We were now in the land of the bloodsucking bats, the vampire bats
that suck the blood of living creatures, clinging to or hovering
against the shoulder of a horse or cow, or the hand or foot of a
sleeping man, and making a wound from which the blood continues to
flow long after the bat's thirst has been satiated. At Tapirapoan
there were milch cattle; and one of the calves turned up one morning
weak from loss of blood, which was still trickling from a wound,
forward of the shoulder, made by a bat. But the bats do little damage
in this neighborhood compared to what they do in some other places,
where not only the mules and cattle but the chickens have to be housed
behind bat-proof protection at night or their lives may pay the
penalty. The chief and habitual offenders are various species of
rather small bats; but it is said that other kinds of Brazilian bats
seem to have become, at least sporadically and locally, affected by
the evil example and occasionally vary their customary diet by
draughts of living blood. One of the Brazilian members of our party,
Hoehne, the botanist, was a zoologist also. He informed me that he had
known even the big fruit-eating bats to take to bloodsucking. They did
not, according to his observations, themselves make the original
wound; but after it had been made by one of the true vampires they
would lap the flowing blood and enlarge the wound. South America makes
up for its lack, relatively to Africa and India, of large man-eating
carnivores by the extraordinary ferocity or bloodthirstiness of
certain small creatures of which the kinsfolk elsewhere are harmless.
It is only here that fish no bigger than trout kill swimmers, and bats
the size of the ordinary "flittermice" of the northern hemisphere
drain the life-blood of big beasts and of man himself.
There was not much large mammalian life in the neighborhood. Kermit
hunted industriously and brought in an occasional armadillo, coati, or
agouti for the naturalists. Miller trapped rats and a queer opossum
new to the collection. Cherrie got many birds. Cherrie and Miller
skinned their specimens in a little open hut or shed. Moses, the small
pet owl, sat on a cross-bar overhead, an interested spectator, and
chuckled whenever he was petted. Two wrens, who bred just outside the
hut, were much excited by the presence of Moses, and paid him visits
of noisy unfriendliness. The little white-throated sparrows came
familiarly about the palm cabins and whitewashed houses and trilled on
the rooftrees. It was a simple song, with just a hint of our northern
white-throat's sweet and plaintive melody, and of the opening bars of
our song-sparrow's pleasant, homely lay. It brought back dear memories
of glorious April mornings on Long Island, when through the singing of
robin and song-sparrow comes the piercing cadence of the meadowlark;
and of the far northland woods in June, fragrant with the breath of
pine and balsam-fir, where sweetheart sparrows sing from wet spruce
thickets and rapid brooks rush under the drenched and swaying alder-
boughs.
From Tapirapoan our course lay northward up to and across the Plan
Alto, the highland wilderness of Brazil. From the edges of this
highland country, which is geologically very ancient, the affluents of
the Amazon to the north, and of the Plate to the south, flow, with
immense and devious loops and windings.
Two days before we ourselves started with our mule-train, a train of
pack-oxen left, loaded with provisions, tools, and other things, which
we would not need until, after a month or six weeks, we began our
descent into the valley of the Amazon. There were about seventy oxen.
Most of them were well broken, but there were about a score which were
either not broken at all or else very badly broken. These were loaded
with much difficulty, and bucked like wild broncos. Again and again
they scattered their loads over the corral and over the first part of
the road. The pack-men, however--copper-colored, black, and dusky-
white--were not only masters of their art, but possessed tempers that
could not be ruffled; when they showed severity it was because
severity was needed, and not because they were angry. They finally got
all their longhorned beasts loaded and started on the trail with them.
On January 21 we ourselves started, with the mule-train. Of course, as
always in such a journey, there was some confusion before the men and
the animals of the train settled down to the routine performance of
duty. In addition to the pack-animals we all had riding-mules. The
first day we journeyed about twelve miles, then crossing the Sepotuba
and camping beside it, below a series of falls, or rather rapids. The
country was level. It was a great natural pasture, covered with a very
open forest of low, twisted trees, bearing a superficial likeness to
the cross-timbers of Texas and Oklahoma. It is as well fitted for
stock-raising as Oklahoma; and there is also much fine agricultural
land, while the river will ultimately yield electric power. It is a
fine country for settlement. The heat is great at noon; but the nights
are not uncomfortable. We were supposed to be in the middle of the
rainy season, but hitherto most of the days had been fine, varied with
showers. The astonishing thing was the absence of mosquitoes. Insect
pests that work by day can be stood, and especially by settlers,
because they are far less serious foes in the clearings than in the
woods. The mosquitoes and other night foes offer the really serious
and unpleasant problem, because they break one's rest. Hitherto,
during our travels up the Paraguay and its tributaries, in this level,
marshy tropical region of western Brazil, we had practically not been
bothered by mosquitoes at all, in our home camps. Out in the woods
they were at times a serious nuisance, and Cherrie and Miller had been
subjected to real torment by them during some of their special
expeditions; but there were practically none on the ranches and in our
camps in the open fields by the river, even when marshes were close
by. I was puzzled--and delighted--by their absence. Settlers need not
be deterred from coming to this region by the fear of insect foes.
This does not mean that there are not such foes. Outside of the
clearings, and of the beaten tracks of travel, they teem. There are
ticks, poisonous ants, wasps--of which some species are really serious
menaces--biting flies and gnats. I merely mean that, unlike so many
other tropical regions, this particular region is, from the standpoint
of the settler and the ordinary traveller, relatively free from insect
pests, and a pleasant place of residence. The original explorer, and
to an only less degree the hardworking field naturalist or big-game
hunter, have to face these pests, just as they have to face countless
risks, hardships, and difficulties. This is inherent in their several
professions or avocations. Many regions in the United States where
life is now absolutely comfortable and easygoing offered most
formidable problems to the first explorers a century or two ago. We
must not fall into the foolish error of thinking that the first
explorers need not suffer terrible hardships, merely because the
ordinary travellers, and even the settlers who come after them, do not
have to endure such danger, privation, and wearing fatigue--although
the first among the genuine settlers also have to undergo exceedingly
trying experiences. The early explorers and adventurers make fairly
well-beaten trails; but it is incumbent on them neither to boast of
their own experiences nor to misjudge the efforts of the pioneers
because, thanks to these very efforts, their own lines fall in
pleasant places. The ordinary traveller, who never goes off the beaten
route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without
himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much
more initiative and intelligence than an express package. He does
nothing; others do all the work, show all the forethought, take all
the risk--and are entitled to all the credit. He and his valise are
carried in practically the same fashion; and for each the achievement
stands about on the same plane. If this kind of traveller is a writer,
he can of course do admirable work, work of the highest value; but the
value comes because he is a writer and observer, not because of any
particular credit that attaches to him as a traveller. We all
recognize this truth as far as highly civilized regions are concerned:
when Bryce writes of the American commonwealth, or Lowell of European
legislative assemblies, our admiration is for the insight and thought
of the observer, and we are not concerned with his travels. When a man
travels across Arizona in a Pullman car, we do not think of him as
having performed a feat bearing even the most remote resemblance to
the feats of the first explorers of those waterless wastes; whatever
admiration we feel in connection with his trip is reserved for the
traffic-superintendent, engineer, fireman, and brakeman. But as
regards the less-known continents, such as South America, we sometimes
fail to remember these obvious truths. There yet remains plenty of
exploring work to be done in South America, as hard, as dangerous, and
almost as important as any that has already been done; work such as
has recently been done, or is now being done, by men and women such as
Haseman, Farrabee, and Miss Snethlage. The collecting naturalists who
go into the wilds and do first-class work encounter every kind of risk
and undergo every kind of hardship and exertion. Explorers and
naturalists of the right type have open to them in South America a
field of extraordinary attraction and difficulty. But to excavate
ruins that have already long been known, to visit out-of-the-way towns
that date from colonial days, to traverse old, even if uncomfortable,
routes of travel, or to ascend or descend highway rivers like the
Amazon, the Paraguay, and the lower Orinoco--all of these exploits are
well worth performing, but they in no sense represent exploration or
adventure, and they do not entitle the performer, no matter how well
he writes and no matter how much of real value he contributes to human
knowledge, to compare himself in anyway with the real wilderness
wanderer, or to criticise the latter. Such a performance entails no
hardship or difficulty worth heeding. Its value depends purely on
observation, not on action. The man does little; he merely records
what he sees. He is only the man of the beaten routes. The true
wilderness wanderer, on the contrary, must be a man of action as well
as of observation. He must have the heart and the body to do and to
endure, no less than the eye to see and the brain to note and record.
Let me make it clear that I am not depreciating the excellent work of
so many of the men who have not gone off the beaten trails. I merely
wish to make it plain that this excellent work must not be put in the
class with that of the wilderness explorer. It is excellent work,
nevertheless, and has its place, just as the work of the true explorer
has its place. Both stand in sharpest contrast with the actions of
those alleged explorers, among whom Mr. Savage Landor stands in
unpleasant prominence.
From the Sepotuba rapids our course at the outset lay westward. The
first day's march away from the river lay through dense tropical
forest. Away from the broad, beaten route every step of a man's
progress represented slashing a trail with the machete through the
tangle of bushes, low trees, thorny scrub, and interlaced creepers.
There were palms of new kinds, very tall, slender, straight, and
graceful, with rather short and few fronds. The wild plantains, or
pacovas, thronged the spaces among the trunks of the tall trees; their
boles were short, and their broad, erect leaves gigantic; they bore
brilliant red-and-orange flowers. There were trees whose trunks
bellied into huge swellings. There were towering trees with buttressed
trunks, whose leaves made a fretwork against the sky far overhead.
Gorgeous red-and-green trogons, with long tails, perched motionless on
the lower branches and uttered a loud, thrice-repeated whistle. We
heard the calling of the false bellbird, which is gray instead of
white like the true bellbirds; it keeps among the very topmost
branches. Heavy rain fell shortly after we reached our camping-place.
Next morning at sunrise we climbed a steep slope to the edge of the
Parecis plateau, at a level of about two thousand feet above the sea.
We were on the Plan Alto, the high central plain of Brazil, the
healthy land of dry air, of cool nights, of clear, running brooks. The
sun was directly behind us when we topped the rise. Reining in, we
looked back over the vast Paraguayan marshes, shimmering in the long
morning lights. Then, turning again, we rode forward, casting shadows
far before us. It was twenty miles to the next water, and in hot
weather the journey across this waterless, shadeless, sandy stretch of
country is hard on the mules and oxen. But on this day the sky
speedily grew overcast and a cool wind blew in our faces as we
travelled at a quick, running walk over the immense rolling plain. The
ground was sandy; it was covered with grass and with a sparse growth
of stunted, twisted trees, never more than a few feet high. There were
rheas--ostriches--and small pampas-deer on this plain; the coloration
of the rheas made it difficult to see them at a distance, whereas the
bright red coats of the little deer, and their uplifted flags as they
ran, advertised them afar off. We also saw the footprints of cougars
and of the small-toothed, big, red wolf. Cougars are the most
inveterate enemies of these small South American deer, both those of
the open grassy plain and those of the forest.
It is not nearly as easy to get lost on these open plains as in the
dense forest; and where there is a long, reasonably straight road or
river to come back to, a man even without a compass is safe. But in
these thick South American forests, especially on cloudy days, a
compass is an absolute necessity. We were struck by the fact that the
native hunters and ranchmen on such days continually lost themselves
and, if permitted, travelled for miles through the forest either in
circles or in exactly the wrong direction. They had no such sense of
direction as the forest-dwelling 'Ndorobo hunters in Africa had, or as
the true forest-dwelling Indians of South America are said to have. On
certainly half a dozen occasions our guides went completely astray,
and we had to take command, to disregard their assertions, and to lead
the way aright by sole reliance on our compasses.
On this cool day we travelled well. The air was wonderful; the vast
open spaces gave a sense of abounding vigor and freedom. Early in the
afternoon we reached a station made by Colonel Rondon in the course of
his first explorations. There were several houses with whitewashed
walls, stone floors, and tiled or thatched roofs. They stood in a
wide, gently sloping valley. Through it ran a rapid brook of cool
water, in which we enjoyed delightful baths. The heavy, intensely
humid atmosphere of the low, marshy plains had gone; the air was clear
and fresh; the sky was brilliant; far and wide we looked over a
landscape that seemed limitless; the breeze that blew in our faces
might have come from our own northern plains. The midday sun was very
hot; but it was hard to realize that we were in the torrid zone. There
were no mosquitoes, so that we never put up our nets when we went to
bed; but wrapped ourselves in our blankets and slept soundly through
the cool, pleasant nights. Surely in the future this region will be
the home of a healthy highly civilized population. It is good for
cattle-raising, and the valleys are fitted for agriculture. From June
to September the nights are often really cold. Any sound northern race
could live here; and in such a land, with such a climate, there would
be much joy of living.
On these plains the Telegraphic Commission uses motor-trucks; and
these now to relieve the mules and oxen; for some of them, especially
among the oxen, already showed the effects of the strain. Travelling
in a wild country with a pack-train is not easy on the pack-animals.
It was strange to see these big motor-vans out in the wilderness where
there was not a settler, not a civilized man except the employees of
the Telegraphic Commission. They were handled by Lieutenant Lauriado,
who, with Lieutenant Mello, had taken special charge of our transport
service; both were exceptionally good and competent men.
The following day we again rode on across the Plan Alto. In the early
afternoon, in the midst of a downpour of rain, we crossed the divide
between the basins of the Paraguay and the Amazon. That evening we
camped on a brook whose waters ultimately ran into the Tapajos. The
rain fell throughout the afternoon, now lightly, now heavily, and the
mule-train did not get up until dark. But enough tents and flies were
pitched to shelter all of us. Fires were lit, and--after a fourteen
hours' fast we feasted royally on beans and rice and pork and beef,
seated around ox-skins spread upon the ground. The sky cleared; the
stars blazed down through the cool night; and wrapped in our blankets
we slept soundly, warm and comfortable.
Next morning the trail had turned, and our course led northward and at
times east of north. We traversed the same high, rolling plains of
coarse grass and stunted trees. Kermit, riding a big, iron-mouthed,
bull-headed white mule, rode off to one side on a hunt, and rejoined
the line of march carrying two bucks of the little pampas-deer, or
field deer, behind his saddle. These deer are very pretty and
graceful, with a tail like that of the Colombian blacktail. Standing
motionless facing one, in the sparse scrub, they are hard to make out;
if seen sideways the reddish of their coats, contrasted with the
greens and grays of the landscape, betrays them; and when they bound
off the upraised white tail is very conspicuous. They carefully avoid
the woods in which their cousins the little bush deer are found, and
go singly or in couples. Their odor can be made out at quite a
distance, but it is not rank. They still carried their antlers. Their
venison was delicious.
We came across many queer insects. One red grasshopper when it flew
seemed as big as a small sparrow; and we passed in some places such
multitudes of active little green grasshoppers that they frightened
the mules. At our camping-place we saw an extraordinary colony of
spiders. It was among some dwarf trees, standing a few yards apart
from one another by the water. When we reached the camping-place,
early in the afternoon--the pack-train did not get in until nearly
sunset, just ahead of the rain--no spiders were out. They were under
the leaves of the trees. Their webs were tenantless, and indeed for
the most part were broken down. But at dusk they came out from their
hiding-places, two or three hundred of them in all, and at once began
to repair the old and spin new webs. Each spun its own circular web,
and sat in the middle; and each web was connected on several sides
with other webs, while those nearest the trees were hung to them by
spun ropes, so to speak. The result was a kind of sheet of web
consisting of scores of wheels, in each of which the owner and
proprietor sat; and there were half a dozen such sheets, each
extending between two trees. The webs could hardly be seen; and the
effect was of scores of big, formidable-looking spiders poised in
midair, equidistant from one another, between each pair of trees. When
darkness and rain fell they were still out, fixing their webs, and
pouncing on the occasional insects that blundered into the webs. I
have no question that they are nocturnal; they certainly hide in the
daytime, and it seems impossible that they can come out only for a few
minutes at dusk.
In the evenings, after supper or dinner--it is hard to tell by what
title the exceedingly movable evening meal should be called--the
members of the party sometimes told stories of incidents in their past
lives. Most of them were men of varied experiences. Rondon and Lyra
told of the hardship and suffering of the first trips through the
wilderness across which we were going with such comfort. On this very
plateau they had once lived for weeks on the fruits of the various
fruit-bearing trees. Naturally they became emaciated and feeble. In
the forests of the Amazonian basin they did better because they often
shot birds and plundered the hives of the wild honey-bees. In cutting
the trail for the telegraph-line through the Juruena basin they lost
every single one of the hundred and sixty mules with which they had
started. Those men pay dear who build the first foundations of empire!
Fiala told of the long polar nights and of white bears that came round
the snow huts of the explorers, greedy to eat them, and themselves
destined to be eaten by them. Of all the party Cherrie's experiences
had covered the widest range. This was partly owing to the fact that
the latter-day naturalist of the most vigorous type who goes into the
untrodden wastes of the world must see and do many strange things; and
still more owing to the character of the man himself. The things he
had seen and done and undergone often enabled him to cast the light of
his own past experience on unexpected subjects. Once we were talking
about the proper weapons for cavalry, and some one mentioned the
theory that the lance is especially formidable because of the moral
effect it produces on the enemy. Cherrie nodded emphatically; and a
little cross-examination elicited the fact that he was speaking from
lively personal recollection of his own feelings when charged by
lancers. It was while he was fighting with the Venezuelan insurgents
in an unsuccessful uprising against the tyranny of Castro. He was on
foot, with five Venezuelans, all cool men and good shots. In an open
plain they were charged by twenty of Castro's lancers, who galloped
out from behind cover two or three hundred yards off. It was a war in
which neither side gave quarter and in which the wounded and the
prisoners were butchered--just as President Madero was butchered in
Mexico. Cherrie knew that it meant death for him and his companions if
the charge came home; and the sight of the horsemen running in at full
speed, with their long lances in rest and the blades glittering, left
an indelible impression on his mind. But he and his companions shot
deliberately and accurately; ten of the lancers were killed, the
nearest falling within fifty yards; and the others rode off in
headlong haste. A cool man with a rifle, if he has mastered his
weapon, need fear no foe.
At this camp the auto-vans again joined us. They were to go direct to
the first telegraph station, at the great falls of the Utiarity, on
the Rio Papagaio. Of course they travelled faster than the mule-train.
Father Zahm, attended by Sigg, started for the falls in them. Cherrie
and Miller also went in them, because they had found that it was very
difficult to collect birds, and especially mammals, when we were
moving every day, packing up early each morning and the mule-train
arriving late in the afternoon or not until nightfall. Moreover, there
was much rain, which made it difficult to work except under the tents.
Accordingly, the two naturalists desired to get to a place where they
could spend several days and collect steadily, thereby doing more
effective work. The rest of us continued with the mule-train, as was
necessary.
It was always a picturesque sight when camp was broken, and again at
nightfall when the laden mules came stringing in and their burdens
were thrown down, while the tents were pitched and the fires lit. We
breakfasted before leaving camp, the aluminum cups and plates being
placed on ox-hides, round which we sat, on the ground or on camp-
stools. We fared well, on rice, beans, and crackers, with canned
corned beef, and salmon or any game that had been shot, and coffee,
tea, and matte. I then usually sat down somewhere to write, and when
the mules were nearly ready I popped my writing-materials into my
duffel-bag/war-sack, as we would have called it in the old days on the
plains. I found that the mules usually arrived so late in the
afternoon or evening that I could not depend upon being able to write
at that time. Of course, if we made a very early start I could not
write at all. At night there were no mosquitoes. In the daytime gnats
and sand-flies and horse-flies sometimes bothered us a little, but not
much. Small stingless bees lit on us in numbers and crawled over the
skin, making a slight tickling; but we did not mind them until they
became very numerous. There was a good deal of rain, but not enough to
cause any serious annoyance.
Colonel Rondon and Lieutenant Lyra held many discussions as to whither
the Rio da Duvida flowed, and where its mouth might be. Its
provisional name--"River of Doubt"--was given it precisely because of
this ignorance concerning it; an ignorance which it was one of the
purposes of our trip to dispel. It might go into the Gy-Parana, in
which case its course must be very short; it might flow into the
Madeira low down, in which case its course would be very long; or,
which was unlikely, it might flow into the Tapajos. There was another
river, of which Colonel Rondon had come across the head-waters, whose
course was equally doubtful, although in its case there was rather
more probability of its flowing into the Juruena, by which name the
Tapajos is known for its upper half. To this unknown river Colonel
Rondon had given the name Ananas, because when he came across it he
found a deserted Indian field with pineapples, which the hungry
explorers ate greedily. Among the things the colonel and I hoped to
accomplish on the trip was to do a little work in clearing up one or
the other of these two doubtful geographical points, and thereby to
push a little forward the knowledge of this region. Originally, as
described in the first chapter, my trip was undertaken primarily in
the interest of the American Museum of Natural History of New York, to
add to our knowledge of the birds and mammals of the far interior of
the western Brazilian wilderness; and the labels of our baggage and
scientific equipment, printed by the museum, were entitled "Colonel
Roosevelt's South American Expedition for the American Museum of
Natural History." But, as I have already mentioned, at Rio the
Brazilian Government, through the secretary of foreign affairs, Doctor
Lauro Muller, suggested that I should combine the expedition with one
by Colonel Rondon, which they contemplated making, and thereby make
both expeditions of broader scientific interest. I accepted the
proposal with much pleasure; and we found, when we joined Colonel
Rondon and his associates, that their baggage and equipment had been
labelled by the Brazilian Government "Expedicao Scientifica Roosevelt-
Rondon." This thenceforth became the proper and official title of the
expedition. Cherrie and Miller did the chief zoological work. The
geological work was done by a Brazilian member of the expedition,
Euzebio Oliveira. The astronomical work necessary for obtaining the
exact geographical location of the rivers and points of note was to be
done by Lieutenant Lyra, under the supervision of Colonel Rondon; and
at the telegraph stations this astronomical work would be checked by
wire communications with one of Colonel Rondon's assistants at Cuyaba,
Lieutenant Caetano, thereby securing a minutely accurate comparison of
time. The sketch-maps and surveying and cartographical work generally
were to be made under the supervision of Colonel Rondon by Lyra, with
assistance from Fiala and Kermit. Captain Amilcar handled the worst
problem--transportation; the medical member was Doctor Cajazeira.
At night around the camp-fire my Brazilian companions often spoke of
the first explorers of this vast wilderness of western Brazil--men
whose very names are now hardly known, but who did each his part in
opening the country which will some day see such growth and
development. Among the most notable of them was a Portuguese, Ricardo
Franco, who spent forty years at the work, during the last quarter of
the eighteenth and the opening years of the nineteenth centuries. He
ascended for long distances the Xingu and the Tapajos, and went up the
Madeira and Guapore, crossing to the head-waters of the Paraguay and
partially exploring there also. He worked among and with the Indians,
much as Mungo Park worked with the natives of West Africa, having none
of the aids, instruments, and comforts with which even the hardiest of
modern explorers are provided. He was one of the men who established
the beginnings of the province of Matto Grosso. For many years the
sole method of communication between this remote interior province and
civilization was by the long, difficult, and perilous route which led
up the Amazon and Madeira; and its then capital, the town of Matto
Grosso, the seat of the captain-general, with its palace, cathedral,
and fortress, was accordingly placed far to the west, near the
Guapore. When less circuitous lines of communication were established
farther eastward the old capital was abandoned, and the tropic
wilderness surged over the lonely little town. The tomb of the old
colonial explorer still stands in the ruined cathedral, where the
forest has once more come to its own. But civilization is again
advancing to reclaim the lost town and to revive the memory of the
wilderness wanderer who helped to found it. Colonel Rondon has named a
river after Franco; a range of mountains has also been named after
him; and the colonel, acting for the Brazilian Government, has
established a telegraph station in what was once the palace of the
captain-general.
Our northward trail led along the high ground a league or two to the
east of the northward-flowing Rio Sacre. Each night we camped on one
of the small tributary brooks that fed it. Fiala, Kermit, and I
occupied one tent. In the daytime the "pium" flies, vicious little
sand-flies, became bad enough to make us finally use gloves and head-
nets. There were many heavy rains, which made the travelling hard for
the mules. The soil was more often clay than sand, and it was slippery
when wet. The weather was overcast, and there was usually no
oppressive heat even at noon. At intervals along the trail we came on
the staring skull and bleached skeleton of a mule or ox. Day after day
we rode forward across endless flats of grass and of low open scrubby
forest, the trees standing far apart and in most places being but
little higher than the head of a horseman. Some of them carried
blossoms, white, orange, yellow, pink; and there were many flowers,
the most beautiful being the morning-glories. Among the trees were
bastard rubber-trees, and dwarf palmetto; if the latter grew more than
a few feet high their tops were torn and dishevelled by the wind.
There was very little bird or mammal life; there were few long vistas,
for in most places it was not possible to see far among the gray,
gnarled trunks of the wind-beaten little trees. Yet the desolate
landscape had a certain charm of its own, although not a charm that
would be felt by any man who does not take pleasure in mere space, and
freedom and wildness, and in plains standing empty to the sun, the
wind, and the rain. The country bore some resemblance to the country
west of Redjaf on the White Nile, the home of the giant eland; only
here there was no big game, no chance of seeing the towering form of
the giraffe, the black bulk of elephant or buffalo, the herds of
straw-colored hartebeests, or the ghostly shimmer of the sun glinting
on the coats of roan and eland as they vanished silently in the gray
sea of withered scrub.
One feature in common with the African landscape was the abundance of
ant-hills, some as high as a man. They were red in the clay country,
gray where it was sandy; and the dirt houses were also in trees, while
their raised tunnels traversed trees and ground alike. At some of the
camping-places we had to be on our watch against the swarms of leaf-
carrying ants. These are so called in the books--the Brazilians call
them "carregadores," or porters--because they are always carrying bits
of leaves and blades of grass to their underground homes. They are
inveterate burden-bearers, and they industriously cut into pieces and
carry off any garment they can get at; and we had to guard our shoes
and clothes from them, just as we had often had to guard all our
belongings against the termites. These ants did not bite us; but we
encountered huge black ants, an inch and a quarter long, which were
very vicious, and their bite was not only painful but quite poisonous.
Praying-mantes were common, and one evening at supper one had a
comical encounter with a young dog, a jovial near-puppy, of Colonel
Rondon's, named Cartucho. He had been christened the jolly-cum-pup,
from a character in one of Frank Stockton's stories, which I suppose
are now remembered only by elderly people, and by them only if they
are natives of the United States. Cartucho was lying with his head on
the ox-hide that served as table, waiting with poorly dissembled
impatience for his share of the banquet. The mantis flew down on the
ox-hide and proceeded to crawl over it, taking little flights from one
corner to another; and whenever it thought itself menaced it assumed
an attitude of seeming devotion and real defiance. Soon it lit in
front of Cartucho's nose. Cartucho cocked his big ears forward,
stretched his neck, and cautiously sniffed at the new arrival, not
with any hostile design, but merely to find out whether it would prove
to be a playmate. The mantis promptly assumed an attitude of prayer.
This struck Cartucho as both novel and interesting, and he thrust his
sniffing black nose still nearer. The mantis dexterously thrust
forward first one and then the other armed fore leg, touching the
intrusive nose, which was instantly jerked back and again slowly and
inquiringly brought forward. Then the mantis suddenly flew in
Cartucho's face, whereupon Cartucho, with a smothered yelp of dismay,
almost turned a back somersault; and the triumphant mantis flew back
to the middle of the ox-hide, among the plates, where it reared erect
and defied the laughing and applauding company.
On the morning of the 29th we were rather late in starting, because
the rain had continued through the night into the morning, drenching
everything. After nightfall there had been some mosquitoes, and the
piums were a pest during daylight; where one bites it leaves a tiny
black spot on the skin which lasts for several weeks. In the slippery
mud one of the pack-mules fell and injured itself so that it had to be
abandoned. Soon after starting we came on the telegraph-line, which
runs from Cuyaba. This was the first time we had seen it. Two Parecis
Indians joined us, leading a pack-bullock. They were dressed in hat,
shirt, trousers, and sandals, precisely like the ordinary Brazilian
caboclos, as the poor backwoods peasants, usually with little white
blood in them, are colloquially and half-derisively styled--caboclo
being originally a Guarany word meaning "naked savage." These two
Indians were in the employ of the Telegraphic Commission, and had been
patrolling the telegraph-line. The bullock carried their personal
belongings and the tools with which they could repair a break. The
commission pays the ordinary Indian worker 66 cents a day; a very good
worker gets $1, and the chief $1.66. No man gets anything unless he
works. Colonel Rondon, by just, kindly, and understanding treatment of
these Indians, who previously had often been exploited and maltreated
by rubber-gatherers, has made them the loyal friends of the
government. He has gathered them at the telegraph stations, where they
cultivate fields of mandioc, beans, potatoes, maize, and other
vegetables, and where he is introducing them to stock-raising; and the
entire work of guarding and patrolling the line is theirs.
After six hours' march we came to the crossing of the Rio Sacre at the
beautiful waterfall appropriately called the Salto Bello. This is the
end of the automobile road. Here there is a small Parecis village. The
men of the village work the ferry by which everything is taken across
the deep and rapid river. The ferry-boat is made of planking placed on
three dugout canoes, and runs on a trolley. Before crossing we enjoyed
a good swim in the swift, clear, cool water. The Indian village, where
we camped, is placed on a jutting tongue of land round which the river
sweeps just before it leaps from the over-hanging precipice. The falls
themselves are very lovely. Just above them is a wooded island, but
the river joins again before it races forward for the final plunge.
There is a sheer drop of forty or fifty yards, with a breadth two or
three times as great; and the volume of water is large. On the left or
hither bank a cliff extends for several hundred yards below the falls.
Green vines have flung themselves down over its face, and they are met
by other vines thrusting upward from the mass of vegetation at its
foot, glistening in the perpetual mist from the cataract, and clothing
even the rock surfaces in vivid green. The river, after throwing
itself over the rock wall, rushes off in long curves at the bottom of
a thickly wooded ravine, the white water churning among the black
boulders. There is a perpetual rainbow at the foot of the falls. The
masses of green water that are hurling themselves over the brink
dissolve into shifting, foaming columns of snowy lace.
On the edge of the cliff below the falls Colonel Rondon had placed
benches, giving a curious touch of rather conventional tourist-
civilization to this cataract far out in the lonely wilderness. It is
well worth visiting for its beauty. It is also of extreme interest
because of the promise it holds for the future. Lieutenant Lyra
informed me that they had calculated that this fall would furnish
thirty-six thousand horse-power. Eight miles off we were to see
another fall of much greater height and power. There are many rivers
in this region which would furnish almost unlimited motive force to
populous manufacturing communities. The country round about is
healthy. It is an upland region of good climate; we were visiting it
in the rainy season, the season when the nights are far less cool than
in the dry season, and yet we found it delightful. There is much
fertile soil in the neighborhood of the streams, and the teeming
lowlands of the Amazon and the Paraguay could readily--and with
immense advantage to both sides--be made tributary to an industrial
civilization seated on these highlands. A telegraph-line has been
built to and across them. A rail-road should follow. Such a line could
be easily built, for there are no serious natural obstacles. In
advance of its construction a trolley-line could be run from Cuyaba to
the falls, using the power furnished by the latter. Once this is done
the land will offer extraordinary opportunities to settlers of the
right kind: to home-makers and to enterprising business men of
foresight, coolness, and sagacity who are willing to work with the
settlers, the immigrants, the home-makers, for an advantage which
shall be mutual.
The Parecis Indians, whom we met here, were exceedingly interesting.
They were to all appearance an unusually cheerful, good-humored,
pleasant-natured people. Their teeth were bad; otherwise they appeared
strong and vigorous, and there were plenty of children. The colonel
was received as a valued friend and as a leader who was to be followed
and obeyed. He is raising them by degrees--the only way by which to
make the rise permanent. In this village he has got them to substitute
for the flimsy Indian cabins houses of the type usual among the poorer
field laborers and back-country dwellers in Brazil. These houses have
roofs of palm thatch, steeply pitched. They are usually open at the
sides, consisting merely of a framework of timbers, with a wall at the
back; but some have the ordinary four walls, of erect palm-logs. The
hammocks are slung in the houses, and the cooking is also done in
them, with pots placed on small open fires, or occasionally in a kind
of clay oven. The big gourds for water, and the wicker baskets, are
placed on the ground, or hung on the poles.
The men had adopted, and were wearing, shirts and trousers, but the
women had made little change in their clothing. A few wore print
dresses, but obviously only for ornament. Most of them, especially the
girls and young married women, wore nothing but a loin-cloth in
addition to bead necklaces and bracelets. The nursing mothers--and
almost all the mothers were nursing--sometimes carried the child slung
against their side of hip, seated in a cloth belt, or sling, which
went over the opposite shoulder of the mother. The women seemed to be
well treated, although polygamy is practised. The children were loved
by every one; they were petted by both men and women, and they behaved
well to one another, the boys not seeming to bully the girls or the
smaller boys. Most of the children were naked, but the girls early
wore the loin-cloth; and some, both of the little boys and the little
girls, wore colored print garments, to the evident pride of themselves
and their parents. In each house there were several families, and life
went on with no privacy but with good humor, consideration, and
fundamentally good manners. The man or woman who had nothing to do lay
in a hammock or squatted on the ground leaning against a post or wall.
The children played together, or lay in little hammocks, or tagged
round after their mothers; and when called they came trustfully up to
us to be petted or given some small trinket; they were friendly little
souls, and accustomed to good treatment. One woman was weaving a
cloth, another was making a hammock; others made ready melons and
other vegetables and cooked them over tiny fires. The men, who had
come in from work at the ferry or along the telegraph-lines, did some
work themselves, or played with the children; one cut a small boy's
hair, and then had his own hair cut by a friend. But the absorbing
amusement of the men was an extraordinary game of ball.
In our family we have always relished Oliver Herford's nonsense
rhymes, including the account of Willie's displeasure with his goat:
"I do not like my billy goat,
I wish that he was dead;
Because he kicked me, so he did,
He kicked me with his head."
Well, these Parecis Indians enthusiastically play football with their
heads. The game is not only native to them, but I have never heard or
read of its being played by any other tribe or people. They use a
light hollow rubber ball, of their own manufacture. It is circular and
about eight inches in diameter. The players are divided into two
sides, and stationed much as in association football, and the ball is
placed on the ground to be put in play as in football. Then a player
runs forward, throws himself flat on the ground, and butts the ball
toward the opposite side. This first butt, when the ball is on the
ground, never lifts it much and it rolls and bounds toward the
opponents. One or two of the latter run toward it; one throws himself
flat on his face and butts the ball back. Usually this butt lifts it,
and it flies back in a curve well up in the air; and an opposite
player, rushing toward it, catches it on his head with such a swing of
his brawny neck, and such precision and address that the ball bounds
back through the air as a football soars after a drop-kick. If the
ball flies off to one side or the other it is brought back, and again
put in play. Often it will be sent to and fro a dozen times, from head
to head, until finally it rises with such a sweep that it passes far
over the heads of the opposite players and descends behind them. Then
shrill, rolling cries of good-humored triumph arise from the victors;
and the game instantly begins again with fresh zest. There are, of
course, no such rules as in a specialized ball-game of civilization;
and I saw no disputes. There may be eight or ten, or many more,
players on each side. The ball is never touched with the hands or
feet, or with anything except the top of the head. It is hard to decide
whether to wonder most at the dexterity and strength with which it is
hit or butted with the head, as it comes down through the air, or at
the reckless speed and skill with which the players throw themselves
headlong on the ground to return the ball if it comes low down. Why
they do not grind off their noses I cannot imagine. Some of the
players hardly ever failed to catch and return the ball if it came in
their neighborhood, and with such a vigorous toss of the head that it
often flew in a great curve for a really astonishing distance.
That night a pack-ox got into the tent in which Kermit and I were
sleeping, entering first at one end and then at the other. It is
extraordinary that he did not waken us; but we slept undisturbed while
the ox deliberately ate our shirts, socks, and underclothes! It chewed
them into rags. One of my socks escaped, and my undershirt, although
chewed full of holes, was still good for some weeks' wear; but the
other things were in fragments.
In the morning Colonel Rondon arranged for us to have breakfast over
on the benches under the trees by the waterfall, whose roar, lulled to
a thunderous murmur, had been in our ears before we slept and when we
waked. There could have been no more picturesque place for the
breakfast of such a party as ours. All travellers who really care to
see what is most beautiful and most characteristic of the far interior
of South America should in their journey visit this region, and see
the two great waterfalls. They are even now easy of access; and as
soon as the traffic warrants it they will be made still more so; then,
from Sao Luis Caceres, they will be speedily reached by light
steamboat up the Sepotuba and by a day or two's automobile ride, with
a couple of days on horse-back in between.
The colonel held a very serious council with the Parecis Indians over
an incident which caused him grave concern. One of the commission's
employees, a negro, had killed a wild Nhambiquara Indian; but it
appeared that he had really been urged on and aided by the Parecis, as
the members of the tribe to which the dead Indian belonged were much
given to carrying off the Parecis women and in other ways making
themselves bad neighbors. The colonel tried hard to get at the truth
of the matter; he went to the biggest Indian house, where he sat in a
hammock--an Indian child cuddling solemnly up to him, by the way--
while the Indians sat in other hammocks, and stood round about; but it
was impossible to get an absolutely frank statement.
It appeared, however, that the Nhambiquaras had made a descent on the
Parecis village in the momentary absence of the men of the village;
but the latter, notified by the screaming of the women, had returned
in time to rescue them. The negro was with them and, having a good
rifle, he killed one of the aggressors. The Parecis were, of course,
in the right, but the colonel could not afford to have his men take
sides in a tribal quarrel.
It was only a two hours' march across to the Papagaio at the Falls of
Utiarity, so named by their discoverer, Colonel Rondon, after the
sacred falcon of the Parecis. On the way we passed our Indian friends,
themselves bound thither; both the men and the women bore burdens--the
burdens of some of the women, poor things, were heavy--and even the
small naked children carried the live hens. At Utiarity there is a big
Parecis settlement and a telegraph station kept by one of the
employees of the commission. His pretty brown wife is acting as
schoolmistress to a group of little Parecis girls. The Parecis chief
has been made a major and wears a uniform accordingly. The commission
has erected good buildings for its own employees and has superintended
the erection of good houses for the Indians. Most of the latter still
prefer the simplicity of the loin-cloth, in their ordinary lives, but
they proudly wore their civilized clothes in our honor. When in the
late afternoon the men began to play a regular match game of head-
ball, with a scorer or umpire to keep count, they soon discarded most
of their clothes, coming down to nothing but trousers or a loin-cloth.
Two or three of them had their faces stained with red ochre. Among the
women and children looking on were a couple of little girls who
paraded about on stilts.
The great waterfall was half a mile below us. Lovely though we had
found Salto Bello, these falls were far superior in beauty and
majesty. They are twice as high and twice as broad; and the lay of the
land is such that the various landscapes in which the waterfall is a
feature are more striking. A few hundred yards above the falls the
river turns at an angle and widens. The broad, rapid shallows are
crested with whitecaps. Beyond this wide expanse of flecked and
hurrying water rise the mist columns of the cataract; and as these
columns are swayed and broken by the wind the forest appears through
and between them. From below the view is one of singular grandeur. The
fall is over a shelving ledge of rock which goes in a nearly straight
line across the river's course. But at the left there is a salient in
the cliff-line, and here accordingly a great cataract of foaming water
comes down almost as a separate body, in advance of the line of the
main fall. I doubt whether, excepting, of course, Niagara, there is a
waterfall in North America which outranks this if both volume and
beauty are considered. Above the fall the river flows through a wide
valley with gently sloping sides. Below, it slips along, a torrent of
white-green water, at the bottom of a deep gorge; and the sides of the
gorge are clothed with a towering growth of tropical forest.
Next morning the cacique of these Indians, in his major's uniform,
came to breakfast, and bore himself with entire propriety. It was
raining heavily--it rained most of the time--and a few minutes
previously I had noticed the cacique's two wives, with three or four
other young women, going out to the mandioc fields. It was a
picturesque group. The women were all mothers, and each carried a
nursing child. They wore loin-cloths or short skirts. Each carried on
her back a wickerwork basket supported by a head-strap which went
around her forehead. Each carried a belt slung diagonally across her
body, over her right shoulder; in this the child was carried, against
and perhaps astride of her left hip. They were comely women, who did
not look jaded or cowed; and they laughed cheerfully and nodded to us
as they passed through the rain, on their way to the fields. But the
contrast between them and the chief in his soldier's uniform seated at
breakfast was rather too striking; and incidentally it etched in bold
lines the folly of those who idealize the life of even exceptionally
good and pleasant-natured savages.
Although it was the rainy season, the trip up to this point had not
been difficult, and from May to October, when the climate is dry and
at its best, there would be practically no hardship at all for
travellers and visitors. This is a healthy plateau. But, of course,
the men who do the first pioneering, even in country like this,
encounter dangers and run risks; and they make payment with their
bodies. At more than one halting-place we had come across the forlorn
grave of some soldier or laborer of the commission. The grave-mound
lay within a rude stockade; and an uninscribed wooden cross, gray and
weather-beaten, marked the last resting-place of the unknown and
forgotten man beneath, the man who had paid with his humble life the
cost of pushing the frontier of civilization into the wild savagery of
the wilderness. Farther west the conditions become less healthy. At
this station Colonel Rondon received news of sickness and of some
deaths among the employees of the commission in the country to the
westward, which we were soon to enter. Beriberi and malignant malarial
fever were the diseases which claimed the major number of the victims.
Surely these are "the men who do the work for which they draw the
wage." Kermit had with him the same copy of Kipling's poems which he
had carried through Africa. At these falls there was one sunset of
angry splendor; and we contrasted this going down of the sun, through
broken rain-clouds and over leagues of wet tropical forest, with the
desert sunsets we had seen in Arizona and Sonora, and along the Guaso
Nyiro north and west of Mount Kenia, when the barren mountains were
changed into flaming "ramparts of slaughter and peril" standing above
"the wine-dark flats below."
It rained during most of the day after our arrival at Utiarity.
Whenever there was any let-up the men promptly came forth from their
houses and played head-ball with the utmost vigor; and we would listen
to their shrill undulating cries of applause and triumph until we also
grew interested and strolled over to look on. They are more infatuated
with the game than an American boy is with baseball or football. It is
an extraordinary thing that this strange and exciting game should be
played by, and only by, one little tribe of Indians in what is almost
the very centre of South America. If any traveller or ethnologist
knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would
let me know. To play it demands great activity, vigor, skill, and
endurance. Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at
the number of children roundabout, it seemed as if the tribe must be
in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in numbers, for
measles and smallpox have been fatal to them.
By the evening the rain was coming down more heavily than ever. It was
not possible to keep the moisture out of our belongings; everything
became mouldy except what became rusty. It rained all that night; and
day-light saw the downpour continuing with no prospect of cessation.
The pack-mules could not have gone on with the march; they were
already rather done up by their previous ten days' labor through rain
and mud, and it seemed advisable to wait until the weather became
better before attempting to go forward. Moreover, there had been no
chance to take the desired astronomical observations. There was very
little grass for the mules; but there was abundance of a small-leaved
plant eight or ten inches high--unfortunately, not very nourishing--on
which they fed greedily. In such weather and over such muddy trails
oxen travel better than mules.
In spite of the weather Cherrie and Miller, whom, together with Father
Zahm and Sigg, we had found awaiting us, made good collections of
birds and mammals. Among the latter were opossums and mice that were
new to them. The birds included various forms so unlike our home birds
that the enumeration of their names would mean nothing. One of the
most interesting was a large black-and-white woodpecker, the white
predominating in the plumage. Several of these woodpeckers were
usually found together. They were showy, noisy, and restless, and
perched on twigs, in ordinary bird fashion, at least as often as they
clung to the trunks in orthodox woodpecker style. The prettiest bird
was a tiny manakin, coal-black, with a red-and-orange head.
On February 2 the rain let up, although the sky remained overcast and
there were occasional showers. I walked off with my rifle for a couple
of leagues; at that distance, from a slight hillock, the mist columns
of the falls were conspicuous in the landscape. The only mammal I saw
on the walk was a rather hairy armadillo, with a flexible tail, which
I picked up and brought back to Miller--it showed none of the speed of
the nine-banded armadillos we met on our jaguar-hunt. Judging by its
actions, as it trotted about before it saw me, it must be diurnal in
habits. It was new to the collection.
I spent much of the afternoon by the waterfall. Under the overcast sky
the great cataract lost the deep green and fleecy-white of the sunlit
falling waters. Instead it showed opaline hues and tints of topaz and
amethyst. At all times, and under all lights, it was majestic and
beautiful.
Colonel Rondon had given the Indians various presents, those for the
women including calico prints, and, what they especially prized,
bottles of scented oil, from Paris, for their hair. The men held a
dance in the late afternoon. For this occasion most, but not all, of
them cast aside their civilized clothing, and appeared as doubtless
they would all have appeared had none but themselves been present.
They were absolutely naked except for a beaded string round the waist.
Most of them were spotted and dashed with red paint, and on one leg
wore anklets which rattled. A number carried pipes through which they
blew a kind of deep stifled whistle in time to the dancing. One of
them had his pipe leading into a huge gourd, which gave out a hollow,
moaning boom. Many wore two red or green or yellow macaw feathers in
their hair, and one had a macaw feather stuck transversely through the
septum of his nose. They circled slowly round and round, chanting and
stamping their feet, while the anklet rattles clattered and the pipes
droned. They advanced to the wall of one of the houses, again and
again chanting and bowing before it; I was told this was a demand for
drink. They entered one house and danced in a ring around the cooking-
fire in the middle of the earth floor; I was told that they were then
reciting the deeds of mighty hunters and describing how they brought
in the game. They drank freely from gourds and pannikins of a
fermented drink made from mandioc which were brought out to them.
During the first part of the dance the women remained in the houses,
and all the doors and windows were shut and blankets hung to prevent
the possibility of seeing out. But during the second part all the
women and girls came out and looked on. They were themselves to have
danced when the men had finished, but were overcome with shyness at
the thought of dancing with so many strangers looking on. The children
played about with unconcern throughout the ceremony, one of them
throwing high in the air, and again catching in his hands, a loaded
feather, a kind of shuttlecock.
In the evening the growing moon shone through the cloud-rack. Anything
approaching fair weather always put our men in good spirits; and the
muleteers squatted in a circle, by a fire near a pile of packs, and
listened to a long monotonously and rather mournfully chanted song
about a dance and a love-affair. We ourselves worked busily with our
photographs and our writing. There was so much humidity in the air
that everything grew damp and stayed damp, and mould gathered quickly.
At this season it is a country in which writing, taking photographs,
and preparing specimens are all works of difficulty, at least so far
as concerns preserving and sending home the results of the labor; and
a man's clothing is never really dry. From here Father Zahm returned
to Tapirapoan, accompanied by Sigg.