THE SECOND ATTEMPT
In March of the next year I started off again for the hills to renew the
search. I got to Oruro at the end of the month, bought four mules for
cargo and a saddle mule for myself from an Argentine trader, and went on
to Sacambaja via Cochabamba and Palca. At Cuti I stayed for five days
with my old friend Mendizabal, who came on with me to the hill. The
first two days were spent in going for wild cattle, as Mendizabal wanted
to make some charque for his own use, and I wanted some for my camp; we
got four cattle, and divided up the meat.
On the third day I started uncovering the top of the hill, working
downwards in a “V” shape from where I had left off. Exactly fifteen feet
down I came to a solid mason work, one big square stone; and then a slab
of slate stone; this formation went on for twelve feet down. Then I came
on a stone cobble path, which I concluded was the bottom of the cave,
but there was no sign of any door, so I decided to drill a hole between
two blocks of stones. I consulted Mendizabal, and he thought with me
that this was the work of man, and not a natural formation. He brought
his son and five Indians to lend a hand. Before we started to drill, one
old man said we ought to offer up a gift of a cock, some wine and bread,
and leave it there for the night. Mendizabal said we must humour these
people. So the offer asked for was duly left. In the morning the things
had gone! They had probably taken them themselves but swore they had not
done so. We pretended to believe them.
We drilled a hole for three feet and a half, and then pushed a thin
bamboo twelve feet long through; it appeared to touch nothing except in
one corner where it seemed to prod something soft.
Suddenly a very powerful smell began, so strong that it made us all feel
bad; it smelt like oxide of metal of some sort. Mendizabal and his son
both went home feeling bad, but he got over it in two days, his son felt
unwell for a week, but I got over it in a few hours. Three of my men
left feeling bad and never returned. The other three men I had went up
with me again two days after, and when we were near the top we saw over
a dozen big condors, hovering about quite close to the works. Zambrana
and Manuel both told me that the three Indians said this was a sign
there was something buried inside; they all seemed rather funky, so I
said I would give it a rest for a fortnight to let it get well
ventilated, bearing in mind what the paper said about there being enough
poison inside to kill a regiment. This was on June 3rd, 1906.
On the night of June 4th, the weather completely changed, and at 8 p.m.
the thermometer stood at four degrees below zero. In the morning at 7
a.m. it was seven degrees below zero, but at 9 a.m. it began to get warm
again, and at 12.30 it was eighty-seven above zero, going down again
after sunset quite suddenly. At 8 p.m. that evening it was fourteen
degrees below, next day between 12 to 1 p.m. eighty-six degrees above.
This was a phenomenal year; there was a black frost every night, and a
lovely blue sky all day. On the sixth night after the change had begun,
the thermometer actually went to twenty-seven degrees below zero, and in
the morning was twenty-eight degrees below. Zambrana said he could not
stand the cold nights even with good food, a tot of rum and a good fire,
and would have to go home; he promised to return in a month. The three
Indians also said they had had enough, and left the camp two days after
Zam, also promising to return. I had already sent Manuel to Barber’s at
Cochabamba for some provisions, so I was now left quite alone. I made it
a point never to let the two fires go out. One night, at about 10.30, I
had turned in with a big log fire burning outside my tent door, when I
heard a rifle shot, then another and yet another, as though some one was
firing a rifle, and the bullets were whistling over my tent. I got out
of bed and lay under the bed with my good double-barrel rifle loaded and
my colts as well. I counted seven shots, and then came to the conclusion
that it was somebody trying to scare me, but with no intention of
shooting me. So I got back to bed and shouted out, “Who is there?” Two
more shots came in quick succession, and then they ceased. The next
morning nothing was to be seen. That night the same performance took
place from eight to ten, but this time I did not bother, being convinced
it was a case of trying to scare me to leave. This was four days after
my men had gone.
After this, I heard nothing further and never found out who fired the
shots. Two days afterwards I was very pleased to see four likely looking
Indians with their packs come into the camp asking to be taken on. I
took them on gladly at 1/-a day, and their food, which was the price
they asked. Next day I left one in the camp to attend to the kitchen,
and took the other three with me. I decided not to disturb the stones
any more, but to go working away to the left, leaving the stone path as
a starting point.
The weather continued the same and was even colder at nights, and in the
early morning, with tropical sunshine all day. I kept in good health and
enjoyed it although it was rather too cold at nights.
One night two men, on their way to La Paz, camped down near the convent,
with five mules loaded with coca leaves. During the night one of the
mules strayed away, and, in the morning, one of the men left to look for
him. His companion remained with the other mules, and, while there,
began to uncover one of the numerous tapadas near the north bank of the
river. Two days afterwards the other man turned up with the lost mule.
They said that as the mules and cargo belonged to them they would stop
and finish uncovering the mound of earth and stones, which they did in
eight days. The day after they had left, which was Sunday, I rode over
on my mule to their camp, about a mile and a half away; and found all
the cargo left, and covered over, so that it was clear they had been
successful in their search. Some weeks afterwards I heard that they had
found the hole full of old silver plate, which I understood they sold
for £1,500.
Some days afterwards Manuel arrived with the stores, also Mendizabal,
who joined him at Cuti. He told me that when he heard strange Indians
had come down to work for me he felt very uneasy, as he did not know
them. His wife was also alarmed, and begged him to tell me to be careful
not to take anyone who was not sent with a note from him. He also said
that three days before, one of the Indian girls on his place had come
and told his wife that they had heard that strange Indians had gone down
there, and that they were up to no good. She sent me a letter by her
husband, begging me to return to the house with him. To my regret,
Mendizabal said that though he would have liked to have stayed for a few
days he did not dare, for fear of ague. I told him that the weather was
the same, beautiful sunshine all day, and very cold at night. I promised
him to be careful about the Indians, and wrote to his wife, thanking her
for the interest she was taking in me. He then went back with Manuel,
who was to leave the mules and horses at Cuti with Mendizabal’s animals,
and return to do the camp work and cooking.
The following day I saw José Maria from the top of the hill, crossing
the river, and at 2 p.m. he turned up with the usual weekly sheep. He
told me Manuel was at his house with a bad attack of malaria, and would
come on when he was better.
The four strange Indians had now been with me nearly three weeks; they
all worked well, and there was no trouble, and nothing amiss to my
knowledge. One morning a few days after Mendizabal left, I went round as
usual, after I had got up, to the kitchen fire, which always burned
night and day, and was never allowed to go out. To my surprise I found
nobody there, and the fire nearly out. All their clothes had gone too!
After breakfast, on looking round, I discovered all their food of the
night before in the bush about fifty yards off. About two hours after
this, I began to feel very queer, and soon my right leg went numb, and
then my arm. I at once looked up the symptoms in Doctor Andrew Wilson’s
“Symptoms and Treatment of Poisons” which I had with me, and soon
discovered that I was poisoned. This lecture went on to say, “When your
finger nails become blue, you must make yourself vomit quickly for the
time is short.” My finger nails were now turning that colour, so I
promptly took some hot tea with salt, which fortunately had the desired
effect. The feeling came back to my leg and arm, and I felt all right
again. This went on several times a day for eight days, and then every
three or four days for two months or more; later these attacks would
only come on every fortnight or so, and I did not get properly well for
a year or more. When I got to La Paz in November, the doctor said I had
had enough poison in me to kill twenty men, and the prompt measure I
took every time the attacks came on had saved me. At La Paz they gave me
strychnine, which made me worse instead of better, and sometimes I was
very ill. In England the treatment was altered to arsenic, and I at once
began to pick up. Nobody knew what the poison was, but all were
convinced it was poison, and not fever. Next year, however, I found out
that it was the Aba de San Ignacio, or the Saint Ignatius Bean, which is
very much like a Lima bean, and grows on a vine. On the way home in
November of that year, I met a fellow passenger, who told me that three
years before he had been poisoned in exactly the same way, with the same
symptoms as myself, and that some Indians who saw him showed him the
bean, and told him it contained strychnine. I found later that this was
quite correct; the remedy is arsenic.
The Indians left the camp on July 5th, leaving their last week’s pay
behind them; I never saw them again. From the day they left until
October 23rd, the start of the first rains, nobody came to the camp, for
I had told old José Maria not to bring down any more sheep until I
advised him by messenger, as I had nearly a whole bullock hanging up
both fresh and dried. During these weeks, I generally pottered round the
camp, and now and then went up the hill for a change, when the poison
fits would allow me. I shot several doves, which were very tame in the
mornings before the sun melted the frost. The temperature twice touched
forty degrees below zero, and the average from the beginning of June to
the middle of September was twenty-two degrees below zero at 7 a.m., and
eighty degrees above at 1 p.m.
One morning soon after daylight, a fine-looking mule came and stood
outside my tent, I put a rope halter on him, and tied him up to a tree,
and a few hours after, the owner came up on another mule with two
Indians. He thanked me profusely for catching his mule, but asked me how
I managed to put the halter on. I told him it had been quite easy, as I
had found him standing outside the tent early in the morning. He then
told me that the mule had never yet been handled, and was one of a
hundred mules and horses he had bought for his farm, at the yearly sale
of animals, held on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This mule and another
one had strayed away from his camp three days ago, and he said he was
sure the other one had been killed by a jaguar, and this one, seeing my
camp, came and stayed for protection. After taking some refreshment, he
and his men left the mule I had caught with me, and followed up its
spoor to look for the other. Next day about 2 p.m. they returned, having
found the second mule killed, and partly eaten, in the forest to the
north of the River Sacambaja. Two nights after this occurrence, I was
awakened in the night by a stampede of cattle in the forest, the other
side of the stream, where my drinking water came from. In the morning I
counted twenty head of cattle on the beach, the other side of the Cato
River, which showed that jaguars or pumas had come up from the forest
below. The following day I was gathering wood near the camp, and just as
I got to the tent I looked up, and saw a magnificent black panther, or
puma, walking slowly along the beach on the south side of the river
Sacambaja. I rushed into the tent and got my rifle, and just managed to
fire a hurried shot at the beast as he was entering the forest. I put
the sight at three hundred yards, and missed him; the bullets seemed to
strike the ground some few yards behind. I was sorry, for he was rather
a rare specimen of the black panther, I think. He was too big for a
puma. I examined the beech for signs and saw the spoor of three or four
jaguars or pumas, and came across a big fat cow which they had killed
near the forest, close to my fresh-water stream on the other side. As it
was just then clear moonlight every night, I sat up and watched on this
side of the stream, just opposite the cow, for five nights. The only
thing I saw was a big brown fox, with a splendid brush, which, one night
after I had been waiting for an hour, appeared, stopped, looked at me
for a minute and trotted off. He was certainly the biggest fox I had
ever seen, and could easily have been shot, but I let him go for two
reasons: first, because I was waiting for larger game, and second,
because no one who had ridden with the Duke’s pack would have thought of
doing such a thing. After five days, the cattle left the beach, and
returned to their feeding ground, which showed that the jaguars and
pumas had gone too. I was now more careful about my two big fires, which
were kept going night and day, one in front of my tent door, and the
other near the kitchen; they served two purposes, to frighten off any
wild animals, and to keep the camp cheery and warm at nights. One
morning after breakfast, I was on the edge of the cliff, half-way up
the Treasure Hill, taking a look at the surrounding country, to see if
anyone was coming my way, when I saw an Indian come out of the forest on
the south side of the River Sacambaja, walk along the beach, and cross
the river to my side. Thinking he had come from Mendizabal with a
message for me, I did not hurry back, but walked slowly down. When I got
to the stream, I saw the Indian calmly walking off with a big load of my
charque (dried beef) on his back. I shouted to him, but he took no
notice, and hurried on faster across the first arm of the river; so I
took my rifle from the tent, and fired two shots at him. I did not want
to kill him, and deliberately fired a few yards wide of the mark, which
answered the purpose. He dropped the charque and a good long llama wool
rope as well, and when I fired two more shots for luck he ran as hard as
he could along the beach, and disappeared into the forest at the other
side, while I carried back my beef and his rope.
It was now the middle of September, and the nights and early mornings
began to get warmer, but the thermometer still registered seven degrees
or four degrees below zero. The first week in October the cold spell
ceased, and the nights became more pleasant, and one could sleep
comfortably with three blankets on instead of six. The nights continued
to get warmer, but not too warm, and the mosquitoes now began to appear,
of all varieties, spotted ones and big black ones. I hung up my big net
on the hooks in the centre of the tent, and the larger net as well on
the inner side of the tent to cover table, bed and other things, and
they did not disturb me.
On October 23rd, Mendizabal, his son and several attendants arrived at
the camp. He told me Zambrana had died a few weeks after he left here,
also the assistant cargo man, and that one of the other men was so bad
with fever that when he felt better he started back to Cochabamba, and
had taken six weeks to get there. As soon as Mendizabal heard about the
four Indians, and the poisoning, he told his son to return to Cuti, take
six of the native police with him to the village where these men had
said their home was, and bring them down here. He told me he was sorry I
had let off the Indian thief, but said it would do him a lot of good, as
he would probably think he had been lucky to get away. I had not been
troubled with the poison symptoms for some weeks, but the day after
Mendizabal arrived I had another attack which was, however, not nearly
so bad as the others had been, and only lasted a day and a half. Three
days after he had left, his son came back with the news that he had
found the huts where the men lived, but they were not there, and had not
been to their homes for over four months. The head man of the village
had been told to have them arrested and brought to Cuti, when they were
found.
I told Mendizabal that the best way, in my opinion, to uncover this big
tapada was to work systematically, and uncover the whole of the side I
was now working on, up to the end of the roof, as indicated by the
formation; it would take six months and require twenty-five workmen. He
kindly arranged to provide me with twenty-five of his own good Indians
for the next season, I to find wild cattle meat, and he the rest of
their food. I was to pay them 6/-every Saturday night, and whenever one
wanted to return to his home he was to do so at the end of the week, and
another would be sent to replace him. If we succeeded in finding the
treasure, it was agreed that I should, at my own expense, go to Arabia,
buy him the finest Arab stallion that money could procure, bring him
over myself, and deliver him to Mendizabal at Cuti. If we did not
succeed next dry season, he said he was willing to go on every year till
we gave it up or found the treasure. We started for Cuti on November
1st, just as the wet season showed signs of coming on, leaving Manuel
and one of Mendizabal’s men as caretakers. I left Cuti two days after
getting there, and went home, intending to return and begin the work
again next April on the terms agreed upon. On the way I met a coloured
man on the shore at Guayaquil, who was hawking round a queer-looking
animal about two feet high, or rather longer, with a tail some eighteen
inches long, and paws like a bear. It was stuffed with long grass, and
cost me 10/-, turning out eventually to be a bear with a tail. In his
book on wild animals, Rowland Ward says, “Amongst the rarest of animals
is a bear with a tail; this animal is known to exist, is very rare, and
only to be found in the forests of Equador,” and this was where the man
who sold it to me said he got it. When I told Mendizabal, he said there
were several in the forest near where we were working at Sacambaja.