“Well,” he continued, paying little heed, “that was, roughly, four
hundred years ago. No modern things to use, no chart, no map, no
compass, no tools, or camp paraphernalia; just plain, dogged go-at-it
and keep on. Keep in one direction, and you get somewhere. That’s how
Magellan felt his way, and Columbus his. Then the old Norsemen in
open boats. It excites me thinking of that. It was always that way,
one man pushing on.”
Again he lapsed into one of his ruminating moods.
“But about Prescott-- Once I was nearly all in. Over the Andes I’d
gone, and if I didn’t hit the trail of the Pizarro men, I’m crazy. I
never saw a helmet in my life until then, and I came across one under
an overhanging rock. A mighty thing it was--the rock I mean--a kind
of excavation under it that formed a cave.
“The helmet was there, and a few pieces of steel--short pieces; a
broken sword, perhaps. I took the helmet and carried it for days,
then threw it away. A man can’t be burdened with plunder like that.
“You see, I’d been on the trail for more than three months that
time. Now and then I caught sight of an Indian, and once I got an
arrow through my left shoulder. There were days and weeks in which
I saw no sign of human life, but, by George! there was plenty of
good company. Insects, you know, great glorious things. Butterflies,
too--butterflies that run and make a little noise like a rattle when
they fly away. It’s laughable. Living things are great fun to watch.
And then the concerts at evening at sunset, crickets and things. I
don’t know their names. Magnify insects, and I reckon you’d have a
fantastic world.
“When I did see a human face again, it gave me a start. I’d found
a good spot in the jungle to rest in. The stream ran clear there,
this stream I’d been following, and the bottom of it was sandy. One
does not often find a place like that. Thinking of an ideal spot,
you imagine a stream in the shade of a tree, with grass all about.
But when you get your stream, there is often mud, and where there
is shade there is no grass. Here there was everything; a pleasant
kind of spot, and I didn’t move all day. I just rested and smoked
and bathed my feet and watched the insects. It was quiet, too, still
as midnight, and the sun never pierced the leafy roof. It was just a
great, green arch like a cathedral, with smooth, lofty tree-trunks,
chamber after chamber of green, and, what was specially fine,
the place was clear of lianas. So I rested there and read an old
newspaper I had picked up in Callao and brought along. I’d read it
before dozens of times. Then my eyes would tire of the print, and I’d
doze off. I did that dozens of times. The peace of the place was too
much for me--too much both ways. The perfectness of it overcame me,
and drove me to the little thing, the silly newspaper.
“Once I woke with the notion that some one was watching me. What I
saw gave me a shiver. There was a big flowering-bush not ten yards
away. They were great red flowers, meat color, like raw beef, and
right between two of the flowers, as if it was stuck in a cleft,
was a man’s face, snag-toothed, red-bearded, shock-haired. It might
have been a great ape. The eyes stared straight at me. Remember, I’d
seen no natives for a long while, nor was there a settlement near,
and it was a region as big as the State of Illinois, and no white
man, I thought, had ever set foot there. Yet here was a face, and it
was not the face of a native. I knew enough to keep still, and only
peered through the narrowest slits I could make with my eyelids, so I
judged that the face in the flower would think I slept. Believe me, I
watched closely.
“It moved my way, but cautiously as a snake, and I saw a hairy
chest, a hairy human being, and stark. He came on hands and toes,
and I knew that he was a fellow used to the jungle and no native.
Noiselessly he came, not stirring leaf or blade, hardly. The smell of
his body assailed me unpleasantly, for there were sweetly smelling
spice-trees, and the human smell was rank as poison.
“I sat up suddenly when the fellow was not more than five yards away.
He stopped, rigid, expectant. Fear was in his eyes. Perhaps he saw it
in mine. In such cases men hate each other. Each resents the presence
of the other where white men should not be. Then he rose to his
feet, turned without a word, his feet making no sound, and made for
the flowering-bush again. I knew in a moment, somehow, that he was
ashamed of his nakedness in the presence of another of his race. So I
hailed him. At that he stood, regarding me with doubt.
“Well, he was one of those queer fish found everywhere. He told me
his tale that night. Of months and of years he had long lost count,
and he wanted to know of things strange to me. Queer things he had
been interested in, it seemed--a Londoner I guess, with the peculiar
sharpness of interest in political things that they have. It must
have been meat and drink to him, his interest in public affairs. He
talked of Gladstone and wanted to know whether some fellow named
O’Donnell who had killed some informer was hanged or not. From such
things we located the date when he left as about 1883. So he had been
there nearly thirty-five years. Think of it!
“But as to the unbelief of people who are credulous on some
things--tell people that for that length of time a white man, an
Englishman, had lived with savages, and every single one would jump
to the conclusion that he was chief among them. Naturally. On the
general principle, I suppose, that it is better to reign in hell
than to serve in heaven. But was he king? Boss? Chief? Not by a long
chalk. And naturally. The man from civilization was the servitor. The
savages were the superiors. Such things as he once knew were useless
in the wilds. Mind you, in civilization machinery is master, and man
the servant of the machine. Take him away from the mechanical things
and cast him on his own resources, and ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred he starves. He can’t make a fire, catch his food, build his
shelter. He is afraid to test things as to their edibility. He cannot
run, fight or climb. Among animals he is a weakling. Face to face
with nature he despairs. His education he finds to be ignorance. His
overpowering fear is that he may be hurt. You see, in civilization
man is protected, he does not have to struggle. All that he needs to
do is to sell himself, his time, his life, for the best price he can
command. So he becomes soft. He is unfit for liberty. Turn him loose,
and he is as useless as a canary-bird or a common hen turned adrift.
So was it with this fellow, Elfner. The savages were his superiors,
and he was the servitor. He had ceased to concern himself about
anything more than the needs of the body; and his brain had gone.
Once, I gathered, he had told them tales of the city life, but the
things he tried to picture they could not conceive; so he was lowered
still further in their estimation and set down as a liar.
“From this Elfner I learned of the Chequa tribe. He warned me against
them as a vicious people that had no dealings with other tribes, and
indicated their valley as farther east. That I was not to be led
to his tribe was made very clear. Obviously, he was ashamed of his
degradation. But really it was not degradation in one way of looking
at it. There are almost no men who would not rapidly find their level
in a savage tribe, and that level would be below its general average,
because of the new valuations that the man from civilization cannot
compass.
“There was a stranger tale he began to tell me--a tale of a
swamp-land to the southeast and of monstrous, yellow earth creatures
that heaved themselves out of the mire. Then I was sure he was
crazed. I knew of the giant armadillos and great sloths, but it was
none of these. He was loath to continue, and parried my questions.
He wanted to know of things in the world that he would never again
see. He wanted to tell me of John L. Sullivan and of Jake Kilrain,
or of sordid crimes that had interested him. Above all he wanted to
talk of eating, of ham and eggs, of bread and cheese and beer. Once,
for instance, when he had begun to tell me something of the Chequas,
he broke off quite unexpectedly, and apropos of nothing went into a
little rhapsody. ‘Say,’ he said, ‘this ’ere is a dull place. I often
think of colors, and there’s a bird all colors, and I always think
of when you hold a glass of whiskey up to the light. Lord! Lord!’ At
that he fell into a reverie and sat hunched, his chin on clenched
fist. Then he grew melancholy. ‘These ’ere fellers in my tribe, they
got me goin’, they ’ave. It’s work, work, work. An’ if I don’t, it’s
punishment tied up to a ant’s nest.’
“His talk was jumbled, disjointed, and I had much ado to get
something from him relative to the country. Very little I got, after
all. We had talked for perhaps a couple of hours when a ululation
filled the air. ‘It’s them blacks callin’ me,’ he said, leaping to
his feet. Now, while I was not anxious for his company, I felt an
urge to invite him to go with me; but, to my relief, he refused on
the ground that his masters would follow, capture and kill him. When
the ululation was again heard, he seemed panic-stricken, stood a
moment irresolute, then turned and fled into the bush as a dog would
on hearing the insistent call.”
The man stopped, and I hazarded the remark that it was strange to
meet a white man thus, because the chances against an encounter were
slight.
“That’s so,” he said.
“And the reference to those strange earth creatures. Didn’t you learn
anything further?”
He looked at me and shook his head doubtfully, and a little puzzled
frown appeared and disappeared.
“No. But I may have seen one, too. I don’t know.”
“May I hear?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to tell, because I’m not sure. And yet--” He passed
his hand over his brow. “I may have been mistaken. It was after I had
left the gentle people, and I was not myself then. I was worried,
grieved, half-starved. It is all muddled.
“You see, after Elfner left I decided to find the valley he had told
me of, and I did find it without any particular difficulty. It was
a bird that attracted me, a quetzal. If I had not gone toward it,
I might have missed the place. But I never could resist watching
a quetzal, for it is the most wonderful thing that God has made,
the most exquisite thing in creation. To see it, a living thing of
metallic green--gold-green and scarlet-breasted, with tail-feathers
of jet and ivory--is an experience. You watch it and lose yourself in
admiration. Nothing else is so gorgeous. I have watched as the light
struck them, and have seen them change from violet to steel-blue,
but colors that live. Then the bird moves slightly, and the blue is
blue-green, then again gold-green, and there are crimson flashes and
purple. And there was the valley, and it was the valley of quetzals
and butterflies, and in it lived the gentle people. I stayed there
many months, peaceful months, only to leave in sorrow. A gentle
people, indeed! Never did I hear a harsh word or see an ungentle
thing. I do not think that they knew of war or of violence. To live
was sweet in that valley of flowers and birds. There were sounds of
living things as sweet as the musical ripples of a little brook, and
the breeze was soft and laden with perfume. So I came to love the
gentle people and their land.
“It may seem odd to tell you this, but I have told you much, and
the mood is on me, and the place in which I tell it to you is odd,
here where there is the noise of people and of the moving train and
where there is glaring light or sooty smoke, and where every one is
burdened with the stern anxiety of duty. And yet it all comes to
me as the memory of a summer day may come to some poor fellow in
prison--the memory of that spot where existence is facile and where
trifles give joy and where people live as birds live. While there I
knew a fresh vigor of soul. I always seemed to be on the point of
grasping and understanding things, and the thought lived in me always
that I should never do a thing to bring the sorrow of the outside
world among this people. The memory is strong upon me now, and it
came to me as a dull blow when I read the bulletin uptown. I felt as
the prisoner might when the judge said the death sentence. It seemed
to mean that, you know.”
The man paused and relit his pipe. He gave a puff or two and laid it
aside again. Then he leaned back in his seat, folded his arms and
dropped his chin on his chest.
“All this noise about us must make what I tell you seem unreal.
I appreciate that fully. Sometimes I think that out there I lost
something well worth the losing, and found instead a precious thing.
Looking back, I seemed to have touched the supernatural. I wonder
if you understand. What I lost enriched me, and I seemed to have
lost forever my own people and the sins of avarice and anger and
pettiness. It was no illusion. There _was_ the valley of peace. There
_is_ the valley of peace. But I fear the ravening hand now stretched
out.
“There was a child there, a thing of beauty, who led me about at
times after I had been accepted as a visitor. Endol was her name, and
she was a dancing creature, who weaved circlets of flowers and often
brought to me, laughingly, water to drink, bearing it in a flattish
shell which held only a taste. I see her now, a bright fairy, dancing
and chasing the cloud shadows on the green, playing with the birds,
clapping her hands as she ran after butterflies, but never trying to
catch them. Do you know, at such times the memory of my own land was
as a dark and fearful dream. I remembered slum children. The memory
of the things that clatter about us in houses and in cities, and the
fret and the evil and the filth and the sickness--these things bore
upon me and oppressed my spirit. Now, sitting here, remembering that
valley of joy, it is as if I were in hell, and it is from that hell
that I am trying to escape, for all has been dark and ugly since I
left.
“One day Endol brought me a golden-colored flower, a new one to me.
I saw that she bore a shell in her left hand. When I made a motion
to take it she prevented me. Playfully, I held her, and as I did so,
she chanced to tip the shell, and a yellowish sand poured forth and
lay lightly on a large leaf. Looking, I saw that it was gold dust. At
that Endol laughed, stooped, scattered the gold, and, gathering the
grains that lay on the leaf, threw them afar.
“That naturally set me to wondering as well as wandering, for thus
far I had confined my walks to the upper end of the valley. As it
fell out, the next day I came upon a flat rock at the foot of a
vine-hung tree, and there in plain view was a shell, much larger than
that which Endol had had. It held gold dust, and a few nuggets, the
best of them not larger than a small pea. The shell had apparently
been set there and forgotten with the carelessness of a child tired
of a plaything. The gold was not free from iron dust, but I saw at a
glance that the vein from which it had been taken was extraordinarily
rich. So it came to me to think that this people knew nothing of the
value of gold and perhaps used it as a plaything. I suppose I should
have left it there, but I did not. Few men living as you and I have
lived in a workaday world could resist the temptation to bear it
away. So I took it to the bower in which I slept.
“Now, Endol and another child met me on the way and, chattering and
laughing, reached for the shell. I handed it to them. Their actions
astonished me. They drew slightly aside; their merriment fell from
them, and they held a rapid, whispered conference. Endol’s friend,
the older of the two, seemed the most urgent, and her counsel
apparently prevailed, for they set off running down the valley with
the gold. They seemed possessed of a new fear, one that I could not
understand.
“Soon after they returned with others, men and women, and I could see
that there was consternation. I was reminded of a crowd I once saw
running to the pit-mouth when the news of trouble came.
“Sima, a handsome youth with a splendid head ornament of quetzal
feathers, addressed me. He was gentle, almost persuasive. At first
I could not understand what he was driving at. There were evidently
references to a people and the setting sun, and in the midst of his
discourse others came up and now and again tried to aid him in making
me understand, as people will do all over the world when a foreigner
is dense. Presently Sima ceased, and another, an older man, took up
the parable. He grew excited in the telling of the tale and, as I
gathered, was eager to impress upon me that there was an evil time
when hate and murder and greed, until then unknown, had come into
the land. But it was not until he roughly fashioned a cross with a
couple of sticks and broke it to pieces that a light dawned on me.
Then when he told me of white men from the north, it dawned upon me
with clearness that here was a tribal memory of the coming of Pizarro
into the land of the Incas. Understanding that, I could piece things
together, the ancient wrong done to a gentle people in the name of
the cross, the white man’s greed for gold, which had been a specific
cause of strife and disorder, the hopeless resistance of an unarmed
people, and the cruel acts of retaliation. From another point of view
I saw what the lust of empire meant, and I saw how those who preached
civilization, philanthropy and religion came burning, shooting,
destroying and subjugating the weak, the simple, the harmless. The
forefathers of this people had escaped. What wonder, then, that to
them gold stood as an evil, something to hide and thrust away as
unclean lest its glitter again attract these who bear death in their
hands.
“I saw all that in a flash, and I understood the vague sense of
imminent chaos that must have possessed the simple, happy folk when
they pondered on what might happen if gold-mad white men again came
ravening. The wonder was that they did not slay me when first I came.
“The gold-bearing sand was exceptionally rich in the little river.
Grubbing about, I found pockets in the bedrock full of gold. I even
amused myself for a time extracting some of it and piling it in
little heaps here and there on stones, and once I dammed up a section
of the stream, turning the current so as to expose the river-bed,
thus laying bare a new and unexpected vein. But it meant nothing to
me then, for I still enjoyed the sighing of the wind through the
silky grass, the sweetness of the day, and the fullness of the earth.
The water that dripped sparkling from my finger-tips was finer to me
than the sifting gold.
“One day I found the cave. I had not found it before simply because
I had not sought it. There was no attempt on the part of the folk to
conceal its location, nor was there displayed any desire to keep me
from it.
“It was an opening in a hillside almost six feet long and four high,
a square, natural gap, and the chamber within was at least thirty by
thirty. The rays of the western sun flooded the place. For over three
hundred years, perhaps, the people had hidden their gold there. From
that you may have some idea how things were. The stuff lay scattered
over the floor of the cave. I worked my fingers through the gold near
the opening, and it was knuckle-deep before I touched the rock. In
the farther corner was a sloping heap of the stuff, and it had been
there so long that the iron dust had blown away. It shone dully as
the sun touched it. Here and there were small nuggets, some as large
as a cherry. Leaving the cave, I found a pile of them, oddly shaped,
laid along a large, flat rock. They were evidently the playthings of
children. I remember noticing one, flattish and almost heart-shaped.
It had a hole through it, and I strung it and hung it round my neck.
Look at this.”
As he spoke he fumbled at his soft shirt-collar and pulled up a
little nugget, which he handed to me.
“It’s all I have to show,” he said as he returned it to its place.
“That night I did not sleep. Strangely enough, my mind took a twist.
The life I was living fell behind me, as it were, and I was filled
with a new desire. It was not really a desire for wealth, but rather
a desire for power. That was it, a desire for power. That old
newspaper I told you of came to my mind, with all that it stood for.
I began to dream of walking into my native town, into Hillsboro, and
showing off. Crazy, isn’t it? But it was so. They were day-dreams
that might have pleased a boy, and it is almost too banal to tell,
the rapid succumbing to temptation. I had a vision of becoming the
local ‘big man,’ of buying out the banker, of building a fine house,
of owning a splendid automobile, of servants, and all that kind of
thing. Things! things! things! The pageantry of wealth! So dreaming,
the quiet of the valley and the peace of it became a hateful thing,
and I longed for the sound of a thousand footsteps and a thousand
wheels, for the noise of streets, and the haste and the clatter and
the excitement. Gradually the idea took possession of me that the
gold was mine and that it was a weak sentimentality which would
prevent a capable white race from using that which a brown-skinned
folk knew not how to use. I planned and dreamed, planned and dreamed.
The poison was at work.
“Weeks and weeks it took me to carry the gold to the hidden canoe. I
thought at the time that I was unwatched, but I do not think so now.
Some of the stuff I loaded direct from the river sand, but by far the
greater part I bore from the cave. Of course there were days when I
hesitated, half repenting. But, on the whole, greed had me.
“One day I saw Sima and Capaca, standing side by side, looking at
me, and I was suddenly overcome with shame. There fell away from
me my desire to leave. The glamor faded. It was as if I had been
discovered handling filth by those whose good opinion I valued, and
the hot blood rushed tingling to my cheeks. I wanted to make my peace
with the people again, but knew that to do so was hopeless now. So I
stood irresolutely by my canoe, and I hated myself for my insincerity.
“Sima came down to me. He said no word, but, with a look half pity,
half contempt, handed me his spear, and with a gesture dismissed me
and turned his back. For a moment I wished that he had thrust the
spear through me.
“So it was that I came to leave the valley where I had known peace,
and from then time was for me little but physical weariness. There
were days when I lay half-dead in the canoe on my bed of gold,
tortured by flies and things that bit and stung--days and days of
misery when I wished myself dead. Once, it seemed ages, a hovering
cloud of insects followed me, sometimes settling on me so thickly
that my arms were black. My bodily suffering was great, but greater
still the suffering within.
“I think that day after day in that jungle drove me mad, and there
were times when I was aware of nothing in the world but the rank
smell of decaying vegetation and a black strip of water winding,
winding, winding through a canon of dark brown earth through which
great roots thrust themselves like snakes. Days of impenetrable gloom
there were, and there were days when all about me there seemed to be
hushings, then hissing whisperings and pointing fingers and peering
eyes. Again there was a sensation that music was about me, and I
seemed to hear at a distance the opening chords of a brass band. I
knew that I was fever-stricken.
“Once I dared to land at a place where the virgin forest seemed to
end. There was a great green, open space, a mighty clearing, and a
fringe of trees between that and the river. I was the victim of a
strange hallucination, and it was as if the whole world were moving
swiftly to the right, swiftly, horribly swiftly, and I alone stood
still. I fought against it, fought myself. Do you understand? It
changed to a sensation of rushing backward. So dizzy I became that
I was constrained to squat at the foot of a tree, pushing against
it hard with my back, and press my temples until I felt the pain
of it. Then I heard a sound and looked up. I saw, or thought I
saw, something. The earth seemed to tremble and heave. Out from
it came swiftly a hideous thing, clay-colored and huge, a mighty
mass of living flesh. The mud fell from it to right and left. I was
breathless and unable to stir. The thing pushed upward and forward
with clumsy, lumbering movements, side to side, extricating itself,
growing huger each moment. Then I realized that what I saw was only
the head and shoulders. The head turned slightly, so that I saw the
upper part of it, blunt and triangular beyond the shoulder. The
heavy-lidded eyes I saw. Then I noticed the mud dripping heavily, and
part of the fore leg coming from the slime. My God! Send that there
are no such things on earth and that I was really mad!
“I remember rolling down the steep bank and falling into the river,
so shaded and still, and then there was an awe-inspiring roar,
dreadful to hear. I swam. I do not know. I cannot talk of it.”
The man sighed deeply. It was almost a stifled sob. He was
ashen-faced. When he spoke again, his voice was perceptibly huskier.
“There is no more to tell,” he said. “There were weeks and weeks of
misery in that jungle, and wanderings that I forget--wanderings in
the swamp lands, and most wonderfully I came to Mannos and, in time,
to Para, where the consul was good to me.”
He ceased suddenly and fell to smoking. It was a long time before I
dared to speak, but said at last:
“And you propose to return?”
“I want to get back to the people, to where the superstition of
gold is absent,” he said. “Only there is the world sane. Only there
do people enjoy their days and love the earth and know the beauty
of life. Gold blinds all others. So I must go to the gentle people
again. That is, if they will have me. Then there’s this expedition.”
His voice was tense now.
“Suppose. You see, once I might have been a traitor to them. I
dreamed of something of the sort, a betrayal to my own people. If
this expedition is a success-- Well, where white people go and where
there is gold, sorrow and disease and death follow. The consul at
Para knew something of my story. Would it not be a good thing to save
a race, a gentle people, from destruction?”
The man’s story stayed with me. And, as I said, since learning of the
failure of the expedition, I have wondered much.
[9] Copyright, 1922, by The Century Company.
Copyright, 1923, by Charles J. Finger.