Across Unknown South America Part 13

What astonished me more than anything was that they would go on working at all--as if nothing had happened--when I split open one of their dwellings and many of the channels, which must have been normally in the dark--were now exposed to the light. This made me suspect that their vision was either missing altogether or was very defective.

Nature is a wonderful organizer. The majority of termites--including warriors and workers--were s.e.xless; that was perhaps why they were such good workers, as they had nothing to distract them. The males and females whose duty was merely to propagate and improve the race were provided temporarily with wings, so that they could fly away from the colony and disseminate their love among other winged termites of other colonies. The relation between different colonies was friendly. When their task was accomplished and flight was no more necessary for them, they conveniently and voluntarily shed their wings, leaving merely a small section of the wing root attached to the thorax.

The local name for all kinds of termites was _cupim_, but technically they are known in the Order of _Neoroptera_ as _Termes alb.u.m_. Another variety of insect, the _Psocus domesticus_, was also as destructive as the _Termes alb.u.m_.

We frequently met with plants of _caju_, or _acaju_ or _acajueiro_ (_Anacardium Occidentale_ L.) on our course. They belonged to the _Terebinthaceae_ group. In a preceding chapter I have already described the red or yellow delicious fruit of this tree. Then we found other interesting trees, such as the _oleo_, the tall and handsome _poinna_, and numerous specimens of the small but good-looking palm _pindova_.

There were not many flowers in that particular spot, barring perhaps an occasional cl.u.s.ter of white flowers, princ.i.p.ally _bocca de carneiro_, said to have properties refreshing for the blood.

Near a small stream I noticed some lovely, slender, tall _jeguitiba vermelho_ trees (_Couratari estrellensis_ Raddi), from 75 to 80 ft. high, with branches and cl.u.s.ters of deep green healthy leaves at the summit only.

There was a little less monotony in the scenery before us that day, for to the west stood, over a long, slightly undulating line, one peculiar conical hill heavily wooded. In pools of stagnant water were lovely water flowers, and in the neighbourhood of that moisture many handsome _burity_ palms were prominent in the landscape.

We had been mounting gently all the time from our last camp. Early in the afternoon we reached that magnificent river, the Araguaya, over 200 yards wide, although something like between 2,500 and 3,000 kil., or perhaps more, from its mouth. Its lovely placid waters, reflecting with the faithfulness of a mirror the vegetation on the high steep banks as well as the clouds in the sky, made an effective picture. The dead silence, disturbed only by the shouts of my men urging the mules to the water-side, was most impressive, the water flowing so slowly that it almost looked stagnant.

Not a mountain, not a hill could be perceived, except one low humble range of hills to the south. It was on those hills that the great Araguaya had its birth.

We crossed the great stream--mules, baggage and all, on three canoes upon which a platform had been erected. Once landed on its western bank, we were, notwithstanding local boundary quarrels, in the immense State of Matto Grosso, the wildest of Brazil.

CHAPTER XI

The _Tucano_--Fish of the Araguaya River--A Bad Shot--A Strange Sight

I SEEMED to have no luck on that journey. Everything went wrong all the time. Everything seemed to stand in my way to prevent my progress. My men were demoralized, my mules and horses in a pitiable condition. I called a halt of two or three days in order that we might shoe the animals again and rearrange the pack-saddles. We had, of course, a good supply of new shoes, but the work of shoeing so many animals was hard, especially as I had to do most of it myself with Alcides and Filippe, the other men being absolutely useless. Add to this a stifling temperature of 90 Fahrenheit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Caraja Indian of the Upper Araguaya River.]

To make things worse there came a downpour, such as I have seldom seen, and which lasted for two entire days. That was the dry season too! The house in which we had put up--and through the roof of which we could admire the stars at our ease while in bed--was turned into a regular swimming-tank when the rain came. We had a good deal of trouble to keep our things dry, propping them up on improvised stands of stones which we removed from the crumbling walls of the building. Fortunately, most of my pack-saddle cases were air- and water-tight, so that the contents could not be injured. The wind blew with great fury--at the rate of 460 metres a minute, to be strictly accurate.

There was a humble hamlet at Rio Grande or Porto do Castanho, on the Matto Grosso side, where we had crossed the Araguaya River. It was the gloomiest of gloomy places even in glorious weather. Imagine it on a wet, windy day. The few tiny one-storied cabins--they could hardly be called houses--had got soaked with the storm, and looked miserable. The inhabitants were busy baling water from inside their dwellings. Many tiles of the roofs had been blown away, and those that remained had grown extra dark with the moisture, with merely a bluish tinge from the reflected light of the grey sky upon their shiny surfaces. The solitary palm tree at the end of the oblong square looked pitiful, with its long bladed leaves split and broken by the wind, while the dense foliage along the river banks was now several tones darker and richer than we had seen it before.

Under usual circ.u.mstances the _plaza_--or square--was so high above the river that one could not see the water at all until one went to the edge of the stream, but during flood the river rose as much as 20 ft. and occasionally overflowed the greater portion of the square.

The gra.s.s of the square--a mere field--alone seemed happy in the damp.

Half dried and anaemic from the hot sun, it seemed to be quickly coming back to life and vigour in those few hours which had rendered us all miserable. My poor horses and mules, worn and sore, stood dripping and wretched, with quivering knees, in the middle of the square--too miserable to feed, only now and then slashing their long wet tails to right or left to drive away impertinent flies.

With the storm the temperature had suddenly descended to 75, and everybody was shivering with cold after the oppressive heat before the storm.

Upon the half-rotted wooden cross which stood in front of the church was perched a vulture--so thin and s.h.a.ggy and soaked and motionless that you might easily have mistaken it for a stuffed bird. It was the very picture of misery. But everybody was miserable--one could not help it. I was, too--who am not much given to being depressed.

While marching or camping in the midst of unspoilt nature, I never felt depressed, no matter what happened, and was absolutely regardless of climatic conditions; but in those miserable settlements--feeble attempts at civilization--I must confess that I used to get low-spirited too, and often thought what an idiot I had been to leave my happy homes in Florence and in London, in order to come to these wretched places.

After the attempts at baling out the water had proved futile--as there was more coming in than it was possible to fling out--the people in resignation barricaded their doors and windows. Not a soul was to be seen or heard anywhere. The place was absolutely dead. Even after the storm was over no sign of life could be noticed. The people were all still hiding and trembling in their houses, the comparatively slight but sudden change in the temperature bringing upon most of them attacks of strong malarial fever, which was there prevalent.

At last, splashing her little naked feet along the footpath in the gra.s.s--now changed into a streamlet--there approached a little girl with a face as black as coal. She looked terrified as she approached the window out of which I was looking. But she overcame her fright and, prettily stretching out her tiny hand, called out "_Boa tarde!_" (Good afternoon). Her father and mother were ill; would I give her some medicine for them? Soon after, when the sky had cleared, other patients came along asking for quinine or any medicine I could give them. Others wished to have their teeth pulled out. The Brazilians of the interior had great trouble with their teeth, which were usually in a state of decay.

My own men had wrapped themselves up in their blankets in order to keep warm. They had slept most of the time. They were too cold and lazy even to get up to cook and eat their food. None of the houses possessed a chimney, cooking being done outside; nor, of course, any sanitary arrangements. Those of my men who had toothache cried and moaned the whole night, as might be expected of children aged six of any other country. I have seldom seen men more sensitive and frightened at pain or illness.

The main structure at Porto do Castanho (Port of the Chestnut Tree, because there should be a chestnut tree there) was the church, a mere barn, which elsewhere but in central Brazil would not be considered good enough for storing hay, still less for the worship of the Almighty. Not that it was used much for the latter purpose, as there was no priest within several hundred kilometres. The walls of the church were all sc.r.a.ped and dirty, the corners chipped off by pa.s.sing animals. All the pa.s.sers-by went and wiped their dirty hands on the walls of the church--perhaps attracted by the whitewash, which none of the other buildings possessed.

The shops--there were two--had nothing for sale, except some locally grown tobacco. In one shop I found some small iron nails, which were sold at the equivalent of 6_d._ each!

May 11th. The drenching rain continued the entire night, the minimum temperature being 73 Fahrenheit. My poor animals were in a terrible condition the next morning through the damp, the sores having become badly infected. They were in a purulent condition, and a ma.s.s of maggots--the terrible _bishus_, which were the pest of Brazil. So we had the great job of cleaning them all with a powerful disinfectant as well as washing them with a decoction of warm _barbatimo_ (_Stryphnodendron barbatimo_ M.), a wood with a great resistance to crushing (K. 1015) and a specific gravity of 1275. The decoction, which was really very beneficial for wounds and sores of animals, was made with the bark of that tree warmed in water over a fire. Another decoction we frequently used was of salt and _carrapicho_ herb, but this was not quite so effective as the former.

My men killed a magnificent _tucano_--a large bird with climbing, inquisitive habits. It possessed an enormous yellow bill of singularly light structure, the point of which was black. The lower part of the bill was of a brilliant red, and of a similar red was the rib of the upper part of the bill. The plumage was of a handsome velvety black on the body and tail--quite shiny--while the chest was of a pure white, and the under part of the tail of bright vermilion feathers. White feathers showed at the base of the tail above.

The _tucano_ (_Ramphastos_) is too well known for me to describe it fully again. It is found all over tropical Brazil. There are many different varieties, such as the _Ramphastos vitellinus_, _Ramphastos ariel_, the _Ramphastos Cuvieri_, the _Pteroglossus Beauharnaisii_, or curl-crested tucano, etc., extremely common, especially farther north, near the borders of the Amazon.

I was sorry when my men killed this beautiful bird. I had watched it for some time, with its inquisitive habits, hopping from branch to branch, peeping its bill into cavities and examining everything that happened below by bending its head attentively, now on one side then on the other.

It evidently took intelligent interest in our doings. My men had gone out to do their cooking. The bird watched them with the greatest attention--with jerky movements not unlike those of a magpie.

The tucanos have, I believe, been described as being stupid; but on the contrary I think they are extremely clever--quite as clever as many parrots or macaws. I observed how shrewd that particular bird was. It would come quite close to us, and examine with really amazing attention what we were doing as long as we were not taking any notice of it, but the moment a man happened to touch a stone or try to point a rifle at it, it would fly a long distance off, with shrill yelps, and would not return until it was quite sure that we were not noticing its presence.

The uses of the enormous bill of the tucano have often been discussed by ornithologists, many of whom believe that the bill is of no use to that bird and Nature made in this case a mistake and has not yet had time to rectify it. Scientists frequently allege that Nature makes mistakes, because many of them have never really understood Nature. How could they?

They have never been near enough to Nature unspoiled. Many of them also believe that tucano birds are great fishers, following the notion that many water birds have red or yellow bills of large size. That, too, is another great mistake, for the tucano is eminently a fruit and nut eater, and of course a feeder on worms and insects contained in fruit.

The huge bill, attaining the length of six or seven inches, is toothed at the sides in order to be able to saw the stems of fruit. The shape and size of the bill, far from being a mistake of nature, are made so in order to enable that bird to dig holes into the bark of trees and to enable it to crush and chew the many curiously shaped fruits found in certain parts of the Brazilian forest. Moreover, the bill is also a great protection to the head in going through the dense foliage, where thorns are innumerable and alive with dangerous insects of great size, which can, owing to the length of its beak, be destroyed at a distance from the bird's most vital organs.

These birds have received the name _tucano_ from the noise they make, which resembles "_tok-kan_" very sharply p.r.o.nounced and with a snap at the end of each syllable.

The tucanos are good climbers, but not good fliers. In fact, their flight is somewhat clumsy and heavy. They seldom fly long distances. They spend all their time on the higher branches of trees. They are generally to be seen alone or in couples, or perhaps occasionally in flocks of three or four.

What spare moments I had in Castanho--after the storm was over--I spent on the banks of the river looking at the magnificent stream.

Looking south, a low hill range could be seen in the distance with a conical summit rising slightly above the range--the Serra do Cayapo. It was there, as I have said, that the great Araguaya had its birth. It was interesting to note that the head waters of the Araguaya--flowing north, of course--had their birth within an infinitesimal distance of those of two such immense rivers as the Induca.s.su and the Sucuru, flowing into the Parana, and also near the somewhat unknown Taquary River flowing into the Paraguay.

It would be possible--although perhaps expensive--by means of raised artificial lakes and locks actually to join at least one of these southern great rivers to the great Araguaya, and thus--barring some troublesome rapids--form a continuous waterway from south to north across South America, from Buenos Ayres, roughly in Lat. 34 5' south, to Para in Lat. 1 27' 6" South. Imagine a distance by river extending for 33 37' 54" (or 3,737 kil.) in a straight line--as the crow flies--and not less than double that distance if we include the constant turns and deviations in the various connected rivers.

Easier still and less expensive would be to connect by rail the last two navigable points of those two streams. That will certainly be done some day, when those abandoned regions are eventually populated and properly developed.

There were some rocky falls just below Porto Castanho which prevented navigation as far as the place where we crossed the Araguaya--otherwise the river was navigable from those falls as far as Conceico.

The formation of the clouds over the great Araguaya River was peculiar.

Great cl.u.s.ters of globular clouds generally collected in three distinct strata upon a whitish sky as far as high up upon the sky vault.

Facing north, the country appeared absolutely flat, and nothing could be seen above the trees as far as the eye or even a telescope could perceive. In that direction the stream, 200 yards wide, flowed through a perfectly straight channel for about one mile.

The fishing in the river was excellent. One night we caught a lot of fish. One, a huge _pirarara_ weighing 40 lb., then some _pirahiba_ and a _pintado_, the latter 24 lb. in weight. The _pirarara_ was an extraordinary-looking fish. It had a long head covered entirely with a hard, bony, granular substance, which could only be cracked by a severe blow with an axe. The eyes were prominent and placed quite close to abnormally long antennae or feelers. The back of the _pirarara_ was bluish black, the centre of the body longitudinally was yellowish, whereas the under part was white. The tail was of a bright vermilion, and the black fins had red edges, which made the huge _pirarara_ a really beautiful fish to look at.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Typical Flat-topped Plateau of Central Brazil.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: One Night's Fishing on the Araguaya.]

The _pirahiba_ had a grey back with stripes so faint that they were hardly visible. Its head was flat and anchor-shaped. The eyes--very small--were curiously situated on the top of the head instead of at the sides--owing to the fact that the head was really so flat that it had no sides: it was merely a gentle convex curve from one side of the mouth to the other over the skull. The _pirahiba_ too, like most fish of those rivers, possessed long tentacles. Its mouth and fins were slightly tinted red. It displayed powerful teeth similarly arranged to those of the _pintado_ fish previously described.