and to drink themselves into
complete intoxication. He who has given occasion for the festival is
looked upon almost as a benefactor. But there is very little hint of
mysticism or worship in these post-mortem antics.
In the “good old days” of Chiquitos, following the expulsion of the
Jesuits, the _cacique_ brought each traveler a maid for his service.
To-day it is the mothers or sisters who offer the guest of the monastery
a companion during his stay. Not even Santa Cruz can compare with the
former “reduction” in the complacency of its customs. The Indians of all
this region, it seems, were as free and natural in their sexual
relations as the ancient Greeks or several other pre-Christian nations,
seeing no harm in the indulgence of a natural appetite; and while the
Jesuit fathers had a decided influence in other matters, they had little
in this respect. Indeed, there is evidence that the Padres set an
example in this regard quite at variance with their preaching.
In San José I discovered that Konanz could not speak his mother tongue.
We had called on the manager of one of the two “Belgian” houses for
information in the matter of homestead colonists in the region, and at
every few words my companion spilled over into his home-made “English.”
A dozen times I had to remind him that the manager did not understand
that tongue. Here was exactly the type of immigrant Bolivia sadly needs,
a man prepared to spend his life in the country, capable of sustained
toil, and likely to leave strong children behind him. Yet already the
politicians of La Paz had given three large syndicates title, almost for
nothing, to all the fertile portions of this immense territory, and
these held it shut against settlers who did not accept their terms,
which, as I heard them outlined to Konanz, virtually made them vassals
to the companies. Instead of assisting a fellow-countryman far off here
in the wilderness, the manager used all his suave persuasiveness to get
my companion’s name signed to a contract of benefit only to his own
“Belgian” house, and would in all probability have succeeded had I not
been there with counteracting advice in English.
These houses are more jesuitical than their predecessors in exploiting
the natives—“and their own employees,” a former one has added, on
reading my notes. The bribery of government officials to obtain immense
concessions of land which they make no effort to develop is a mere
detail of their business methods. They sell at from 200 to 800 percent
increase over buying prices even of Puerto Suarez. A German imitation of
a $12 American plow was held at 100 bolivianos ($40); a roll of barbed
wire at 40 Bls.; ordinary shoes, as much; a four-gallon can of kerosene,
20 Bls. Not merely do the Germans take advantage of their virtual
monopoly to buy of the natives at a fifth of the just value, and sell
again at five times that; but even their dealings with each other are
unprincipled. One episode will stand as typical. A bank failed in La
Paz. The government, seeing all the Germans as brothers, notified one of
the firms that the bills issued by that bank had become worthless,
expecting one house to warn the other. Instead, the manager gathered
together all the worthless _billetes_ in his possession and sent them
one at a time by natives to the rival house, with orders to make some
small purchase and bring back the change in good money.
Barter is the chief form of commerce in all this region. We chanced to
be chattering with the manager of a “Belgian” house in San José, when
the wobbly-minded old cura came in with a long document written on the
firm’s stationery. It proved to be the certificate of baptism of a
daughter recently born to the manager, whose “housekeeper” had insisted
on this formality. After much chaffering the priest was at last beaten
down to three bolivianos for his divine services.
“Caramba!” cried the German, in pretended anger. “If you ’re going to
mulct me this way every time, I’ll discharge my housekeeper and bring
you no more to baptise. And what are you going to take for those three
billetes?” he went on.
The priest ran his dull eyes around the shelves, packed with all manner
of cheap imports, until they fell upon a long array of bottles. Then he
glanced back at the manager, who was at that moment offering him a
cigarette.
“Pues, señor,” mumbled the old ecclesiastic, as he accepted a light, “I
wonder if you have a real good wine, proper to say mass with.”
“Cómo no!” cried the German, in his throaty but self-confident Spanish.
“There is a splendid wine, just the thing for mass, worth five
bolivianos even in Europe, but”—with a wink at Konanz and myself,—“to
you, as my compadre as well as priest, I’ll make it three.”
The cura accepted the exchange and wandered back to the monastery with
the bottle under his arm. To judge from the condition he was in when we
returned to our lodging, he said at least a half-dozen masses that very
evening.
We were lolling luxuriously in our hammocks one morning, when a man in a
sun-faded straw hat, cotton jacket and trousers, a long lack of shave,
and feet that had never known the restraint of shoes, wandered into the
compound and asked Konanz if he spoke English. The latter, full of the
self-confidence of his race, had already misinformed the newcomer in the
affirmative when I drew his attention. There was not a hair of the man’s
head that did not cry native, yet he spoke my own tongue rapidly, with
only the intangible hint of a foreign accent.
“Where did you learn English?” I yawned.
“Why, I am an American!” came the startling answer. “My name is Jim
Powell. We was born in Texas,” he went on without urging. “I don’t
remember what place, an’ when I was small paw an’ maw they went away
with five of us children because North America was fixin’ to fight. I
don’t know what country they was aimin’ to fight, but paw he didn’t want
to, ’n’ so we sailed across the ocean to Bolivia. The other seven
children was born in Chiquitos, an’ finally paw he up an’ died last
year. Maw she’s livin’ out to San Antonio, an’ the rest is mostly
scattered around. One of the girl’s married to a judge in Santa Cruz an’
the others is on the rocks.”
His language was that of the “white trash” of our southern states, but
was academic compared to the illiterate brogue of his brother,
“Hughtie,” who arrived soon after him. The latter had come to Bolivia so
young that Spanish and chiquitana were his native tongues. He was a
bullock-driver for a native owning several carts, and had recently been
released from eight months in the prison of Santa Cruz, at the cost of
all he owned,—“Jes’ becoze I killed a feller thet was monkeyin’ with one
o’ my women.” Accustomed as we are to transplanted foreigners of all
nationalities in our own country, it was a distinct shock to come upon a
Bolivianized American. Such atavism brought the reflection that
civilization is at best a weak and artificial thing.
So completely native had the pair become that the natives themselves
never thought of them as foreigners. “Hughtie” was soon to leave for the
Paraguay river with a train of carts, and invited us to go along,
pretending, native fashion, that he was in charge of the expedition, of
which, in reality, he was a mere peon. When the time set came, he
wandered into the monastery to say that we should start the following
night—“if thet there mozo finds thet there bull that run away;” or if
not, then the next night. “Hughtie” was a true Bolivian in putting his
trust chiefly in to-morrow.
The shadow across the Jesuit sun-dial was exactly horizontal when,
refreshed by four long gnatless days and nights in San José, we pushed
on along a road that stretched like a tunnel through the greenery.
Konanz had decided to travel a few days further eastward. The road was
of sand that drunk up the rains quickly, but thirst was correspondingly
worse. Jejenes were fewer, though swarms of swamp flies added their
annoyance. The danger of savages was less than in the Monte Grande; on
the other hand “tigers,” as the natives call the jaguar, were said to be
plentiful. The mosquitero protected us from these, however, were any
protection needed, even when sleeping in the wilderness; for the animal
is never known to attack unless it can see the head of its victim. We
were soon splashing again waist-deep through swamps, and often wading as
laboriously through deep sand between them. Beyond the palm-thatched
hamlet of Dolores, where we saw our first wild ostriches, the country
grew more open, with scrub trees, the way strewn with appetizing
_petas_, or land turtles, the hollow charred shells of which marked more
than one camping-ground of former travelers. We should have reached the
ranch of an American off the main trail on the second day, had not the
German given out at Las Taperas, a cluster of three huts at the forking
of the ways. We camped under a heavily loaded lemon tree, beside a
swampy lake backed far off by a blue range of low hills. From this
flowed a clear little stream in which I lay most of the afternoon with
only my nose and hands out of water and finished the volume of
Nietzsche, to the disgust of the German, who did not believe in “vashing
all over der body.”
In the morning we struck off by the faint trail around the lake. The day
was brilliant, and the going pleasant enough to be enjoyed amid my own
meditations. I let the German and his animal draw on ahead, until they
were lost to view in the placid chiquitano landscape. At Las Taperas we
had bought for twenty cents a whole bunch of the fat little “silky”
bananas of the region, and hung them on the pack. As I plodded on
through a low scrub forest and a tough and wiry grass, knee-high, hunger
gradually intruded upon my dreams, and almost at the instant it grew
tangible a fresh banana appeared in the trail before me. After that they
were as nicely proportioned to my requirements as manna to the
Israelites in a not wholly dissimilar wilderness. But what had become of
Konanz? Hour after hour passed without a sign of him. He was not
accustomed to lead the way for so prolonged a period. I pushed on more
rapidly, not entirely free from visions of savages falling upon him. The
sun stood high overhead, casting down its rays like the contents of an
overturned melting-pot, when I caught sight of him at last some distance
beyond. He lay panting and dripping in the scant shade of a bush, while
the mule stood tied to another, eyeing him suspiciously. It was a full
minute before he gathered breath to relieve my anxiety.
“Oh, you —— —— mool!” he gasped, shaking his fist at the animal so
savagely that it all but tore itself loose, “Rhight avay now I shoot you
der head through, you ——”
Expurgated of its adjectives, the story, during which I was forced to
retain a deep solemnity, was that the mule,—after having been beaten and
kicked during all the loading that morning—had suddenly taken fright
when the German started up from a log on which he had rested for a
moment, and had run away. For hours the angry Teuton had pursued the
animal, trailing her by the clue of bananas she had dropped at intervals
for my benefit, until, no doubt frightened to find herself alone in the
wilderness, “she come valking pack against me. Chust like a vomans, py
Gott! Rhunned avay un’ den gum scneaking pack, pegause she haf to haf
der home un’ der master!”
Beyond the _rancho_ of Pablo Rojo the pampa gave place to _monte_, dense
tangled growth not tall enough to shade us from the blazing afternoon
sun, yet high enough to cut us off in the trough-like trail from every
breath of breeze, until our tongues and throats went parched and
charqui-dry, and the red-hot sand sifted in through the holes in my
shoes and burned my toes. Konanz could only be coaxed along a mile at a
time, between which he lay like a log in any patch of shade to be found.
Luckily, the sun was still above the horizon when the endless jungle was
enlivened by the welcome sight of a thatched house framed in corn and
banana fields and backed by slight wooded ridges. About the gate, toward
which we tore our way through jungle grass shoulder-high, were toiling
three men in long-uncut hair and beards, barefoot in their leather
_ajotas_, and wearing the customary chiquitano garb of two thin and
faded garments topped by sun-faded hats of local weave.
[Illustration:
“Don Cupertino,” chief adornment of eastern Bolivia, with his family
and dependents. The man on the right is a German neighbor. The
Indian at his side has leaves stuck on his temples to cure his
headache]
To my astonishment, all three turned out to be Americans. Henry Halsey,
whose welcome was as genuine as any I received in South America, though
less expressed in words than deeds, was owner of this wilderness estate;
his employees were “Chris” and George Powell, younger brothers of the
pair we had met in San José. Halsey was a Virginian whose career had
ranged from teaching country school to mining in Zaruma and Cerro de
Pasco. The altitude bothered him and he had drifted to Paraguay, only to
find “too much government” and to push on into this wilderness as far
from the world as a man can easily get. Not because the government of
Bolivia is an improvement on that of Paraguay, but because its tentacles
rarely reach so far into the wilds, he had prospered. He had all but
come to grief at the outset, however. Barely had he chosen a knoll on
which to build his hut, when he was bitten by a small viper that swelled
one leg to thrice its natural size and left him half paralyzed. For four
days he could not move from where he lay, and only by good fortune had
he water within reach, for no other human being appeared until long
after his recovery. Now, with a native wife and child, as well as his
peons, he was in no danger of repeating the experience. With American
energy he had cleared of the primeval, tropical forest a large space
that now waved with corn-fields and sugar-cane, with bananas and
productive ground-vines, and had built a large house in the native style
and a distillery to turn his sugar-cane into value, while his cattle
spread over a broad region in which he had no neighbor to dispute his
sway. His chief problem was to get peons; for as often as a native was
named subprefect of the district, he rounded up all the laborers for
many miles around and forced them to work on his own estate. Thus Halsey
was reduced to the intermittent assistance of “Chris” and George. These
Bolivian-born sons of the Texan who didn’t “aim” to fight were as truly
peons as the lowest of the natives. They were subject to the same
“slavery” that prevails in all the region, hiring themselves out for an
advance and getting ever more deeply into debt to their employer.
“Chris” was just then “working out” a rifle, and his brother a
saddle-steer. They had all the diffidence of the native peon, the same
point of view, the same loose habits, spoke “English” only when forced
to, lamely and without self-confidence, ending every sentence with an
appealing, “Ain’t thet right, maw?” to their mother. The latter was
strikingly typical of the erosion of customs, a “poor white” of our
south grafted upon the life of tropical Bolivia. Completely illiterate,
barefoot, bedraggled as any native woman, whom she went one better by
incessantly chewing tobacco, she had wholly succumbed to her
environment, and spoke fluently one of the most atrocious imitations of
Spanish it has ever been my fortune to hear in a long experience with
all grades of that tongue.
Here we made up royally for all the hungry days behind us. The products
of Halsey’s exotic industry ranged all the way from fowls to milk—huge
bowls of real, honest-to-goodness milk, unboiled, unspoiled in any
Latin-American way—lacking only bread, which could not be had in these
wilds at a dollar a nibble. Its rôle was filled by cold boiled squash,
or plantains fried in lard. The craving for sweets I found was no
personal weakness. Halsey ate huge quantities of sugar—which he refined
by the primitive method of covering it with a layer of mud—sprinkling it
on every possible dish and often munching it like candy. The longing for
fats or grease, commonly supposed to be chiefly confined to the arctic
regions, was also extraordinary in this climate. So great was the demand
for lard that it sold at 50 cents a pound; the axle-grease supplied by
the owners of bullock-carts was mixed with soap to prevent the peon
drivers from eating it. Among the children of the region dirt-eating,
due to some morbid condition of the stomach, is almost universal,
frequently resulting in death unless the vigilance of parents is
constant. The majority are chalky white, weak and sickly, with enormous,
protruding bellies. One of Halsey’s sources of income was the carting of
salt from the _salinas_, shallow lakes some days to the south, around
the shores of which it gathers in large quantities, to the neighboring
hamlet of San Juan, where it sold at 25 bolivianos a hundred-weight. The
region was well stocked with deer; wild cattle belonged to whoever shot
them; jaguars were not hard to find and _antas_ were so numerous that he
shot at least one a week to feed his hogs. This stout, bulky animal,
largest of the South American fauna, known to us as the tapir, lives in
the dense thickets near streams or water-holes, in which it bathes by
moonlight or in the gray of dawn. The experienced hunter has little
difficulty in waylaying the anta, since it always follows the same path
to and from the water. The Bolivian variety is about the size of a
yearling calf, with short legs and a long, flexible, porcine snout. Its
skin, excellent for the making of harness, is so tough that it dashes
with impunity through the densest spiny thickets, often tearing from its
back by this means its chief enemy, the jaguar. Caught young, the anta
becomes as tame as a puppy, following its master with marked devotion.
Four days I swung my hammock under a great tree before Halsey’s door,
reading belated magazines of the light-weight order, the neurotic
artificiality of which seemed particularly ridiculous against this
background of primitive nature, as the complexity of life in great
cities stood out by contrast to the simple ways of the region. Lounging
in the tropical shade it was easy to understand why men so often settle
down in the tropics and let the world drift on without them, easy to
lose the feeling that life is short and fleeting, that one will be a
long time dead, and must grasp existence as it passes. The day after our
arrival Konanz had fallen victim to chills and fever. My regret was
tempered by the memory of many a vain struggle to get him to take a
daily dose of quinine. When he recovered, which did not promise to be
soon, he planned to explore the region round about for a spot on which
to settle. I took leave of my fellow-men on one of the last mornings of
January and struck off alone.
That day’s experience emphasized the difference between trackless jungle
and even the poorest of roads. Some twelve miles separated Halsey’s
estate from the traveled trail. The faint path through wiry grasses and
low brush, which he had pointed out to me, died out even sooner than I
had feared. I pushed on in the direction I knew I must go,—south and a
shade east. A wooded bluff standing above the jungle landscape, like the
Irish coast from the sea, gave an objective point. It was on the summit
of this that “Thompson” and his fellow-assassin had planted in vain
their ill-gotten gold; in just such jungle as that about me they had
wandered starved and choking for days; somewhere in this sea of
vegetation lay the sun-bleached and vulture-picked bones of the more
fortunate of the pair.
To keep a due course in the trackless wilderness is not so easy as to
set it. I was soon among heavier undergrowth that cut down my progress
like a head wind that of a “windjammer,” then in head-high jungle that
made every step a struggle, then in full forest with the densest
undergrowth snatching, clinging, tearing at me for all the world like
living beings determined to stop my advance at any cost. Vines enwrapped
me, head, chest, waist, and feet, at every step. Thorns and brambles
gashed and tore my sweat-rotted clothing, leaves of wild pineapple laid
bare my bleeding knees, the jungle reached forth and snatched a sleeve
from my shirt, slashed my hands, broke my bootlaces, poured blinding
sweat into my eyes, and treacherously tripped me up, so that I smashed
headlong into masses of vegetation where who knew what might be sleeping
or lurking. The scent of wild animals was pungent; now and then I fell
into their recent lairs or signs of their passing. Every plunge left me
so breathless from the incessant struggle that I was several minutes
gathering strength to crawl to my feet and tear my way onward.
All day I fought nature hand to hand, with the growing conviction that I
should still be struggling when night came upon me. The sun beat
pitilessly down into the breathless tangle. Once, when thirst seemed no
longer endurable, I had broken out upon a small swamp and thrown myself
face-down to drink it half dry. From it radiated the paths of wild
animals, and every inch of the wet sand was marked with their
footprints, as fresh as if they had that moment passed. I recognized
those of the deer, the anta, the cat-clawed jaguar; and those of at
least a score of smaller species were plainly visible. Beyond the
waist-deep swamp the waterless jungle was even thicker. The blue
headland of Ypias had long since been lost to view, and I found that I
was indeed going round in a circle, like the heroes of fiction, until I
drew out my compass and insisted that nature let me through the way it
indicated. Hunger was completely routed by a thirst like a raging
furnace within me. Frequently I brought up against thorn-bristling
thickets so dense that further progress seemed impossible, and must tear
my way back and forth, as along some fortress wall, seeking a weak spot
in the impregnable density.
Then all at once, toward sunset, when I had concluded I was hopelessly
lost, I fell suddenly out of the jungle into a sandy road, fell indeed
on hands and knees, for the way was worn several feet deep into the soft
soil. An hour along it brought me to the _pascana_ of Ypias,
uninhabited, yet like all these rare natural clearings on the
trans-Bolivian route, so important as to have its name solemnly engraved
on the map of the republic. This was the scene of what “Thompson” had
called “our stunt.” In a bit of space scolloped out of the jungle were
the six weather-blackened wooden crosses of the victims, the largest
crudely carved with the names of all, that of the German confederate
with its cross-piece at a sharp angle, the natives of the region
apparently resenting his claim to full Christian burial. Beyond the
clear little stream that makes Ypias a favorite camping-ground, four
ox-carts were preparing for the customary night journey after a day of
rest and grazing. One of the barefoot drivers under command of a cholo
astride a saddle-steer proved to be “Hughtie” Powell. I climbed into his
wagon and stretched out on the great balls of rubber from the Beni with
which it was loaded.
[Illustration:
The _tipoy_, a single loose gown, constitutes the entire garb of most
of the native women of tropical Bolivia]
[Illustration:
A girl of Santiago de Chiquitos selling a chicken to the cook of “los
americanos”]
Each cart was drawn by twenty oxen, gaunt, reddish, long-horned animals
that seemed Patience done in flesh and bone. Their pace averaged perhaps
two miles an hour. Now and then “Hughtie,” like the other drivers,
sprang noiselessly into the sand and, racing ahead, lashed each yoke in
turn, with insulting words of encouragement, and the entire team crowded
into one of the close-set jungle walls until the massive two-wheeled
cart was dragged over small trees and head-high bushes at a slight
acceleration of pace. A dozen strange cries were used in urging the
phlegmatic animals forward. When a halt was ordered, the drivers sprang
to the ground and ran alongside them, voicing a long, soothing wail of
peculiarly mournful _timbre_ that often lasted a full minute:
“So-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.”
Once, in the thick black night, the train halted to boil rice and make
“tea” of a willow-like jungle leaf, then dragged drowsily on. At
daylight we broke out into the pascana of Motococito, where the animals
were turned loose to graze for the day, each pair still yoked together
by a beam that was almost a log, fastened across the front of their
horns with rawhide thongs, while the peons swung their hammocks under an
ancient thatched roof on poles. We had made four leagues, or a scant
twelve miles, during the night.
I made my way to the home of “Don Cupertino” nearby, for no traveler
across Bolivia misses the opportunity of at least one meal with this
best-hearted of Bolivians. Outwardly ugly, he was a man of fascinating
personality, before whom one could sit for hours listening to well-told
anecdotes, frequently emphasized in his excitement by the snapping of
his long forefinger, and marveling at the grasp of mind of a man who has
never emerged from this inland wilderness. So great was his magnetism
that he had imposed on all those about him a degree of human kindness
and common decency rare in the region. The education of this corner of
the republic, wholly neglected by the government, he had taken upon
himself; had turned one of his thatched buildings into a school for the
children of whatever cast roundabout, and drafted as school-master a
Spanish shoemaker who had drifted in upon him. Motococito is frequently
favored with attacks by the wild Indians, and not the least dramatic of
“Don Cupertino’s” stories was that of the routing of a band of “los
bárbaros” the night before.
The pace of the ox-carts was so slow that I pushed on alone. The sky was
incessantly growling off to the southwest, banks of jet-black clouds
frequently wiped out the brilliant sun, and many a roaring tropical
deluge set me slipping and sliding at every step. Swamps of varying
length and depth continued monotonously to intrude, until I became
amphibious, with water almost my natural element.
Where the road forked one afternoon I took the fainter, left-hand trail
for a side-trip to the town of Santiago de Chiquitos. The rumor was
persistent that “americanos” lived there; moreover, it was said to be
situated on a ridge unknown to insects. The heights to be surmounted
were not piled into the sky ahead, as in the Andes. I knew I was rising
only by the changing character of soil and woods, the former increasing
in rocky sandstone formations, the latter more open, with diminishing
undergrowth. After the first few miles up, the forest opened out now and
then on little grassy pampas, with V-shaped gaps in the wooded hills
through which one could look back upon tropical Bolivia spreading away
sea-flat, humid blue to infinity in every direction, with a vast sense
of relief after weeks of never seeing the woods for the trees that had
shut me in.
The trail split at last into several branches. The one I took at random
led me to a thatched hut, then suddenly broke out upon the grassy plaza
of a great, or a tiny town, according to the point of view and the
immediate previous experience. A native lolling in a hammock answered my
question with a “sí, hay” in the impersonal monotone common to the
tropics, languidly nodding toward one of the huts facing the plaza.
Jungle-worn and all but shoeless, my reddened knees protruding through
the remnant of my breeches, my shirt lacking a sleeve and otherwise
mutilated beyond recognition, unkempt and sun-scorched, showing many a
patch of my insect-arabesqued hide, my face bristling with four
razorless weeks, unquestionably the most disreputable sight in all that
disreputable region, a hunger like the Old Man of the Sea riding my
shoulders, I strode across to the building indicated and paused in the
doorway. Inside, seated about a snow-white table, backed by a butler of
African dignity, sat five “gringos” in speckless white, dipping their
soup noiselessly and without haste with a calm backward motion.
Santiago was the headquarters and place of recuperation of the employees
of the Farquhar Syndicate, engaged in surveying the 1500 square leagues
of territory recently conceded the company at a nominal price. There I
slept in the first bed since Cochabamba. The chickens that died for us
were countless, the inevitable phonograph was in full evidence, there
were lamps to read by even at night, and books to read by them. When the
sun touched the jungle sea to the west “los americanos” strolled
homeward from the office, pausing to play ball until dark, with real
gloves, but picking green oranges from the plaza trees as often as they
needed a new “ball.” Great bands of deep-green parrakeets flew by high
overhead, screaming and gossiping deafeningly, but with no suggestion of
stopping in a place so high and cold. From this “mountain” top the
sunsets across the humid-blue, flat jungle were indescribable,
particularly after a rainy day. The enormous conflagrations blazed for a
brief time across all the western world, faded to red, to pink, then
into the steel-gray of a tropical evening; the distant hills turned from
deep blue to purple, banks of white clouds floating up out of the
wilderness below; the sky above faded through all the shades of pink to
lilac and to purple, until even the flecks of clouds tinged with the
last reflected rays were wiped out entirely. At night, looking south, we
could see the fires of the wild Indians of the Gran Chaco.
Besides the Anglo-Saxons, there were the managers of two “Belgian”
houses—the only stores for some hundred miles around, mere thatched huts
like the rest, with no distinguishing signs—an odd German or two, an
argentino who wore shoes; and the rest were barefoot natives, except for
an occasional sun-faded passerby. Like San José, Santiago de Chiquitos,
set almost exactly in the geographical center of South America, was a
“reduction” of the Jesuits, with more than 1500 inhabitants at the time
of their expulsion. To-day it is a sleepy little hamlet of some two
streets of one-story huts among gentle and _frondoso_ hills, with a
constant breeze and no insects, lolling through an easy, barefoot,
loose-gowned existence, chiefly in hammocks. Coffee bushes fill every
back yard, the coffee of Santiago being famous through all Chiquitos. A
languid commerce in cattle, sugar, and alcohol is carried on
intermittently; the region round about is rich in timber. High above all
else a wonderfully beautiful palm-tree stands out against the cerulean
sky.
The inhabitants retain many of the customs bequeathed them by the
Jesuits. Only a wooden church was built here, with four bells in a
wooden tower on legs some distance from the main building. Into this an
Indian climbs several times a day, and more often by night, to make life
hideous. Why the Loyalists were so fond of the continual hammering of
these instruments of torture was a mystery to me at the time, but in the
library of Asunción I ran across an old volume that explained the
matter. The writer, a European member of the brotherhood, visiting a
“reduction,” asked the superior why the Padres saw fit to keep
themselves awake most of the night for no apparent reason. The Jesuit
answered: “Brother, we keep our faithful flock toiling all day in the
fields. After the evening meal they drop at once to sleep without
remembering their marital duties. Their first fatigue worn off, we
remind them of those duties now and then during the night, waking them
up with the noise of drums and bells, to the end that the succeeding
generation may be larger, to the glorification of the Sacred Church and
our Holy Society.” And to think that I had fancied the jangling of
church-bells all down the length of the Andes to be a mere caprice of
the holy fathers!
The fiestas of Jesuit days are religiously preserved. Several nights we
were kept awake by the monotonous, heathenish beating of a drum, often
accompanied by a shrill fife. By day, to the “music” of these, most of
the population marched round and round the town, holding hands and
swinging them high before and behind them in a kind of shuffle and whirl
on their bare feet in the silent sand streets, getting ever drunker on
chicha of maize or the stronger _totay_. They danced also the _chobena_,
to the accompaniment of the _manais_, a hollow calabash with seeds
inside it. There was no resident priest, but an old Indian who had
assisted the former cura conducted a service each Sunday, always ending
it with a debauch that hung over into the middle of the week. There is
one custom, however, which even the Jesuits could not bequeath
them,—that of industry. In the olden days the entire population was sent
to work each morning with drums, prayers, and processions; to-day only
the processions, prayers, and drums remain.
As in all Chiquitos, the women and girls of Santiago, chiefly Indian in
blood, with now and then a trace of the negro, solidly built as an
_anta_, wear only the loose _tipoy_. Their customs are, if possible,
even more easy-going than those of San José. Yet they are by no means
forward, being rather bashful, indeed, with little sense of wrong-doing,
and are said to yield more easily to blandishments and trinkets than to
money. The former priest demanded fabulous sums for his services, which
is no doubt one of several reasons why virtually none, even of the “best
families,” are married. The moral attitude of the place may most easily
be gaged by an episode that occurred during my stay. A shoemaker living
in the other half of the thatched hut occupied by “los americanos”
learned that the young woman who passed as his wife had yielded to the
entreaties of one of the foreigners. He beat the girl until her cries
could be heard in the office across the broad plaza. But when, next day,
he met the offending American, he bowed respectfully with a polite,
“Buenos días, señor. Y cómo está usté’?”
[Illustration:
The shoemaker who lived next door to “los americanos” in Santiago de
Chiquitos, and his latest “wife”]
[Illustration:
A birthday dance in Santiago de Chiquitos, in honor of the German in
the center background. The man dancing with the latter’s
“housekeeper” is an Englishman born in the Argentine]
The distance from Santa Cruz de la Sierra to the Paraguay turned out to
be 135 leagues, something over 400 miles, divided as follows: Santa Cruz
to San José, 56 leagues; to Santiago, 32; to Santa Ana, 25; to Puerto
Suarez, 22. The last stage of the journey I covered astride one of the
company’s mules, hardly an improvement in comfort over walking, on such
a route. Luckily, the rains were delayed that year, or the difficulties
of all this trans-Bolivian journey would have been quadrupled, and I
might have been held for months in the hilltop hamlet of Santiago until
the floods common to the twenty-leagues or more west of the Paraguay
subsided. Day after day we rode through the endless forest that crowded
us close on either hand, with no other sign of humanity than the sulky
mozo trotting behind me, sleeping in some tiny pascana where a moon so
bright one could have read by it looked down upon the crosses of
soldiers and travelers who had died on other journeys, or peered dully
in at me through the mesh of my mosquitero. _Palmares_, quagmires
thick-grown with hardy palm-trees, in which we plunged to the saddle for
long distances, alternated with thirsty stretches of waterless sand. In
places the heavier woods gave way to dense brush, head-high and always
thorny. Across these, to the right, lay the vast Bolivian Chaco—or the
Paraguayan, according to how the dispute shall finally be settled—in
which the sun set so blood-red that the painter who dared put half the
reality on canvas would be accused of gross exaggeration. A strip of
delicate pink sky blended quickly into the wet-blue of the endless
jungle, darkness settled quickly down, and we rode noiselessly on, the
sky an immense field of stars, bats circling around our heads and
alighting again and again in the sandy road ahead, to spring up with a
peculiar little squeak when the mule’s hoofs had all but touched them.
No other sound was heard, except the chirping of the jungle, chiefly the
long-drawn creak and short staccato of two species of crickets, and
occasionally the noise of some wild animal fleeing unseen at our
approach. On such a night we came to the Tucabaca, the only river of
size between the Guapay and the Paraguay. I ordered a halt until the
moon appeared, but clouds hid it, and we came perilously near losing a
mule in forcing the frightened animals across. Frequently the Tucabaca
rises in a few hours to a raging torrent that can only be crossed in a
_pelota_, or in the dugout of a surly old Brazilian negro living in a
cluster of huts on the further bank.
At Santa Ana, eighteen waterless miles beyond, we were overtaken by two
of the gringo colony of Santiago. Calling itself a city, the place is
merely a row of thatched huts around a grass-grown space, with a
mud-hole to keep it alive, saintly in its customs as all the towns of
this saintly route. Its corregidor takes orders, not from the subprefect
of San José, but from the _delegado_ at Puerto Suarez, sent out from La
Paz by way of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil! The place is a
headquarters of _jejenes_, and the wild Indians descend upon it
periodically. At the very edge of the hamlet lies a _barrizal_, a
mud-hole three miles long, famous for its victims. But beyond, territory
which the year before had been an almost unbroken lake was for long
stretches without water to drink, though we wallowed in more than one
swamp and slough. Near the corrals of Yacuces, in a low, humid region
where rain often falls, we came upon telegraph-poles, old and sagging,
heavy with parasites and creepers. The line planned by the government
from Puerto Suarez to Santa Cruz had been abandoned some forty miles
out, and cart-drivers now cut down the poles and use the wire to repair
their wagons.
On the last morning we woke at two to find the moon brilliant, and
pulling on our soggy garments, pushed eagerly forward. On the right the
Southern Cross stood forth brightly whenever a fleck of cloud veiled the
moon. Away in the forest monkeys wailed their everlasting plaint. Great
masses of green vines, covering irregular giant bushes, looked like
German castles in the moonlight. The first flush of day showed in the
V-shaped opening ahead the shoulders of the advance horseman, cutting
into the paling sky and blotting out the bright morning star. Then dawn
“came up like thunder” out of the endless wilderness, and somehow it
seemed wasteful to keep the moon burning after the tropical sunshine had
flooded all the scene. Tall, slender palms, and all possible forms of
trees, festooned and draped with vines in fantastic web and lace
effects, stood out against the sky. Masses of pink morning-glories
quickly shrunk under the sun’s glare; brown moor-hens, flicking their
black tails saucily, foraged about mud-holes and flew clumsily, like
chickens, with little half-jumps, as we passed. Beyond the pascana of
Tacuaral, with its myriad of slim _tacuara_ palms, the country that
should have been flooded at this season was utterly waterless. Hour
after sun-baked hour we jogged on, our thirsty animals stumbling in the
enormous sun-dried cart-ruts. An occasional hut with a banana-grove
appeared in a tiny space shaved out of the bristling forest. In
mid-afternoon we sighted through the heat rays ahead a wide street, with
red-tiled buildings and open water beyond, backed far away by low wooded
ridges, and the Port of Suarez and the end of Bolivia was at hand. It
was two months to a day since Tommy and I had set out from Cochabamba.
Dawn was just beginning to paint red the humid air between jungle and
sky across the lagoon of Cáceres, a backwater of the river Paraguay,
when I descended to its edge and, by dint of acrobatic feats of
equilibrium, managed a bath and left behind in the mud and slime, like
fallen heroes of many a campaign, the remnants of my tramping garb. As I
climbed the bank new-clad, there persisted the feeling that I had
heartlessly abandoned some faithful friend of long standing. The
gasoline launch chugged more than two hours across the muddy _lagoa_
before there rose from the jungle, on a bit of knoll, the modern city of
Corumbá, in the Brazilian State of Matto Grosso, to the residents of
which the appearance of a lone traveler from out the ferocious wilds and
haunts of _bugres_ beyond the lagoon that ends their world was little
less wonder-provoking than the arrival of one from a distant planet.
Here at last was civilization,—expensive civilization—and steamers every
few days to Asunción and Buenos Aires.