Across Unknown South America Part 14

Then we got some _tubarao_ (or _Squalus carcharias_)--a small fish with a long, pointed head like a bird's beak, of the _plagiostomos_ order, and several _mand[~i]_--a small yellow fish with enormous eyes. The _mand[~i]_ had remarkable vitality. Seven hours after it had been caught--I had no idea the poor thing was still alive--it gave several leaps in the air, and when I put it in a bucket of water it shortly began to swim as if nothing had happened.

There were only two or three very small dug-outs on the Araguaya, none of which were capable of carrying more than one or two people. There was no boat there large enough to carry all my men and baggage, had I even at that moment decided to descend that river instead of proceeding west. I took observations for lat.i.tude and longitude at Porto Castanho, as well as boiling-point observations with the hypso-metrical apparatus, the latter in order to get the exact elevation, and also to keep a check on my several aneroids which I used on the journey merely for differential observations.

May 9th, 1910. Boiling point, 210 3 F. Temperature of the air, 83 F. = 1182 ft. above the sea level. By Aneroid, 1190 ft.

My mules having had a good rest, I was making ready to start on May 12th, when one of my men refused to come any farther. He wished to be paid off and go. So he received his pay and went. He would probably end his existence in that filthy little hamlet. He would never have the energy to return to Goyaz alone. I was rather glad he had gone, as, a few nights previously, he had fired at me while I was asleep. The bullet had actually made a hole through the canvas of my camp bed. I had fortunately taken the precaution to alter the position of my bed--under my tent--a precaution I took every night, after my men had gone to sleep in their hammocks, some distance outside. The man had evidently aimed where he thought my head was resting. I having turned the bed around, the bullet, fired from the man standing, went just over my ankles, perforating the canvas quite close to them. I naturally came out of my tent to see what was the matter, and saw the man with the rifle in his hand.

"Why did you shoot?" I inquired, as the man, evidently surprised to see me standing before him, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed disconnected words.

"I saw a huge _onca_" (a jaguar) ... "it was there ... I saw its two eyes shining like fire...."

"Did you kill the _onca_?"

"No, it leapt away."

I advised the man, patting him paternally on the back, not to startle everybody again. If he should see another _onca_ he had better come to me. I seldom missed when I fired at all--as I had been able to show them a few days before. I did not wish my men to behave like so many timid young girls, as I wished to be able to tell people in Europe that Brazilians were brave and n.o.ble.

"Firing in such a fashion indiscriminately," I explained to him, "you might have even killed one of your companions! Now go to sleep like a good fellow, and do not fire again!"

I spoke to the rascal in the gentlest of ways, never for one moment letting him suspect that I knew he had intended that bullet to go through my head. Nor did I ever take any of the other men into my confidence.

When they asked what the commotion was about, I told them that their companion had fired at a jaguar and the jaguar had leapt away. There is only one effective weapon you can use with scoundrels. It is the greatest calm and kindness.

The man, hiding his face in his hands, threw himself upon his hammock and began to sob. He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until the morning--much to the inconvenience of everybody in camp. At sunrise he had been seized with a severe attack of rheumatism which had contracted a leg badly. It was pitiful to see him walking--but when he was not aware of being looked at he walked as well as anybody else.

From that day that fellow never dared look me straight in the face. He avoided riding near me on the march, and in camp was sulky and unpleasant, retiring to a distance and declining to work. He was relieved of the functions of cook. The last time he had produced a meal nearly brought ma.s.sacre upon him at the hands of the other men.

He received his full pay up to date, without uttering a word of thanks.

He duly signed a receipt with his thumb-mark, as he was unable to write.

When the troop of horses and mules and his companions left, he never spoke a word of farewell to his companions or animals, nor to me. He sat silent and motionless, with his eyes riveted to the ground as if in a trance. Some days later we discovered that he had stolen from our store some 40 lbs. of coffee and a large quant.i.ty of sugar, as well as a number of other articles which had been useful to us.

The sky when we left was overcast, and huge globular clouds, white and grey, hung in great ma.s.ses, especially half way up the vault of the sky.

The country, after crossing the Araguaya, was remarkably beautiful, from an agricultural point of view--enormous campos or prairies--over rich alluvial deposits, with scanty stunted trees upon them. Plenty of _burity_ palms grew in the lower depressions.

My men suffered intensely from the cold at night--the minimum being 60 Fahr., maximum 92, in the afternoon of the 13th. The temperature had been much lower since we had crossed the great river. The elevation was only 1,250 ft.

Rising slowly over an undulation in the country to 1,300 ft., we began to find igneous rock showing through the surface soil, especially on the higher points.

_Lixia_ (_Nephelium Litchi_ Carab), _caraiba_ and the _laranjeira do campo_ (_Citrus vulgaris_), were trees to be seen in that region.

We had wonderfully clear sky in the morning. At noon it became slightly clouded, while in the afternoon one-third of the sky was covered. A light breeze blew from the west.

Some 28 kil. from the Araguaya we came to a small miserable farmhouse.

After a great deal of bargaining I was able to purchase some extra horses. The people had no idea whatever of the value of money, and named sums at first which would have easily purchased the finest horses on the English turf. They descended in time to more reasonable figures.

Our life was rendered miserable all day by the millions of _pium_ or gnats that swarmed around us and stung us with incredible fierceness and viciousness. Those little brutes left on our skins black marks fully as large as themselves wherever they stung us. The itching was most trying.

Those marks remained for several weeks, and only disappeared when we perforated them with a needle to let the blood out, or waited long enough for them to become desiccated and the skin re-formed.

_Pium_ is a word of the Tupi and Tupinamba Indians' language. Those tiny insects entered your eyes, leaving behind an odoriferous acid which caused great irritation of the lids. We removed dozens every day from our eyes. Fortunately they were easily extracted. They also dashed into your ears, up your nose, and, whenever you opened it, inside your mouth.

It was well worth going to Matto Grosso to enjoy the lovely moonlight nights, only comparable in their luminous splendour to nights of Central Africa in the middle of the Sahara desert, and to those on the high Tibetan plateau in Asia. The light of the moon was so vivid that one could see almost as well as in the daytime.

Personally, the crisp cool air (min. 59 Fahr.) made me feel in most excellent health and spirits, but my men, who had putrid const.i.tutions, were a ma.s.s of aches and pains. Some cried like children the entire night with toothache, moaning and shrieking like lunatics when the pain became acute; others got internal aches, another had cramp in the legs. I must say that Alcides, with all his faults, was the only one who always did his work--not always with common sense, but he did it--and, when ill, never gave exhibitions of pitiful weakness like the others.

Filippe, the negro, who eventually showed himself to be the bravest Brazilian on that expedition, also stood the pain more calmly and with manliness. As I had judged from the first moment I had laid eyes upon them, those were really the only two men who were any good at all. "_Il bon d si vede dal mattino_" (A fine day is seen in the morning), says an ancient and very true Italian proverb; truer, perhaps, in its philosophy with individuals than with the weather.

Many of my men's complaints vanished with the warmth of the sun--108 Fahr. at 1 p.m., with a maximum temperature during the day of 85 in the shade.

With the beautiful clear sky and a gentle breeze blowing, it was a real delight to march. Only a slight whitish mist--always in horizontal streaks--was to be noticed near the earth. The sky, although limpid, was never of a deep blue, but merely of a pale cobalt. The dew was heavy during the night and soaked everything, making the baggage, the tents particularly, heavy for the animals to carry. We still kept at an elevation of 1,250 ft., noticing, as we marched on, an isolated range of hills extending from north-east to south-west and showing considerable erosion at its south-westerly terminus. Two conical hills--one a broken cone--stood on the summit of a flat plateau, the entire range, as well as the summit of hills, showing eroded slopes with vertical wall-like superior portions.

After leaving the stream at the foot of a range 1,450 ft. above the sea level, on rising over a low pa.s.s I could observe to the north-east of that range great blocks of eruptive rock much perforated, in which were embedded pellets of yellow lava and of red and black baked igneous rock.

On examining the north-eastern end of the main part of the range it was apparent that what remained standing before us was merely one half of a circular crater, the other half of which had collapsed or had been blown up by volcanic action. The bottom of the crater was subsequently filled with alluvial deposits. There was there a gra.s.sy plain with a few _burity_ palms. In the valley before us was ideal pasture land, which will some day be of great value.

We crossed two cols (elev. 1,550 ft.) with a beautiful plain between.

Then we descended into a third lovely valley on the north side of the outer wall of the crater. The grazing was perfect for the animals.

Cl.u.s.ters of vigorous, healthy _burity_ palms stood in great numbers in the centre and at the sides of the valley. This great valley was bounded by two ridges extending in a northerly direction--two spurs, as it were.

The rounded, channelled outer sides of the crater to the north would tend to strengthen the theory that those slopes were formerly a gradual continuation of the present inclined valley. On those slopes of the mountain hardly any vegetation could be noticed, perhaps owing to the fact that hard volcanic rock existed under the thin surface padding of yellowish earth.

The valley was buried in red and grey lapilli and ashes, finely broken up marble cubes, and fragments of other forms of crystallized rock.

As we proceeded from camp Foga.s.so, the northern slopes of the crater became divided into huge furrows, the vertical upper part of the crater displaying vividly rich red tones. The crater was castellated at the summit, like the walls of a fortress.

The geological formation of that portion of the Matto Grosso plateau interested me greatly. Each individual spur, taken separately, showed slopes sometimes abrupt, sometimes well rounded, separated from the next spur of hills by a V-shaped or angular, or else a concave hollow. At the bottom of those hollows one did not find the slopes continuing the line of the crater, but the valley was there absolutely flat and cut the line of the slope sharply. It would almost appear as if a subsidence of the soil had taken place in that particular locality, or else one might speculate whether those abrupt hills had not been the walls of what was once a subterranean volcanic cauldron--the flat valley, in which we were, having been the bottom of that cauldron. What little rock one found in the river bed in this valley showed signs of having been exposed to intense and prolonged heat, and so did the brilliant red summit of the hill range, which was also of the deep red typical of hard-baked rock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Paredozinho.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Typical Scenery of Matto Grosso.]

The scene which I had before me there in Matto Grosso greatly reminded me of a similar basin I had seen when the great Bandaisan mountain in j.a.pan was blown up by a volcanic explosion and left merely the bottom part of its gigantic internal cauldron with vertical red walls around it.

With the exception of scanty and anaemic gra.s.s and a few stunted trees, there was hardly any vegetation noticeable. The Foga.s.so stream, on the bank of which we camped, flowed in an easterly direction into the Araguaya.

The temperature on the plateau was ideal--min. 63 Fahr. during the night; max. 75. We were at an elevation of 1,450 ft.

On May 15th we were travelling along a valley over which must have once risen the continuation of a range which stood to the north of us. There were deep grooves and corrugations in the valley in a direction from south to north between the two sections of the now interrupted range.

There we found soil of red, brown and yellow tints, or else great stretches of grey volcanic ashes and earth mixed, as well as sharply angular fragments of igneous rock, which showed that they had not travelled there by rolling on the ground or propelled by water.

After this we pa.s.sed close to another curious spur of mountains on the east--quite isolated and of a red vertical columnar formation. Its summit was broken up--much more so than that of the plateau-like range to the south of us which we were following in a parallel line. The highest point of that range, to the south, was wooded, and so were the two conical-topped hills which towered over it. The strata where exposed showed a slight dip to the north. We crossed the range by two low cols at elevations of 1,550 ft. and 1,560 ft. respectively. On the summit and even lower upon the sides of those cols we found huge boulders of eruptive rock, highly ferruginous. Globular lumps, big and small, of spattered smooth-surfaced yellow lava were to be found in myriads; also many spherical pellets of ferruginous, highly-baked rock with innumerable holes produced while in a state of ebullition. Some of the ferruginous rocks had pellets of yellow lava firmly imbedded in them, which had evidently penetrated while liquid into the hollows of the ferruginous rock which was already in a semi-solid, or perhaps solidified, condition.

At any rate, when it happened the ferruginous rock was already harder than the lava.

While I was studying attentively the geological conditions of that region, the sky suddenly became as black as ink to the south, and a heavy shower, which lasted half an hour, drenched us all to the marrow of our bones. Then it cleared up, and the sun, supplemented by our natural heat, dried our clothes upon us again as we went on.

CHAPTER XII

Geological Speculation--Beautiful Pasture-land