Chapter 45

Konanz seated on our baggage in thepelota de cuero, or “leather ball” in which we were both carried across the Rio Guapay

The force of one of the fourfortines, or “fortresses,” with which the Bolivian government garrisons the Monte Grande against the savages

It was a brilliant day when I shouldered the German’s rifle, my own revolver well oiled and freshly loaded, and led the way out of town. Mud-holes, along which we picked our way on rows of thewhitened skulls of cattle, soon gave place to a great pampa, with tall, coarse grass and scattered trees, across which lay a silent sand road so utterly dry that we had already suffered long from thirst when we reached the first “well,” a mud-hole thick with green slime, attesting by its taste the also visible fact that all the cattle for miles around made it their loafing-place and protection from the swarms of flies and insects. Here we not only drank, but filled the German’s water-bag. When the liquid mud in this gave out, my companion took to lapping up that in the cart-ruts and the footprints of cattle along the trail. I held out until I overtook a boy carrying on his head a pailful of guapurú (wah-poo-roó), of which I bought a hatful for amedio. This is a fruit cruelly like a large luscious cherry in appearance, growing without a stem on the trunk of a gnarly pampa tree, of a snow-white meat not particularly pleasant to the taste, but a welcome antidote for tropical thirst.

Twice during the day we met a train of heavy, crude ox-carts roofed with sun-dried ox-hides, that recalled the “prairie-schooners” of pioneer days, eight oxen to each, creaking westward with infinite slowness. In the afternoon the forest closed in about us, and we plodded on through deep sand alternating with mud-holes. Soon all the woods about us were screaming like a dozen suffragette meetings in full session and, fancying the uproar came from edible wild fowls, I crept in upon them, rifle in hand. To my astonishment, I found a band of small monkeys shrieking together in a huge tree-top. Even a monkey steak would not have been unacceptable. I fired into the branches. Instantly there fell, not the wherewithal for a sumptuous evening repast, but the most absolute silence. The little creatures did not flee, however, but each sprang a limb or two higher and watched my slightest movement with brilliant, roving eyes. A qualm came upon me and I hurried after the German.

That night we camped in a clump of trees about a water-hole. The native who pointed out the trail to it did so in a surly, regretful manner, as if he resented the consumption by strangers who should have remained in their own country of a priceless treasure insufficient for home consumption. Down at the bottom of a deep hole in the sand, strongly fenced with split rails, was an irregular puddle barely four inches deep, full of fallen leaves, wrigglers, and decayed vegetable matter; yet from it radiated trails in all directions. The blocks of crude brown sugar we had purchased that morning had melted during the day and smeared everything within reach; the boiled leg of muttonalready whispered its condition to the nostrils. The breeze a slight knoll promised treacherously died down, and the swarms of insects that sung about us all night frequently struck home, in spite of the close-knitmosquiterothat kept us running with sweat until near dawn.

Monkeys were already howling in the nearby woods when we pulled on our clothes, wet and sticky, in a soggy morning that soon carried out its promise of rain; and parrots now and then screamed at us in dull-weather mood. A heavy shower paused for a new start and became a true jungle deluge. My poncho would have been useless; besides, it was wrapped, in Australian “swag” style, around my possessions on the mule. Past experience told me that the only reliable waterproof in the tropics is to let it rain—and dry out again when opportunity offers. We settled down to splash on indifferently, soaked through and through from hat to shoes, dripping at every seam. The weather was not over warm either, and only the heaviest moments of the storm dispersed the swarms of ravenous mosquitoes.

In dense woods punctuated with mud-holes, a yellow youth in two cotton garments overtook us well on in the afternoon, and asked if we would need a “pelota.” We would. He stopped at a jungle hut some distance beyond and emerged with an entire ox-hide, sun-dried and still covered with the long red hair of its original owner, folded in four like a sheet of writing paper, on his head. For a mile or more he plodded noiselessly behind us. Then suddenly the forest opened out upon the notorious Guapay, or Rio Grande, a yellow-brown stream, wide as the lower Connecticut, flowing swiftly northward to join the Mamoré on its journey to the Amazon. We splashed a mile or more up along its edge, to offset the distance we should be carried downstream before striking a landing opposite. Here two men of bleached-brown skin, each completely naked but for a palm-leaf hat securely tied on, relieved our companion of his load and set about turning it into a boat. These “pelotas de cuero” (“leather balls”) are the ferries of all this region, being transportable, whereas a wooden boat, left behind, would be stolen by the “indios bravos.” Around the edge of the hide were a dozen loopholes through which was threaded a cord that drew it up into the form of a rude tub. To add firmness to this, the hat-wearers laid a corduroy of green poles in the bottom. Then they piled our baggage into it, set the German atop, and dragged it down the sloping mud bank into the water, while the youth coaxed the mule into the stream and swam with it for the opposite shore. This seemed load enough and to spare. But when Ihad fulfilled my duties as official photographer of the expedition, I, too, was lifted in, as they would no doubt have piled in Tommy also, had he been with us, and away we went, easily 500 pounds, speeding down the racing yellow stream, the naked ferrymen first wading, then swimming beside us, clutching the pelota, the “gunwales” of which were in places by no means an inch above the water. Had the none-too-stout cord broken, the hide would instantly have flattened out and left us—for an all-too-brief moment—like passengers on the magic carpet of oriental fairy-tales.

Before and high above us, where thepeloteroscoaxed the crazy craft ashore, stretching like a Chinese wall of vegetation further than the eye could follow in either direction, stood an impenetrable forest, the famous Monte Grande, or “Great Wilderness,” of Bolivia. Here was the chief haunt of the wild Indians of the penetrating arrow, a region otherwise uninhabited, through which the “road” to the Paraguay squeezes its way for hundreds of miles almost without a shift of direction. We swung our hammocks on the extreme edge of the river, where the breeze promised to blow—and failed of its promise, like most things Latin-American. For though the day was not yet spent, the journey through the Monte Grande is fixed in its itinerary by the four “garrisons” maintained some five leagues apart by the Bolivian government as a theoretical protection against the nomadic Indians. At dusk a man swam the river with his clothing and possessions in the brim of his hat, and soon afterward the stream began to rise so rapidly that it is doubtful if we could have passed it for several days.

Almost at once, in the morning, we met a train of nine enormous roofed carts of merchandise from Europe by way of Montevideo, each drawn by eight yoke of gaunt, way-worn oxen, straining hub-deep through the mire at a turtle’s pace. The forest crowded them so closely on either hand that we must back into it, as into the shallow niche of an Inca wall, and stand erect and motionless until the train had crawled by, the wilderness bawling and echoing a half-hour with the cries of the dozen drivers with their long goads dodging in and out, knee-deep in mud, among the panting brutes. We met no other person during the day. Travelers through the Monte Grande go always in bands, and the ox-drivers stared at us setting out alone, as at gringo madmen.

We deployed in campaign formation. Our revolvers loose in their holsters, the German marched ahead, closely followed by his affectionate“mool,” while I brought up the rear with his new Winchester. Mine was the post of honor and most promise, for the Indians of the Monte Grande do not face their intended victims, but spring from behind a tree to shoot the traveler in the back, and dodge back out of sight again. They shoot seated, using the feet to stretch the bow, a slight advantage, in point of time, to their prey. Rumor has it that the tribe is by nature peaceful; but they were long hunted for sport and are still shot on sight, with no questions asked, and so have come to look upon all travelers as tribal enemies. They are said to be entirely nomadic, to wear nothing but a feather clout, and to bind their limbs in childhood, so that the forearm and the leg below the knee become mere bone and sinew with which they can thrust their way through the spiny undergrowth without pain. This improvement on nature draws the foot out of shape, and the footprint of a savage, showing only the imprint of the heel, the outer edge of the foot, and the crooked big toe, is easily distinguished from that of the ordinary native. However, that was not my lucky day, and I caught not so much as a kodak-shot at a feather clout, though I glanced frequently over my shoulder all the day through.

But if the Indians failed us, there were other visitations to make up for them. Every instant of the day we fought swarms of gnats and mosquitos; though the sun rarely got a peep in upon us, its damp, heavy heat kept us half-blinded with the salt sweat in our eyes. The road was really a long tunnel through unbroken forest meeting overhead, into which the thorny undergrowth crowded in spite of the ox-cart traffic. All day long, mud-holes, often waist-deep for long distances, completely occupied the narrow forest lane. The region being utterly flat, the waters of the rainy season gather in the slightest depression, which passing ox-carts plough into a slough beyond description; while the barest suggestion of a stream inundates to a swamp all the surrounding territory. For the first mile we sought, in our inexperience, to tear our way around these through the edge of the forest. But so dense was this that it barred us as effectually as a cactus hedge. We took to wading, now to the knees, now to the waist, sometimes slipping into unseen cart-ruts and plunging to the shoulders in noisome slime.

Jim and “Hughtie” Powell, Americans from Texas who have turned Bolivian peons

A jungle hair-cut

It grew monotonous, but so does life under the best of conditions. Moreover, whatever gloom our surroundings created was more than offset by the German. Not that he was gay, nor, indeed, cheerful under adversity. But the genuine comedian, like an Italian Hamlet,has no inkling of his humor. Konanz was at his best when he fancied himself most tragic, putting me frequently to excruciating labor to preserve outwardly that solemn gravity that was indispensable to peace between us. He insisted on speaking “English.” This astounding tongue he had concocted by the simple rule of learning the corresponding English for each German word, and jealously retaining the German grammar and form; all this with so guttural an accent that the hearer could not distinguish “lake” from “leg.” Thus I was informed that “He put it his hat in,” and “He set him by a boat the river over.” Our snow-white pack-mule was of that affectionate nature that craves constant companionship. But the Teuton had no affection to spare, and whenever the animal chanced to stray a yard from the spot in which he had left her, he fell upon the poor brute with a bellow of rage:

“Oh, py Gott, Mr. Mool! Ven I don’t hat to lug myself der loat all to San Yozay, I rhight avay shoot her der head through. To-morrow, py Gott, I bind her der dree on, der ...”

At sunset we waded through a barred gate into thepascana, or tiny natural clearing, ofCañada Larga, the first of the fourfortines. Five miserable thatched huts, some without walls and the others of open-work poles set upright, were occupied by eight boyish soldiers in faded rags of khaki and ancient cork helmets of the same color, and a slattern female belonging to the lieutenant. The latter was a haughty fellow of twenty-five, sallow with fever and gaunt from long tropical residence, a graduate of the Bolivian West Point in La Paz, and permanently in command of all the garrisons of the Monte Grande. The others were two-year conscripts between nineteen and twenty-one, assigned to the forts for a year, usually to be forgotten by the government and left there months longer.

Our official paper ordered the commander to “give us all facilities, wood and water, and to sell us food—provided there was any.” He waved a hand in a bored, tropical way, and two of the handsomest children in uniform brought us wood, and soon came lugging a huge bucket of water on a pole across their shoulders. What food could he sell us? Not a thing. Someyucas, at least?Señor, we have only half rations of rice for ourselves. But the prefect said we could depend.... The prefect,señor, has not sent us any supplies for more than a month. There was nothing left but to cook some of our own rice and charqui, and try to be thankful for even that miserable substitute for food. Its staying powers were slight. Twice during thenight I ate a large plate of it cold, and spent most of the time hungry at that. Not that I got up to eat; much of the night I wandered up and down the pascana, fighting the mosquitos and a tiny gnat whose bite was out of all proportion to its size, and which the fine gauze mosquitero designed for the purpose by no means kept out, though it did effectually any breeze that stirred.

The lieutenant insisted on sending along a soldier to “protect” us from the savages. He was a girlish-looking boy of Indian features, armed with an ancient Winchester of broken butt, thick with rust inside and out. Most of the day he lagged far behind, for the sun-dried stretches of road between the swamps and mud-holes hurt even his calloused feet. We tramped unbrokenly for seven hours, the endless forest-wall close on either hand, without sighting another human being, until the jungle opened out slightly on the little pascana of Tres Cruces. The sergeant in command dragged himself out a few yards to meet us, a rifle-shot having warned him of our approach. He had four soldiers and a gnat-bitten female. They called the bucketful they brought us from a swamp, “excellent water.” Itwasclear, to be sure, and a decided improvement on what we had drunk from the mud-holes during the day, the swampy taste not quite overwhelming. But it was lukewarm from lying out under the sun, and had at least a hundred tadpoles swimming merrily about in it. One dipped up a cupful, picked out the tadpoles gently but firmly, and forced as much of their vacated bath as possible down the feverish throat.

The gnats of Tres Cruces quickly got wind of the arrival of fresh supplies and attacked us in battalions. The previous camp had been gnatless compared to this. Known to the natives asjejenes, they are almost invisible, yet they can bite through a woolen garment or a cloth hammock so effectively that the mosquito’s puny efforts pass unnoticed in comparison. Wherever they alight they leave a red spot the size of a mustard-seed that itches and burns for days afterward. What such a host of them had hoped to feed on, had we not unexpectedly turned up, I cannot guess; surely they were taking long chances of starvation here in the unpeopled wilderness. Under no circumstances did they give us a moment of respite. Even the soldiers, tropical born and long accustomed to them, ate their supper plate in hand, marching swiftly up and down the “parade-ground” and striking viciously at themselves with the free hand. We could not leave off fighting them long enough to lift a kettle off the fire,without a hundred instantly stinging us in as many distinct spots. In bookless Santa Cruz I had had the luck to pick up a paper edition of Nietzsche in Spanish, but even in that tongue the journey through an entire sentence was impossible. I could not write a word or speak a sentence without pausing to slap savagely at some portion of my anatomy. My notes of those days are all short and choppy. A long sentence was impossible. It seemed unbelievable so tiny a thing could bite so. The mosquitero was useless. They could bite through sheet-iron. A real dinner would have been a joy, but an hour’s relief from these incessant pests would have outdone a week of banquets. One wanted to run and dance and scream, but tired feet forbade. Much as we needed rest, we must keep walking swiftly up and down the pascana, wondering how long a man would last on charqui and rice, walking day and night. “Oh, py Gott!” cried Konanz, attempting in vain to slap himself between the shoulder-blades. “In China py der Boxer der mosquito he pinch is very much, aber here!”

Tramping doggedly back and forth in the dusk, I heard the sergeant in his hut singing and apparently happy. I raced to his door. Eureka! Necessity is the mother of invention, even among the uninventive. He was swinging swiftly back and forth in his hammock. I grasped a pack-rope and was soon rushing swiftly through the half-arc of a circle. The relief was startling. But to work incessantly with the arms was little better than tramping the pascana. If only the inventor of perpetual motion had not put his invention off so long. The relief from torture quickly made me drowsy. But if the swinging flagged for an instant, the jejenes at once brought me wide awake. Before long, too, a few hardy gnats solved the problem of catching their prey on the fly, like experienced “hoboes.” More and more learned the trick, until I gave up in despair and took once more to tramping the parade-ground; kept it up, indeed, most of the brilliant, moonlit night.

In the morning I found that ants had eaten into decorative fringes the edges of my leather leggings. Vampire bats had smeared our white mule with her own blood. For a long time I could not make the German understand what had happened to the animal, until I dug up out of the depths of memory the word “Fledermaus.” To watch him pack was always amusing—also a torture. He had learned to do everything in the German style of systematized routine, in which the longest way round is always the shortest way between two points; and he knew nothing of “efficiency,” of that dovetailing of work in such a way as to hasten the process. Instead of lighting a fire first andhaving his breakfast ready by the time he was dressed, he must be entirely garbed before touching a stick or a pot; and so on clear through the loading. However often he made up the pack, each detail must be laboriously thought out again, and as he could never think of more than one thing at a time, the operation was endless. Bring him what he needed to load next, and he stared stony-eyed at me, as if wondering why I was trying to disturb his meditations. Though we rose at dawn, we were fortunate to be off before the sun had surmounted the jungle tree-tops.

The sergeant insisted, languidly and tropically, on sending one of his armed boys along. We refused. Should anything have happened to the child, such as a sprained ankle in “protecting” us from the savages, we could never have forgiven ourselves. All day long we tramped due eastward through unbroken forest. Monotonously the swamps and mud-holes continued. It would not have been so bad could we have waded all the way barefoot; but the sun-dried stretches between made shoes imperative. Never a patch of clearing, never a sign of human existence—though I still glanced frequently over my shoulder—never the suggestion of a breeze to temper the heat or to break the ranks of the swarming insects! We threw ourselves face-down at any mud-hole or cart-rut, gratefully, to drink. “It was crawlin’ an’ it stunk, but”—anything that can by any stretch of the word be called water is only too welcome in tropical Bolivia. The red-hot poison with which the gnats of days past had inoculated us from head to foot itched murderously. Amateur wilderness travelers have a theory that “dope” smeared over the body will afford protection in such cases, but it would be a strong concoction indeed that could rout the jejenes of the Monte Grande. The only method is to get bit and heal again, as one gets wet and dries again, or goes astray and finds oneself again. The one absolute rule is,Don’t scratch!Not to scratch may drive the sufferer mad, but to do so will drive him doubly insane; and swamp water is infectious to any abrasion of the skin, and an open sore is the greatest peril of tropical travel.

Let it not be fancied, however, that life was sad even with these drawbacks. The song of the jungle was unbroken, the brilliant sunshine joyful, for all its heat. In places the road was completely veiled by clouds of beautiful white butterflies. Sweating freely, there was a spontaneous play of the mental spirits and a sense of splendid physical well-being, not the mind-paralyzing gloom of our northern winters. Up on the high plateau the mind might work as freely, butwith this difference: there it seemed to be using itself up, each period of exaltation being followed by the feeling that one was much older, much more worn out, while here there were no such after effects. Though we drank water which, in civilization, would have caused us to die of cramps within an hour, the constant sweating carried off its evil effects, and though gaunt and gnat-bitten, we both looked “the picture of health.” The main rule for keeping well in the tropics is to live on the country, to avoid canned food and dissipation, and above all to get plenty of hard exercise and exposure to the elements. Unfortunately, where food is most needed, it is most difficult to obtain.

A toilsome eighteen miles ended at Pozo del Tigre—there was something fetching about the name of this thirdfortín,—the “Tiger’s Drinking-place.” Here were four boys, a cossack post in command of a corporal; also at last there was something for sale, for some one had planted a patch of corn back in the forest. Two soldiers brought uschoclosandhuiro,—green-corn for ourselves and stalks of the same for the mule. The conscripts preferred coffee and rice in payment, for money is of slight value beyond the Rio Grande, but demanded five times what the stuff was worth. It was not sweet-corn, and was either half-grown or overripe, but was welcome for all that. We threw the ears into the fire and raked them out, to munch what was not entirely burned or still raw. The jejenes made it impossible to hold them over the fire to toast. We squatted so closely over the blaze it all but burned our garments, yet the relief was so great, in spite of the smoke in our eyes, that we all but fell asleep into the fire.

The life of these garrisons is dismal in the extreme. The soldiers had absolutely no drill or other fixed duty. In most cases they were too apathetic to plant anything, even to dig a well, however heavily time hung on their hands, preferring to starve on half-rations, to choke in the dry season and drink mud in the wet, rather than to exert themselves. Each “fort” had in the center of the “parade-ground” a crude horizontal-bar made of a sapling. But it was used only for a languid moment, when utter ennui drove some one to it. The impossibility of “team-work” among Latin-Americans was never more clearly demonstrated than by the fact that each soldier cooked his own food separately three times a day over his own stick fire. There was not faith enough among them even to permit division of labor in bringing fire-wood. Each set hismarmita, a soldier’s tin cook-pot shaped to fit between the shoulders, on the ends of burning sticks and sat constantly on his heels beside it, lest it spill over as one of thefagots burned away. The fellows were astonished to learn the use of Y-shaped sticks for hanging their kettles.

Toward morning I slept an hour or two from utter exhaustion. It was astonishing how one recuperated for all the day ahead with so short a rest. After all, tramping is not like mental labor; a brief repose is all that is necessary. The savages having deceived us for three days, we lessened our burdens by fastening rifle and shotgun within quick reach on the mule, though still keeping our revolvers handy. Wild animals are commonly hidden away in the silence of the forest, even in such wildernesses, and rarely cross a path used by man; but they are not always unseen. We were tramping side by side when I pointed excitedly at the narrowing vista of the road ahead.

“Deer!” I cried.

The German, his mind perhaps on Indians, all but sprang over his mule. Some two hundred yards ahead a reddish fawn stood grazing, and fresh meat would have been more acceptable just then than eternal riches. As a three-year soldier it was surely my companion’s place to shoot; besides, the rifle and cartridges were his. But he marched stolidly forward. With no officer behind to give a stentorian command, his mind refused to work. Every step was increasing the probability of seeing a splendid venison repast for ourselves and for the soldiers ahead bound away into the trackless forest.

“Schüsse doch!” I cried, in a hoarse whisper.

Alas! I had overlooked the preliminary routine of “Ready! Load! Aim!” The German snatched hastily and blindly at the pack, leveled a gun, and fired. A discharge of bird-shot sprinkled the nearby tree-trunks, and the startled deer sprang with one leap into the unknown. Konanz had caught up the shotgun instead of the rifle!

It must not be gathered, however, that he was not an effective hunter, given prey fitted to his abilities. All this region is noted for itspetas, a large land-turtle, with the empty charred shells of which any camping-ground is sure to be scattered. During the afternoon the German actually ran one down.

Tied on the pack, it arrived at the fourth and lastfortínof the Monte Grande, Guayritos, a larger clearing surrounded bymatorralesor palm-tree swamps, and noted for attacks by the savages. The corporal ordered one of his three men to prepare the turtle. He split it open with a machete and, removing all the meat, spitted the liver, the chief delicacy, on a stick, while I set the rest to boiling. When it had cooked for an hour, the addition of a handful of rice and a chipof salty rock made the most savory repast of several days. All through the cooking Konanz had sat moodily by, fighting clouds of jejenes and smoking furiously for protection. When the meal was ready he refused to touch it. Evidently turtle is not eaten in the German army. But for once the inner man all but overcame the iron discipline of years. It may have been the smoke that brought tears to his eyes as I fell upon the mess; at any rate he moved away from the fire and went to tramp gloomily up and down the edge of the pascana. The thick muscles, that in life are so strong that a man cannot pull a leg from its shell by main force, were of a dark-red meat far superior to the finest chicken—unless appetite deceived me—and almost boneless. The comatose condition induced by the feast lasted with only an occasional break all night, so that I slept considerably, even though the gnats roared about my net like a raging sea on a distant cliff-bound coast, and a few hundred managed to gain admittance.

A tropical shower was raging when we finished loading. Even the soldiers were in a snarling mood. The going was so slippery that it was painful. For long distances there werecamelonesorbarriales, as the interminable corduroy-like mud ridges with troughs of slime between them are called. Every step was perilous, until we were splashed and soaked from hat-crown down; after that a misstep and a sprawl did not matter. Skeletons of oxen were numerous along the way. When the rain ceased, the day remained thick, and the heat was heavy enough to cut with a spade. For long stretches we waded waist-deep through swamps of long green grasses. A few slight pascanas began to break the endless forest. In one of them, and scattered far beyond, we met the first travelers since entering the woods,—four rusty and mud-plastered wagons, hopelessly mired, others with their several yokes of oxen lying indifferently in water, mud, or on dry land.

That afternoon our journey seemed to have come ignominiously to an end. An immense swamp or lake a half-mile wide spread across the trail and far away in both directions into the now thinner forest, the notorious “curiche de Tuná.” We attempted to flank it, only to have a faint side path end in the impassable tangles of an even greater swamp. Wandering in this for an hour, we regained the road at last, and, putting everything damageable in our hats and strapping our revolvers about our necks, attempted the crossing. The lake proved only chest-deep, but the glue-like mud-bottom all but swallowed upthe mule, and the pack emerged streaming water from every corner.

The sun was getting low when we sighted a little wooded hill above the sea-flat forest ahead. The road dodged the hillock, however, and we slushed hopelessly on through endless virgin forest. Night was coming on. The insignificance of man in these primeval woods was appalling. Suddenly a large, rail-fenced cornfield appeared in a clearing beside the “road,” but this plunged on again into the wilderness without disclosing any other sign of humanity. Darkness was upon us when a man in white rode out of the gloom ahead, and all but fell from his mule in astonishment. We had passed unseen the branch trail to the scattered hamlet of El Cerro, a score of thatched huts, constituting the first civilian dwelling of man beyond the Rio Grande.

The old stone and brick church and monastery of San José, erected by the Jesuits, typical of the architecture of their “reductions” throughout “Guarani Land”

The fatherly old cura of San José standing before the Jesuit sun-dial in the patio of the ruined monastery, now the free abode of travelers. The all-but-horizontal shadow across the dial shows 6:30A. M.

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