The home and family of thealcaldewho could not read
The home and family of thealcaldewho could not read
The home and family of thealcaldewho could not read
Our impromptu celebration of Christmas Eve in Pampa Grande
Our impromptu celebration of Christmas Eve in Pampa Grande
Our impromptu celebration of Christmas Eve in Pampa Grande
In the cool of evening the corregidor came again to share his troubles with me, bewailing the fact that Pampa Grande no longerhad a Christmas celebration, because they had no cura. By the same token there was no longer a public market on Sundays and feast-days, “for the Indians only come to town to sell if there is a church fiesta at which they can drink chicha.”
“God save us,” he sighed as he rose to leave, “for want of a priest we are all turning Protestants!”
I respread my “bed” early. But the aftermath of the Christmas dinner had not yet run its course. Some time far into night I was for a long time half-conscious of some hubbub, and at last woke entirely. On his piece of blanket on the floor Tommy was rolling from side to side, in one hand his precious trowel, which he was beating on the flaggings until it rang again, while shouting at the top of his voice:
“Mortar! Mortar! How in —— can I lay bricks if you don’t keep me in mortar?”
All next day he dragged far behind in the twenty-five miles to Samaipata, second largest town of this leg of the journey. Ahead of us was a five-days’ tramp without the suggestion of a village, and we were forced to weigh ourselves down under such supplies as we could purchase. Some two hours beyond Samaipata, 3000 feet or more above the road, up the range on the right, stands what the natives of the region call “El Fuerte.” Here, in a splendid strategic position, covering the flat top of an entire hill, were and still are extensive terraces and the mostly fallen remains of what must have been important buildings, now overgrown with brush, though there are few or no real trees. Scattered about this cold and barren plateau, some 10,000 feet above sea-level, are many carved seats, similar to those of Cuzco and vicinity, and figures cut in sandstone, among which jaguars, ostriches, and other fauna of the Andes can still be distinguished, though many are time- and weather-worn beyond identification. Practical miners who have visited the spot report the existence of ore-washing apparatus of hewn stone. According to tradition the Incas had here their easternmost stronghold, built by Yupanqui, the emperor who aspired to conquer the hatedhuara-ni, the “breechless” tribes of the tropical lowlands. At present “El Fuerte” is utterly uninhabited. For many years one aged Indian lived here, long reputed to be more than a century old. The people of the region called him “the Inca” and credited him with supernatural powers and untold wealth. The usual rumors of hidden gold and jewels, and of subterranean passages from temple to treasure-house, hover about the place. So far as isknown the site has never been visited, or at least explored, by archeologists, to whom it might bring rewards not inferior to those of Machu Picchu.
As the Andes flattened down, ever slowly and as if under protest, the population showed more African blood; and if the people did not grow more friendly, at least they were less incommunicative than those of the highlands. The women took to smoking, a custom almost unknown to the sex on thealtiplanicie, until it become quite the fashion. Quichua had finally died out near Totora. Real tropical heat, such as I had all but forgotten the existence of, weighed down upon us, though it did not induce Tommy to be seen without his winter vest. We moved forward steadily, but no longer pushed the pace; the tropics is no place for that. Wandering comfortably along sandy trails through half-woods, we came now and then upon a cluster of weather-blackened wooden crosses tied together with vines, with rudely carved and misspelled lettering, such as:
“Rogad adiós por el alma de Pablo MoralesFallesió 22 julio de 1911.”
“Rogad adiós por el alma de Pablo MoralesFallesió 22 julio de 1911.”
“Rogad adiós por el alma de Pablo MoralesFallesió 22 julio de 1911.”
“Rogad adiós por el alma de Pablo Morales
Fallesió 22 julio de 1911.”
Thealcaldeof Monos, which consisted of a single hut at the top of a stiff zigzag, had already held that honor for years, in spite of his protests. When I handed him the order from his chief in Samaipata, he returned it, asking me to read it aloud, as he could not. I did so fairly, without taking advantage of the occasion to include a command from the president of the republic for him to stand on his head, and, duly impressed, he spread a sun-dried cowhide for us on the unlevelled earth floor of his wall-less lean-to, and set his women to preparing us a caldo, of which we furnished the rice and they the fire, labor, and a bit of what looked and tasted like grass. Food had grown so tasteless that we had to force it down like medicine, simply because we needed the strength. To me fell the task of making the family understand why we should wish to eat again in the morning, before we started.
A couple of hours beyond, I came upon Tommy, who for once had forged ahead, seated beside the trail and overcome with sadness. With reason, as the Spaniard says. Far away across the bottomless wooded hole in the earth at our feet rose a sharp range with red rock cliffs up which the trail climbed to the very gates of heaven—which we should find locked no doubt when we arrived. As Tommy put it,“I think they must have to take part of that hill away when the moon comes over.” We slept that night higher than Samaipata. But this was the last surge of the Andean billows. Next morning we came out on a wonderful vista of tropical South America, an unbroken sea of green, rolling and more hilly than I had imagined it, spreading away in all directions into the purple haze of vast distances. We had come at last to the end of the Andes.
Now and then thereafter came a short descent, but no more rises, and we were soon in real jungle, with palm-trees of many species. Banana plants appeared; and insects bit us from hair to ankles. Upon us came that care-free languor of the tropics, and for the first time I realized the strain of living and tramping two or three miles aloft. Dense vegetation crowded the trail, now heavy in sand in which the constant slap of our feet grew monotonous, close on either hand. Night had no terrors now, for we could lie down anywhere. Fruit of many kinds grew,—plantains, bananas, melons, oranges green in color, papayas,—but was rarely for sale. The rare inhabitants had a more kindly air, addressing us as “Ché”—“Hola, ché gringo!”—the familiar and affectionate term, evidently from the Guaraní for “Look!” or “Listen!”, which we were to hear often from now on clear into the Argentine, but they were still not noted for unselfishness. A belligerent attitude might have won more, but that we had left behind with the bleak highlands. Besides, through it all Tommy would have hung on my coat-tail, had I worn one, shuddering in his English, laboring-class voice, “Don’t! Don’t tyke it! The police!”—and once anything had been obtained, he would have made away with it so swiftly that I should have caught little more than its vagrant aroma. The desire for sweets was alarming. Indeed, it was a craving for food, rather than hunger, that troubled us. We ate great chunks ofempanisado, and an hour after the best meal we should have jumped to accept an invitation to a fifteen-course dinner.
We were following now the course of the little, all but waterless, Piray, some day to join the Mamoré and the Amazon. There were many pack-trains of donkeys and mules going and coming. Thunder grumbled frequently far off to the east. Toward sunset we came upon an hacienda-house before which hung a bullock on a clothes-line—in the process of being charquied, and already as succulent as the sole of an old boot. The haughty hacendado grudgingly sold us chunks of the already-too-long-dead animal at the breath-taking price of fifty centavos a pound, and steeping tea in water so thick it couldall but stand alone, we cut off slabs of the meat and thrust them into the fire on the ends of sticks, to eat it half-raw and unaccompanied, like gauchos of the pampas.
About the house was thick grass, an unusual feature in South America, for ordinarily either the altitude is too great for it, or the jungle so thick it cannot grow in the constant shade. The hacendado gave us permission to lie anywhere in the yard, with a graciousness that implied we might also eat the longest grass if we chose. All the corrals in the neighborhood were filled with donkey- and mule-trains, with arrieros speaking both Spanish and the Quichua of the highlands, on the way to or from Santa Cruz with cargoes of alcohol, hides, and tobacco coming out and foreign merchandise going in. For a long time we sat in the velvety air of a jungle evening, listening to the singing of tree-toads and crickets and the occasional faint tinkle of a grazing lead-mule’s bell, with now and then the sharp, excited chorus of birds,—all interwoven with the wind-borne voices of the arrieros. Then I picked a spot, as apt to be free from snakes, on the clipped grass a few yards from the house, and lay down on my rubber poncho. The soft breeze soon lulled me to sleep, in spite of the itching of countless insect-bites. I had not slept long probably, when I was awakened by rain striking me in the face. It would not last long, I fancied. I pulled the poncho over me and let it rain. It did. Quickly it increased to a hollow roar; trickles of water began to tickle me along the ribs. Evidently I had picked a slight slope, for the water was soon pouring in upon me in streams. I caught up my scattered belongings and dashed for the house, the wet poncho lapping up all the mud in the vicinity, and some of my effects dropping at each step, forcing me to await the next flash of lightning to find them. Under the corredor roof there was barely room to roll up beside Tommy on the earth floor, trampled hard as an iron casting, and for an hour there roared such a tropical deluge as I had never known in the western hemisphere.
The Piray, now a wide, raging river of red mud, forced us to strip to the waist, and even then splashed us redly far higher as we breasted the powerful current. All day we plowed through dense forest, wet and soggy, singing with insect life, a roaring tropical shower bursting upon us now and then, after each of which the red sun blazed out through the thick, humid air. With dusk we waded heavy-kneed into La Guardia, sticky and sweated as the dweller in the tropics must always be who cannot spend the day in a hammock; fighting swarmsof gnats while we waited patiently for the promised antidote for our raging appetites. Twice during the day we had climbed padlocked bars across the trail. I had fancied them toll-gates, but found they wereaduanillas, little custom-houses for the collection of duty on goods entering, or produce leaving the department of Santa Cruz. Each hide exported paid about 65 cents; the flour that had come all the way from Tacoma, Washington, by ship, train, and mule had added to its already exorbitant price a high departmental duty. No wonder chunks of boiled yuca commonly took the place of bread.
Beyond La Guardia the country was more open, the forest at times giving place to half-meadows, with single trees and grazing cattle, across which drifted a breeze that tempered the midsummer heat. The way lay so straight across the floor-flat country that the line of telegraph poles beside it looked like a single pole standing forth against the horizon. There were many huts now, roofed and sometimes entirely made of palm branches. Warm, muddy water was our only drink, for we had descended so low that the inhabitants were too lazy even to make chicha. Once we got a watermelon, which are small here and far from being on ice. In passing another hut I was startled by a cry of “Se vende pan,” and went in to pay two females, whose faces were a patchwork of gnat-bites, an astounding price for some tiny, soggy biscuits. Ponderous ox-carts with solid wooden wheels crawled by noiselessly in the deep sand behind three and even four pairs of drowsy oxen. Everything, even the breeze, moved now with the leisureliness of the tropics. The jungle ahead was so flat and green, so banked by clouds, that one had the feeling that the sea was soon to open out beyond. We loafed languidly on, certain that our goal was near, yet though there were other evidences that we were approaching a city, there were no more visible signs of it than in approaching Port Saïd from the sea.
At last, so gradually that we were some time in distinguishing it from a tree-top, a dull-colored church-tower grew up in line with the vista of telegraph-poles. We drifted inertly into a sand-paved, silent, tropical city street, past rows of languid stares, and on the last afternoon of the year, with Cochabamba 335 miles behind us, sat down dripping, a week’s lack of shave veiling our sun-toasted features, in the central plaza of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
Tommy had heard so many stories of the generosity of thecruceñosthat he was astonished to have reached the center of town without being invited from some doorway to come in and make his home there aslong as he chose. This was doubly annoying, since rumor had it that white men were so in favor with the gentler sex that a sandy-haired one as handsome as Tommy fancied himself to be was in danger of being damaged by the feminine rush his appearance was sure to precipitate. After a time he rose to carry his perplexity back to where we had seen the British vice-consular shield covering the front of a house. When I met him again he had told his sad tale so effectively that he had been “put up” at both hotels by as many compatriots and was eating regularly at each, though taking care not to let his right hand know what the left was carrying to his mouth. After dark, in a humid night made barely visible by a few candle street-lamps, I splashed out to the hut of Manuel Abasto in the outskirts, to sleep under the trees in the canvas-roofed hammock of one of the American prospectors, the legitimate occupant being engaged in therôleof Don Juan in the city. The hut was crowded with peons already half drunk, languidly fingering several guitars and now and then raising mournful voices in some amorous ballad. At midnight church-bells rang, and one distant whistle blew weakly to greet the incoming year, but the music of the tropical rain on the canvas over my head soon lulled me to sleep again.