CHAPTER X.The rapid of Trés Irmãos—Meeting with the Pacaguara savages—The river Trés Irmãos—Wild turkeys.
The rapid of Trés Irmãos—Meeting with the Pacaguara savages—The river Trés Irmãos—Wild turkeys.
On the morning of the 9th, we left Girão at six o’clock, with all our blankets and clothes thoroughly wet, and with no chance of drying them. No coffee, either, could be had, as no dry sticks could be found; so we had to be content with a nip at the flask, and a tot of cachaça served all round to the crew. We had more rain during the day, everything in consequence being dull and dispiriting. I had a smart attack of shakes and fever at night, probably from the severe wetting endured the previous night. I stopped work at about four in the afternoon, so as to give time to get some kind of shelter ready and some supper cooked, passing the night in the camarote or cabin of the canoe, as I was afraid of the damp on shore after the heavy rain of the previous night.
For the 10th there was nothing special to note; the weather improved, and we made pretty fair progress. On the 11th we came, about 8 a.m., in sight of the hills of Trés Irmãos, or the “Three Brothers,” the highest hills I had yet seen in the district. We passed the rapid of the same nametowards nightfall without any difficulty, and very little towing work. This rapid is only troublesome to travellers when the river is low; when there is plenty of water it becomes merely a corriente. As we were making our canoes fast for the night a short distance above the rapid, we heard voices below us, and, stealing up out of the deepening shadows, saw a bark canoe approach, with three men and a child seated in it. They were the first “Barbaros,” or savages, that I had seen, and were objects of great interest to me. They were of the tribe called “Pacaguaras,” and have their “malocal,” or clearing, on the river Trés Irmãos, which runs into the Madeira on the Brazilian side. They are not to be confounded with the Caripunas that are generally met with at the rapid of Calderão do Inferno, and were very careful to let us know that they were Pacaguaras, and not Caripunas. The three men were of very fair features, two of them rather good-looking, and, except in their adornments of feathers, very similar to the Bolivian Indians of the Beni, although, perhaps, a shade lighter in colour. Their hair is jet black, cut squarely above their eyebrows, and hanging down behind almost to their shoulders; they have no whiskers or beard. The absence of these facial appendages seems to be a characteristic of the savage tribes of the interior of South America, and I observed that these Pacaguaras seemed to be much surprised at the length of these adornments of some of the travellers, and would take hold of one’s whiskers, giving them a good pull, possibly with a view to see if they were false; when, finding that they adhered firmly to the faces, they would burstout into a hearty laugh. They were dressed in shirts and trousers that they had received from the engineering parties that had lately been up the river, but in their natural state a few feathers and a little string form the whole of their wardrobe. It is said that when once they put on an article of clothing that is given to them, they never remove it until it drops to pieces, and certainly the state of the shirts I saw them in warranted the report. Their language appears to be a succession of semi-articulated sounds, shrugs, signs, and much laughter, and the word “shuma,” which is said to mean “good,” stands them in great stead in their conversation with passers-by. Some of them have picked up a few Spanish and Portuguese words, and the first question they address to one is to ask one’s name; and if they hear a new one, they give it to the next child that is born in their malocal. The three men that paid us a visit were named Patricio, Isiriaco, and Gregorio, while the head man, or “Capitan,” of the tribe is one Mariano, who, however, is not a true Pacaguara, but a runaway Cayubaba, from the town of Exaltacion in the Beni. They were very friendly to us, and seemed to be very pleased to see my mayordomo again, as they had known him some months before, when he was up the river with the railway engineers. We gave them some cachaça and some biscuits, and they promised to bring us some yucas and maize in the morning, and, bidding us good-night, they paddled away in the dark at a rapid rate. Their bark canoes are wonderful structures, being about fifteen or sixteen feet long, and made out of one single piece of bark, about half or three quarters of an inch inthickness, tied tip at either end, and stretched out in the middle, the stretchers forming the seats. These canoes are rather heavy to carry on land, but, sitting very lightly on the water, are driven along rapidly, with very little exertion on the part of the paddlers. They also appear to be very safe, and will go up or down all the smaller rapids. There is generally a small fire carried at one end, where a sufficient quantity of earth is placed to prevent the canoe being burnt. If all the “Barbaros” were like these Pacaguaras, they would give but little trouble to travellers or settlers, a little stealing being probably the only annoyance to be anticipated from them.
CASCARA, OR BARK CANOE OF THE CARIPUNAS AND OTHER TRIBES OF THE RIVER MADEIRA.
CASCARA, OR BARK CANOE OF THE CARIPUNAS AND OTHER TRIBES OF THE RIVER MADEIRA.
CASCARA, OR BARK CANOE OF THE CARIPUNAS AND OTHER TRIBES OF THE RIVER MADEIRA.
The next morning, the 12th, we started early, and tried to go up the river Trés Irmãos to the malocal of the Pacaguaras, but were unable to go sofar for fear of being separated from the other canoes. The river near its junction with the Madeira is about 200 yards in width, is very deep, and is very abundantly stocked with fish; indeed, all the rivers and ravines that debouch into the big river amongst the rapids are full of fish at the junction, as it would seem that the fish like to frequent the quieter waters there met with. While we were breakfasting at a small clearing about a mile or so above the rapid, three of the Pacaguaras came up with a quantity of fine fresh maize, but no yucas or plantains; and they made us understand by signs, and pointing to the sun, that they had not had time to go to their clearing, where the plantains and yucas were growing. We bought the maize from them by barter, giving them an axe, a machete, or cutlass, and some fish-hooks in exchange; and I also obtained a couple of sets of the capybara teeth that they use as ear ornaments, for they can hardly be called ear-rings, as they are stuck behind the ear by a small piece of wax. I presented the Capitan Mariano with an accordion, with which he seemed highly pleased, and they parted from us evidently very contented with our treatment of them.
Up to the present time I had but little chance of shooting, but nevertheless generally managed to get a shot at a pava or a mareca while the canoe wasen route, although, as I was always behind the other canoes, I only got other people’s leavings, in stray birds that had escaped discovery, or that had returned to the river bank, possibly thinking that all the canoes had passed. To-day, however, I was fortunate enough to bag a “mutun,” or wild turkey,a very handsome black bird, with a bright yellow horn-shaped wattle over his beak. He had a fine fleshy breast, and made us a capital supper. One of my best men, a Canichana Indian, was down to-day with a very bad attack of ague fever.