BRAZILIAN BROWNIES
Entering the mouth of the mighty River Amazon, we travel slowly by
steamer right away through Northern Brazil, past Manaos, with wonderful
forests on either side of us. How hot and stifling it is, for we are
journeying through the Tropics!
On we go, gliding past the crocodiles that lie basking in the sun,
and that lazily open one eye at us or a huge mouth, the sight making
us shudder, but with a sense of devout thankfulness that we are at a
respectable distance! No sound disturbs the quiet, except the ripple
of the water, and the screams of gaily-coloured parrots. Now and again
we hear a sound like human voices, and straining our ears to listen
we find to our amusement that it comes from monkeys chattering and
quarrelling among themselves.
At length we branch off into one of the many tributaries of the great
river, the Yavari for choice, which brings us to the borders of Peru.
Pitching our tent on the river-bank, we settle down for a quiet
evening. In front of us is the Yavari River, filled with many wonderful
varieties of fish.
Stretching away behind us is the forest, full of strange and wonderful
things. We are in the home of the wild Indians, of whom there are many,
many tribes. They live by fishing in the river, and hunting in the
forest. There are said to be one hundred different kinds of fish, the
largest of which is the King Herring, weighing often as much as three
hundred-weight. When one gets weary of fish diet, stewed monkey makes a
pleasant variety, and cooked alligator a nice change!
Darkness has now fallen, and the stars are out. No sound now but the
humming of the mosquitoes, which are the bane of the traveller’s life
in South America. Here in this great land even the insects are on a
large scale. Spiders, jiggers, carrapatoes, ticks, and other insects
threaten to disturb our reverie. So if we would escape such unwelcome
attentions from blood-thirsty mosquitoes, we must take shelter under a
net. But not yet; the night is cooler than the day, and the fire-flies
are out, like vivid electric sparks, darting about us as we lie and
watch and dream of Paradise.
By and by we fall asleep. Suddenly we sit up, rubbing our eyes. What
was that? Listening, for we are wide awake now, we hear a cry as of
someone in distress. The dawn has broken as suddenly as the darkness
fell last night. It always does so in the Tropics, and the crying and
wailing gradually die away.
Presently we hear a splash, something small and dark has been thrown
into the river, and drifts slowly in our direction. Straining our eyes
to see what it is, we find to our horror that it is a dear little brown
baby, but quite dead, and following in its wake is a huge crocodile.
Alas! Alas! Who is it that has been so inhuman to a little child? We
will find out.
Like scouts through the trees we stealthily creep along, hardly daring
to breathe, and never once speaking above a whisper. Hark! What is
that? It is the tramp of many feet, and away in the distance, across an
open track, we see a company of naked Indians in charge of men clad in
European clothing.
In our eagerness to follow we almost stumble over a brown form, lying
so still. It is an Indian woman, dead from a gun-shot wound, and lying
at the foot of the tree close by is a little brown baby. We turn away
from the sickening sight, for the wee brownie’s brains have been dashed
out by one of the wicked white men in charge of the Indian gang, now
quickly disappearing in the distance.
But we must hurry on, or we will lose them. By and by they reach
the rubber plantation, the place where the rubber-trees abound. The
Brazilian and Peruvian forests are full of rubber, and for six months
in the year (the other six months the land is under water) these trees
are “bled”--as it is called--by the Indians for their taskmasters. The
rubber trees grow in groups of 100 to 150, each tree yielding on an
average eleven pounds of the grey, sticky juice.
Here the Indians, under pain of terrible torture and death, were made
to extract the rubber. The method of doing so is by making a V-shaped
gash in the trunk, under which is hung a little clay cup to catch the
juice. To each tree is this done in turn, and when the cups are full
they are emptied into a large cauldron hanging on a tripod over a fire
of pine-cones.
After going through a certain process, the juice becomes a hard,
congealed mass. This raw rubber is carried on the backs of Indians,
through the forest and over the mountains, to the city of Iquitos, in
Northern Peru; and every year sufficient rubber is exported to provide
tyres for 300,000 motor-cars.
In order to produce this rubber, the Indians have been hunted through
the forests like wild beasts, and have been made to obtain the rubber
under the threats and taunts of ignorant and cruel white men from
neighbouring republics. The Indians have been allowed a certain time to
get a certain quantity of rubber, and if it has not been forthcoming
the Indians--men, women, and girls--have been flogged, put into stocks,
starved, tortured, and tormented to death.
Saddest and most cruel of all, the children have not escaped, as we
have already seen. The mother has been killed because maybe she was
too ill or weary to walk any farther, and her little ones, who would
only be in the way, have been either thrown into the river to the
alligators, or have had their heads smashed against the trees, or been
thrown away into the forest alive to be devoured by wild animals.
It was said to be a favourite pastime of some of these so-called
“civilized” (!) agents of the rubber companies to sit round smoking,
and for a little diversion to have one or more of these little brown
children hung up on a tree, and to shoot at them as a target--for sport!
Think of the agony of suffering of these children, flogged by wicked
men, and even burned alive, in order to force them to tell where their
parents were hidden. If those rubber-trees could only speak, what awful
secrets they would reveal! Every thousand tons of rubber that have come
to our own Christian land have cost seven Indian lives! Who knows, my
young reader, what tragedy lies behind even the india-rubber ball with
which you play so skilfully, and yet lose so carelessly!
For ten long, weary years all this went on, before we heard in England
the wail of the little brown children of the Brazilian and Peruvian
forests. Have the cries ceased? God only knows, for the sounds are too
far away for us to catch them.
Now I want to introduce you to some more Brazilian babies, but of a
very different kind. So we will leave this “Paradise of Satan,” and
travel in an easterly direction, which will take us through the heart
of the continent.
In the Amazon Valley there are many, many tribes of savage Indians, who
hide away as we approach, thinking in their great fear that we must be
rubber-gatherers. Occasionally we see a large space, where once stood
an Indian village, a place of ruins and desolation, and along the
tracks are human bones lying bleached and dry, telling a silent, yet
eloquent story of what had been once living forms.
We, too, must be careful as we journey along, for the Indians near this
rubber region we are leaving behind are in a dangerous mood, and there
is much to be feared from their deadly blow-pipes. One little prick
from the poisoned arrow, and we would be dead in a very few seconds. So
we will proceed cautiously.
As we get farther into the interior, we gradually find the vegetation
becoming more dense; we enter the region of “Matto Grosso” (meaning, in
English, “Big Woods”), covering a million square miles. You will see
it on the map, in the centre of the continent. This forest swarms with
monkeys, snakes, parrots, and many kinds of beautiful birds.
Most wonderful of all the plants are the exquisite orchids, which grow
luxuriantly on the moss-covered boughs in the gloomiest parts of the
dark forest. They are beautiful both in shape and colour--pink, white,
and yellow. Some spotted, and others striped with crimson.
It may seem strange that such loveliness should be hidden away from the
eyes of all but the God who made them, but it is the same everywhere
in this wonderful country. The choicest flowers bloom unseen except
by the chance traveller, and the strangest animals and birds hide in
the most out-of-the-way places. Some of the trees are fully two hundred
feet high, so that birds on the topmost branches are safe from the
hunter.
Right in the heart of the forest is a dead silence; no animal life is
to be seen, though probably there are swarms of monkeys, birds, and
other creatures hidden away in the tree-tops. Female monkeys usually
carry their babies on their backs or shoulders, though sometimes they
are carried on the breast with the legs and arms clasped round the
body. They are very fond of Brazil nuts, several of which grow in one
large, round shell, and in order to get at them the monkey beats the
shell against the bough until it breaks and scatters the nuts upon the
ground beneath.
South America has been spoken of as a Christian country, and yet, here
in Brazil, which is large enough to include the whole of the United
States, and France as well, we find many tribes of savage Indians, each
tribe speaking its own language, but to whom no messenger of the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ has ever been sent.
Some of these tribes are large, some small, many move about from place
to place, and others cannot be reached, so fearful are they of showing
themselves. It is, on this account, exceedingly difficult to find out
how many Indians there are living in the continent. There might be six
millions, or the number might possibly be nearer ten, no one can tell.
Tens of thousands have passed away without ever having heard of the
Saviour.
They have their witch-doctors and their religious feasts, and they live
in constant dread of evil spirits. Those who have come in contact with
so-called civilized white people are none the better for it. In fact we
can say, without any hesitation whatever, that “the last state of these
people is worse than the first”; for civilization without Christ is a
far worse condition than paganism.
Just a few words more about these Brazilian Brownies before we make
our way to the coast. From its birth the Indian baby is seldom parted
from its mother, until it learns to walk. A few days after baby is born
mother takes it to the plantation, protecting the little head from the
heat of the sun by a banana leaf. When on a visit to distant relatives
they take all their goods and chattels with them; and when paddling
down the river the little ones help father to row, while mother sits at
the helm nursing baby.
While baby is very tiny mother carries her in a broad, bark band which
is hung over her right shoulder. When baby grows bigger, and is able
to sit up by herself, she rides on mother’s hip, supported by her
encircling arm.
[Illustration: BRAZILIAN BROWNIES FISHING]
The Indians do not spoil their children, although they are very fond
of them. They believe in hardening their little ones, so the girls and
boys are bathed by their careful mothers every day in cold water, in
some shady forest stream. Indian mothers are very fond of playing with
their children, and when a tiny mite wants all her mother’s care the
older ones are handed over for “grannie” to look after.
Mother loves to deck her little one with necklaces, only I do not think
we should say they were pretty, for they are made either of teeth or
seeds. If you want to make an Indian woman your friend, nothing will
win her friendship quicker than a present of a bead necklace to her
little child.
Then no Indian mother thinks her little one’s toilet is complete until
she is painted red, though I do not suppose we should think her at all
beautiful.
Girls soon begin to help their mothers in various ways, by looking
after the smaller ones, netting hammocks, making pottery, spinning
cotton, and learning to cultivate the fields and to cook. But “the
children’s souls, which God is calling Sunward, spin on blindly in the
dark.”