The emotion of the jungle is a direct function of human temperament.
Where one sees in it naught but a "grim, green sepulcher," teeming with
malignant, destructive forces, inimical to health, to tranquillity, to
life, another--perhaps a member of the same party--will find in the
wanton extravagance of Nature, her prodigious luxury, her infinite
variety of form, of color, and sound, such stimuli to the imagination,
and such invitation to further discovery and development, as to
constitute a lure as insidious and unescapable as the habit which too
often follows the first draft of the opium's fumes. There are those
who profess to have journeyed through vast stretches of South
American _selva_ without encountering a wild animal. Others, with sight
and hearing keener, and with a sense of observation not dulled by
futile lamentations over the absence of the luxuries of civilized
travel, will uncover a wealth of experiences which feed the memory
throughout their remaining years, and mold an irresistible desire to
penetrate again those vast, teeming, baffling solitudes.
It is true, the sterner aspect of the South American jungle
affords little invitation to repose or restful contemplation. And
the charm which its riotous prodigality exerts is in no sense
idyllic. For the jungle falls upon one with the force of a blow. It
grips by its massiveness, its awful grandeur. It does not entice
admiration, but exacts obeisance by brute force. Its silence is a
dull roar. Its rest is continuous motion, incessant activity. The
garniture of its trackless wastes is that of great daubs of vivid
color, laid thick upon the canvas with the knife--never modulated,
never worked into delicate shading with the brush, but attracting
by its riot, its audacity, its immensity, its disdain of convention,
its utter disregard of the canons cherished by the puny mind that
contemplates it. The forest's appeal is a reflex of its own infinite
complexity. The sensations which it arouses within the one who steps
from civilization into its very heart are myriad, and often
terrible. The instinct of self-preservation is by it suddenly,
rudely aroused and kept keenly alive. Its inhospitality is menacing.
The roar of its howling monkeys strikes terror to the timid heart.
The plaintive calls of its persecuted feathered denizens echo through
the mysterious vastnesses like despairing voices from a spirit
world. The crashing noises, the strange, weird, unaccountable
sounds that hurtle through its dimly lighted corridors blanch the
face and cause the hand to steal furtively toward the loosely
sheathed weapon. The piercing, frenzied screams which arise with
blood-curdling effect through the awful stillness of noonday or the
dead of night, turn the startled thought with sickening yearning
toward the soft charms of civilization, in which the sense of
protection is greater, even if actual security is frequently less.
Because of Nature's utter disregard of the individual, life is
everywhere. And that life is sharply armed and on the defensive.
The rising heat-waves hum with insects. The bush swarms with them.
Their droning murmur crowds the air. The trunks of trees, the
great, pendent leaves of plants, the trailing vines, slimy with dank
vegetation, afford footing and housing to countless myriads of
them, keenly alert, ferociously resistive. The decaying logs fester
with scorpions. The ground is cavernous with the burrows of
lizards and crawling forms, with centipedes and fierce formicidae.
Death and terror stalk hand in hand. But life trails them. Where
one falls, countless others spring up to fill the gap. The rivers
and _pantanos_ yield their quota of variegated forms. The flat
_perania_, the dreaded electric eel, infests the warm streams, and
inflicts its torture without discrimination upon all who dare invade
its domain. Snakes lurk in the fetid swamps and lagoons, the
brilliant coral and the deadly _mápina_. Beneath the forest leaves
coils the brown adder, whose sting proves fatal within three days.
To those who see only these aspects of the jungle, a journey such as
that undertaken by Rosendo and his intrepid little band would prove a
terrifying experience, a constant repetition of nerve-shocks, under
which the "centers" must ultimately give way. But to the two
Americans, fresh from the mining camps of the West, and attuned to any
pitch that Nature might strike in her marvelous symphony, the
experience was one to be taken in the same spirit as all else that
pertained to their romantic calling. Rosendo and his men accepted the
day's stint of toil and danger with dull stolidity. Carmen threw
herself upon her thought, and saw in her shifting environment only the
human mind's interpretation of its mixed concept of good and evil. The
insects swarmed around her as around the others. The tantalizing
_jejenes_ urged their insidious attacks upon her, as upon the rest.
Her hands were dotted with tiny blood-blisters where the ravenous
gnats had fed. But she uttered no complaint; nor would she discuss the
matter when Harris proffered his sympathy, and showed his own red
hands.
"It isn't true," she would say. "But you have no religion, and you
don't understand--as yet."
"Don't understand? And it isn't true, eh? Well, you have mighty
strange beliefs, young lady!"
"But not as strange and illogical as those you hold," she replied.
"Oh, I don't believe anything," he answered, with a shrug of his
shoulders. "I'm an agnostic, you know."
"There is just where you mistake, Mr. Harris," she returned gravely.
"For, instead of not believing anything, you firmly believe in the
presence and power of evil. It is just those very people who boast
that they do not believe in anything who believe most thoroughly in
evil and its omnipotence and omnipresence."
Yes, even the animals which she saw about her were but the human
mind's concepts of God's ideas--not real. Adam had named them. In the
Bible allegory, or dream, the human, mortal mind names all its own
material concepts.
The days wore on with dull regularity. From the rippling Tiguicito,
which they reached choking with thirst and utterly exhausted, they
dropped down again to the Boque, where they established camps and
began to prospect the Molino company's "near-mines," as Harris called
them after the first few unsuccessful attempts to get "colors" out of
the barren soil. At certain points, where there seemed a more likely
prospect, they remained for days, until the men, under Rosendo's
guidance, could sink pits to the underlying bedrock. Such work was
done with the crudest of tools--an iron bar, wooden scrapers in lieu
of shovels, and wooden _bateas_ in which the men handed the loosened
dirt up from one stage to another and out to the surface. It was slow,
torturing work. The men grew restive. The food ran low, and they
complained.
Then Harris one evening stumbled upon a tapir, just as the great
animal had forded the river and was shambling into the bush
opposite. He emptied his rifle magazine into the beast. It fell
with a broken hip, and the men finished it with their _machetes_.
Its hide was nearly a half inch in thickness, and covered with
_garrapatas_--fierce, burrowing vermin, with hooked claws, which
came upon the travelers and caused them intense annoyance throughout
the remainder of the journey.
Then Reed shot a deer, a delicate, big-eyed creature that had never
seen a human being and was too surprised to flee. Later, Fidel Avila
felled another with a large stone. And, finally, monkeys became so
plentiful that the men all but refused to eat them any longer.
Two weeks were spent around the mouth of the Tiguicito and the Boque
cañon. Then Reed gave the order to advance. The little party
shouldered their packs and began the ascent of the ragged gorge. For
days they clambered up and down the jagged walls of the cut, or
skirted its densely covered margin. Twice Harris fell into the
brawling stream below, and was fished out by Rosendo, his eyes
popping, and his mouth choked with uncomplimentary opinion regarding
mountain travel in the tropics. Once, seizing a slender vine to aid
him in climbing, he gave a sudden lurch and swung out unexpectedly
over the gorge, hundreds of feet deep. Again Rosendo, who by this time
had learned to keep one eye on the ground and the other on the
irresponsible Harris, rescued him from his perilous position.
"Why don't you watch where you are going?" queried the laughing
Carmen.
"I might," sputtered Harris, "if I could keep my eyes off of you."
Whereat Carmen pursed her lips and told him to reserve his compliments
for those who knew how to appraise them rightly.
They camped where night overtook them, out in the open, often falling
asleep without waiting to build a fire, but eating soggy corn _arepa_
and tinned food, and drinking cold coffee left from the early morning
repast. But sometimes, when the fatigue of day was less, they would
gather about their little fire, chilled and dripping, and beg Carmen
to sing to them while they prepared supper. Then her clear voice would
ring out over the great cañon and into the vast solitudes on either
hand in strange, vivid contrast to the cries and weird sounds of the
jungle; and the two Americans would sit and look at her as if they
half believed her a creature from another world. Sometimes Harris
would draw her into conversation on topics pertaining to philosophy
and religion, for he had early seen her bent and, agnostic that he
was, delighted to hear her express her views, which to him were so
childishly impossible. But as often he would voluntarily retire from
the conflict, sometimes shaking his head dubiously, sometimes
muttering his impatience with a mere child whose logic he, despite his
collegiate training, could not refute. He was as full of philosophical
theories as a nut with meat; but when she asked for proofs, for less
human belief and more demonstration, he hoisted the white flag and
retired from the field. But his admiration for the child became
sincere. His respect for her waxed daily stronger. And by the time
they had reached the great divide through which the Rosario fell, he
was dimly aware of a feeling toward the beautiful creature who walked
at his side day after day, sharing without complaint hardship and
fatigue that sorely taxed his own endurance, that was something more
than mere regard, and he had begun to speculate vaguely on a possible
future in which she became the central figure.
At Rosario creek they left the great cañon and turned into the rugged
defile which wound its tortuous course upward into the heights of the
_Barra Principal_. They were now in a region where, in Rosendo's
belief, there was not one human being in an area of a hundred square
miles. He himself was in sore doubt as to the identity of the
_quebrada_ which they were following. But it tallied with the brief
description given him by Don Nicolás. And, moreover, which was even
more important, as they began its ascent there came to him that sense
of conviction which every true son of the jungle feels when he is
following the right course. He might not say how he knew he was right;
but he followed the leading without further question.
Up over the steep talus at the base of the cañon wall they clambered,
up into the narrowing _arroyo_, cutting every foot of the way, for the
_macheteros_ were now no longer keeping ahead of them--the common
danger held the band united. Often they believed they discovered
traces of ancient trails. But the jealous forest had all but
obliterated them, and they could not be certain. In the higher and
drier parts of the forest, where they left the creek and followed
the beds of dead streams, slender ditches through which the water
raced in torrents during the wet season, they were set upon by
countless swarms of bees, a strange, stingless variety that covered
them in a buzzing, crawling mass, struggling and fighting for the
salt in the perspiration which exuded from the human bodies. Harris
swore he would cease to eat, for he could not take even a mouthful
of food without at the same time taking in a multitude of bees.
Often, too, their _machetes_ cut into great hornet nests. Then, with
the shrill cry, "_Avispas_!" Rosendo would tear recklessly through
the matted jungle, followed by his slapping, stumbling companions,
until the maddened insects gave up the chase. Frequently they
walked into huge ant nests before they realized it, sometimes the
great _tucanderas_, so ferociously poisonous. "Ah, señores,"
commented Rosendo, as he once stopped to point out the marvelous
roadway cut by these insects for miles straight through the jungle,
"in the days of the Spaniards the cruel taskmasters would often tie
the weak and sick slaves to trees in the depths of the forest and
let these great ants devour them alive! Señores, you can never know
the terrible crimes committed by the Spaniards!"
"And they were Christians!" murmured Harris, eying Carmen furtively.
But she knew, though she voiced it not, that the Spaniard had never
known the Christ.
Night was spent on the summit of the divide. Then, without further
respite, Rosendo urged the descent. Down through ravines and gullies;
over monster bowlders; waist deep through streams; down the sheer
sides of gorges on natural ladders formed by the hanging _mora_
vines; skirting cliffs by the aid of tangled and interlaced roots
of rank, wet vegetation; and then down again into river bottoms,
where the tenacious mud challenged their every step, and the streams
became an interminable morass, through which passage was possible
only by jumping from root to root, where the gnarled feeders of the
great trees projected above the bottomless ooze. The persecution
of the _jejenes_ became diabolical. At dawn and sunset the raucous
bellow of the red-roarer monkeys made the air hideous. The
flickering lights of the forest became dismally depressing. The men
grew morose and sullen. Reed and Harris quarreled with each other on
the slightest provocation.
Then, to increase their misery, came the rain. It fell upon them in
the river bottoms in fierce, driving gusts; then in sheets that
blotted out the forest and wet their very souls. The heavens split
with the lightning. The mountains roared and trembled with the hideous
cannonade of thunder. The jungle-matted hills ran with the flood. An
unvaried pall of vapor hung over the steaming ground, through which
uncanny, phantasmagoric shapes peered at the struggling little band.
Again the sun burst forth, and a fiery vapor seethed above the moist
earth. The reek of their damp clothing and the acrid odor of the wet
soil increased the enervation of their hard travel. Again and again
the peevish Harris accused Rosendo of having lost the way. The old man
patiently bore the abuse. Reed chided Harris, and at length quarreled
violently with him, although his own apprehension waxed continually
greater. Carmen said little. Hour after hour she toiled along,
floundering through the bogs, fording the deeper streams on Rosendo's
broad back, whispering softly to him at times, often seizing and
pressing his great horny hand, but holding her peace. In vain at
evening, when gathered about the damp, smudging firewood, Harris would
bring up to her the causes of her flight. In vain he would accuse the
unfortunate Alcalde, the Bishop, the soldiers. Carmen refused to lend
ear to it, or to see in it anything more than a varied expression of
the human mind. Personality was never for a moment considered. She
saw, not persons, not things, but expressions of thought in the
phenomena which had combined to urge her out of her former environment
and cast her into the trackless jungle.
At length, one day, when it seemed to the exhausted travelers that
human endurance could stand no more, Rosendo, who had long been
straining his ears in the direction straight ahead, announced that the
singing noise which floated to them as they descended a low hill and
plunged into a thicket of tall lush grass, undoubtedly came from the
river Tiguí. Another hour of straining and plunging through the dense
growth followed; and then, with a final effort, which manifested in a
sort of frenzied rush, the little band emerged suddenly upon the east
bank of the crystal stream, glittering and shimmering in the bright
morning sun as it sang and rippled on its solitary way through the
great jungle.
The men threw off their packs and sprawled full length upon the
ground. Rosendo pointed across the river.
"La Colorado," he said, indicating what the Americans at length made
out to be a frame house, looming above the high grass. "And there,"
pointing to the north, "is _Pozo Cayman_, where the trail begins that
leads to La Libertad."
That night, as they lay on the rough board floor of the house at La
Colorado, Rosendo told them the story of the misguided Frenchmen who,
years before, had penetrated this wild region, located a barren quartz
vein, then floated a company and begun developments. A considerable
colony settled here. The soil was fertile; the undeveloped country
ceaselessly rich in every resource, the water pure and sparkling, and
abounding in fish. The climate, too, was moderate and agreeable. It
seemed to the foreigners a terrestrial paradise. But then came the
insidious fever. It crept out of the jungle like a thief in the night.
One by one the Frenchmen fell sick and died. Panic seized upon them.
Those unafflicted fled--all but one. He remained to protect the
company's property. But he, too, fell a victim to the plague. One day,
as he lay burning upon his bed, he called feebly to his one remaining
servant, the native cook, to bring him the little package of quinine.
She hastened to comply; but, alas! she brought the packet of
strychnine instead, and soon he, too, had joined his companions in
that unknown country which awaits us all. The old woman fled in
terror; and the evil spirits descended upon the place. They haunt it
yet, and no man approaches it but with trembling.
Reed and Harris listened to the weird story with strange sensations.
The clouds above had broken, and the late moon streamed through the
night vapor, and poured through the bamboo walls of the house. The
giant frogs in the nearby creek awoke, and through the long night
croaked their mournful plaint in a weird minor cadence that seemed to
the awed Americans to voice to the shimmering moon the countless
wrongs of the primitive Indians, who, centuries before, had roamed
this marvelous land in happy freedom, until the Spaniard descended
like a dark cloud and, with rack and stake, fastened his blighting
religion upon them.
A day's rest at La Colorado sufficed to revive the spirits of the
party and prepare them for the additional eight or ten hour journey
over boggy morass and steep hill to La Libertad. For this trip Rosendo
would take only the Americans and Carmen. The _cargadores_ were not to
know the nature of this expedition, which, Rosendo announced, was
undertaken that the Americans might explore for two days the region
around the upper Tiguí. The men received this explanation with grunts
of satisfaction.
Trembling with suppressed excitement, oblivious now of fatigue,
hunger, or hardship, Reed and Harris followed the old man that day
over the ancient, obliterated trail to the forgotten mine of Don
Ignacio de Rincón. They experienced all the sensations of those who
find themselves at last on the course that leads to buried treasure.
To Harris, the romance attaching to the expedition obliterated all
other considerations. But Reed was busy with the practical end of it,
with costs, with the problems of supplies, of transportation, and
trail. Carmen saw but one vision, the man in far-off Simití, whose
ancestor once owned the great mine which lay just ahead of them.
When night fell, the four stood, silent and wondering, at the mouth of
the crumbling tunnel, where lay a rusted shovel bearing the scarce
distinguishable inscription, "I de R."
* * * * *
Two weeks later a group of natives, sitting at a feast of baked
alligator tail, at the mouth of the Amacerí, near the dirty,
straggling riverine town of Llano, rose in astonishment as they saw
issuing from the clayey, wallowing Guamocó trail a staggering band of
travelers, among them two foreigners, whose clothes were in shreds and
whose beards and unkempt hair were caked with yellow mud. With them
came a young girl, lightly clad and wearing torn rope _alpargates_ on
her bare feet. The heat was descending in torrents. From the
neighboring town floated a brawling bedlam of human voices. It was
Sunday, and the villagers were celebrating a religious _fiesta_.
"_Compadres_," said Rosendo, approaching the half-intoxicated group.
"The boat--which way?"
One of the group, his mouth too full to speak, pointed in expressive
pantomime up-stream. Rosendo murmured a fervent "_Loado sea Dios_,"
and sank upon the ground.
"It will be down to-morrow--to-day, perhaps," gurgled another of the
rapidly recovering feasters, his eyes roving from one member to
another of the weird-looking little band.
"Lord Harry!" exclaimed Harris, as he squatted upon the damp ground
and mopped his muddy brow. "I'm a salamander for heat, that's
certain!"
"Señor," said Rosendo, addressing Reed, "it would be well to pay the
men at once, for the boat may appear at any time, and it will not wait
long."
While the curious group from the village crowded about and eagerly
watched the proceedings, Reed unstrapped his pack and drew out a bundle
of Colombian bills, with which he began to pay the _cargadores_,
according to the reckoning which Rosendo had kept. As the last man,
with a grunt of satisfaction, received his money, Harris exclaimed:
"And to think, one good American dollar is worth a bushel of that paper
stuff!"
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a shrill whistle came
echoing down the river. A cloud of smoke above the distant treetops
heralded the approach of the steamer. The little party had escaped a
wait of a month in the drenching heat of Llano by the narrow margin of
an hour.
Rosendo hastened to Reed and drew him aside. He tried to speak, but
words failed him. Reed took his hand. "I understand, my friend," he
said gently. "Have no fear. The mine is all I had anticipated. My wife
and I will care for the girl until we hear from you. And we will keep
in touch with you, although it will take two months for a letter to
reach us and our reply to get back again to Simití. The development
company will be formed at once. Within six months you may expect to
see the work started. It is your fortune--and the girl's."
Carmen drew close to Rosendo. "Padre, I am coming back to you--yes?"
"_Cierto, chiquita_!" The old man would not permit himself to say
more. The girl had known for some time that he was not to accompany
her to the States, and that she should not see Ana in Cartagena. To
this she had at length accustomed herself.
In a few minutes the lumbering boat had swung around and thrown out
its gang plank. A hurried embrace; a struggle with rushing tears;
another shriek from the boat whistle; and the Americans, with Carmen
standing mute and motionless between them, looked back at the fading
group on shore, where Rosendo's tall figure stood silhouetted
against the green background of the forest. For a moment he held his
arm extended toward them. Carmen knew, as she looked at the
great-hearted man for the last time, that his benediction was
following her--following her into that new world into which he might
not enter.
* * * * *
Reed lifted the silent, wondering, big-eyed girl from the dinkey
train which pulled into Cartagena from Calamar ten days later, and
took her to the Hotel Mariana, where his anxious, fretting wife
awaited. Their boat had hung on a hidden bar in the Cauca river
for four interminable, torturing days.