Across Unknown South America Part 32

The Rio Manso, which flowed into the Cuyaba River, was not to be confounded with the Rio Manso forming the head-waters of the Rio das Mortes, which eventually threw itself into the River Araguaya.

Owing to one of my animals having strayed away and the difficulty of finding it again in the tall gra.s.s and high vegetation, we were not able to leave camp until the afternoon of June 18th. Soon after starting on the march we went through a marvellous arch of thick foliage, creepers, bamboos, and _akuri_ palms, previous to crossing a streamlet 9 metres wide and 1 ft. deep--flowing towards the west. We had no end of trouble near these streamlets, as they flowed between precipitous banks 50 to 70 ft. high. There was no trail. The animals frequently lost their footing over the slippery, steep slope, and rolled down, baggage and all, until they reached the bottom; or else they would sometimes stick half way down against trees and liane, and we had the greatest difficulty in extricating them again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Quadrangular Rocky Mountain connected by Natural Wall of Rock with the Vertical-sided Range in Background.]

There was a low range extending from north to south along the left bank of the Rio Manso. From a hill 1,470 ft. high above the sea level on the right bank of the river we saw a plateau in four terraces--the third of the line of plateaux we had seen on our preceding march. Upon getting higher we perceived to the south, beyond the four-terraced plateau, another plateau with vertical walls, and to the south-west a high double-humped dome--resembling Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Evidently one more of the innumerable extinct volcanoes to be seen in that region.

The mountainous ma.s.s extended in a more confused form farther to the south-west. On our side of the Rio Manso the country was gently undulating--in fact, it formed many parallel ridges of low, well-rounded hills with occasional deep hollows or basins between. One could not help being particularly struck by the wonderful regularity and strong similarity of the curves on the parallel hill ranges, as if all had been turned out of the same mould. The hill-range we were on was 1,500 ft.

above the sea level. The others--excepting one or two--were lower.

There was an absolutely flat horizon line to the north, with no mountain range in sight. The country opening up before us was from that point almost entirely made up of campos, with _chapada_ or growths of trees princ.i.p.ally near streams in the valleys. We crossed a watercourse 30 metres wide and 1 ft. deep at an elevation of 1,350 ft. We called it the Palmeira, owing to the many palms upon its banks. Here grew many great _caja_ or _cajazeiro_ trees (of the genus Anacardiaceae), the largest and tallest trees I had yet seen in Brazil, and _Garappa_ or _Garabu_ (of the genus Terebinthaceae) trees--very interesting on account of their peculiar winged roots. They resembled the _nonoko_, which were characteristic of the Polynesian Islands and Philippine Archipelago, only the Brazilian ones never attained proportions so large.

With endless trouble we had gone 20 kil. We had come to streams, where again, owing to the precipitous descents on the slippery high banks, several mules fell over and rolled down into the stream. One mule, particularly, had become very nervous on approaching those places.

Foreseeing the punishment which would be meted out, its knees invariably began to tremble and give way, and it let itself roll down purposely, every time we came to those difficult pa.s.sages. Once down at the bottom, with baggage often immersed deep in water, we had the greatest difficulty in making the wretched animal get up again, and we frequently had to drag it bodily up the opposite slope by means of ropes. I have never seen an animal stand more beating than that brute did. Although I am most kind to animals, I must say for my men that this particular mule often drove us all to absolute despair. Dragging the dead weight of an animal up a steep slope, 40, 50, or even 70 ft. high--we were only seven men--was no joke at all. When you had to repeat the operation several times a day, it was somewhat trying. Once the brute had been dragged up to the top it would quickly get up on its legs, and marched well while on fairly good ground.

But in moments of danger it was one of the most pusillanimous animals I have ever possessed.

I had given strict orders that in places of that kind the more timid animals were to be unloaded, and the loads conveyed across on men's backs. My orders were always disobeyed. The result generally was that not only did the men have to carry the loads eventually, but we had to carry the animals as well. Endless time and energy were thus wasted. That is what happens to people who try to save themselves trouble.

At sundown, after having witnessed a glorious view of the valley to the north, we descended rapidly amidst luxuriant vegetation of tall bamboos, _akuri_ palms, and festooned liane, until we reached the Palmeira River, flowing from north to south. Having crossed it, we continued for 3 kil.

through dense vegetation, and then recrossed it at a spot where it pa.s.sed within enormous fissures in colossal ma.s.ses of highly polished yellow lava. After solidification these ma.s.ses of lava had been subjected to violent commotion, as their stratification was nearly in a vertical position.

Wherever possible I took observations for lat.i.tude and longitude, in order to ascertain my exact position; an 8-in. s.e.xtant, mercurial artificial horizon and chronometers being used for the purpose. It is not easy to describe the torture I had to go through when taking those tedious astronomical observations. The gla.s.s roof of the artificial horizon had unfortunately got broken. I had to use a great deal of ingenuity in order to screen the mercury from the wind so as to obtain a well-defined reflection. No sooner was I getting a perfect contact of the sun's image and its reflection than some huge fly or other insect would begin to promenade on the mercury, disturbing its surface. b.u.t.terflies were even more troublesome, as they left upon the mercury--by the luminosity of which they were greatly attracted--sediments of multi-coloured powder and down from their wings and bodies. The mercury had to be carefully re-filtered before work could proceed. Then, what was worse, when both your hands were occupied--one holding the s.e.xtant, the other gently s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the vernier--hundreds of mosquitoes, taking advantage of your helpless condition, buzzed round and settled on your nose, ears, neck, eyelids and forehead, stinging you for all they were worth. Swarms of bees--a dwarf kind, with body in yellow and black stripes; fortunately these did not sting--also placidly roamed upon every available patch of skin with a provoking tickling. A great number of them settled along the edges of the eyelids, attracted by the sheen of the retina of the eye, into which they gazed with great interest. Others, more inquisitive, would explore the inside of your ears; while millions--actually millions--of _pium_, the tiny gnats--more impertinent than all the others taken together--dashed with great force up your nose, into your eyes, into your mouth, and far into your ears, and were most troublesome to remove. Your ankles and knees and wherever the skin was soft were itching terribly with _carrapatinhos_, and before you got through with your work you were also swarming all over with ants of all sizes--careering all over your body and inflicting painful bites whenever you placed your hand upon your clothes to arrest their progress. When you had endured the torture long enough, and had managed to take a satisfactory solar observation, you generally had to remove all your clothes in order to get rid of the unpleasant parasites--and you then had a good hour's hard work cut out for you.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Quadrangular Rocky Mountain showing Rocky Wall connecting it with the Neighbouring Range.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Author's Caravan in the Heart of Matto Grosso.]

We continued our march northward, the temperature in the sun being 105 Fahr. The minimum temperature had been 60 Fahr. during the night of June 17th, and 64 on June 18th. We crossed the Piraputanga River, flowing into the Rio Manso, and then pa.s.sed over a magnificent flow of yellow, red and black lava, the Cambayuvah River, a tributary of the Palmeira.

The Cambayuvah flowed through a great volcanic crack 75 ft. high, the sides of the crack showing much-fissured strata in a vertical position. A smaller streamlet entered the Cambayuvah where we crossed it. Wonderfully beautiful, indeed, were the rapids among brilliantly coloured red and yellow rocks, the water winding its way among high upstanding pillars and sharp blades of laminated rock.

A beautiful waterfall tumbled over with a great noise into a pool, scooped out of an immense block of such hardened rock that even the force of that violent stream seemed to have had but little erosive effect upon it. The edges of it were as sharp as possible, instead of being worn smooth and rounded by the constant rapid flow of water. The rock had been hard baked, and was of a shiny black colour, almost as shiny as crystal.

At the bottom of those picturesque rapids was a circular volcanic vent, the periphery of which had been blackened by the action of fire. The Cambayuvah followed a general course of south-east to north-west.

We camped near that enchanting spot--most picturesque, but terrible for my animals, as the grazing was poor. My mules, when let free at the end of the march, stood helpless around the camp, looking reproachfully at us, and making no effort to go far afield in order to get something to eat. The poor things were quite exhausted. I saw well that they could not last much longer. My men were constantly worrying me, and saying that we were going to sure perdition. They had become painfully home-sick, and had they not been dead-tired too--more so, perhaps, than the mules and horses--I should have expected great trouble from them. As it was, to lead on those men with persuasion and kindness was an exhausting mental effort for me. Once or twice the suggestion was made that if I did not agree to go back the way we had come I might perhaps get killed and they would return alone. When I enquired whether any of them could find their way back alone, they said "no"; so I suggested that perhaps it would be to their advantage to let me live. I might eventually see them out of that difficulty.

In all my travels I have seldom come across men more helpless at finding their way about, or realizing in which direction they had travelled.

Barring Alcides, none of them had any more idea whether we had travelled south, north, east, or west of Goyaz, than the man in the moon. Naturally I did not exert myself to enlighten them unduly, for there lay my great and only hold over them. I had fully realized that I was travelling with an itinerant lunatic asylum, and I treated my men accordingly. No matter what they did or said, I always managed to have things my own way. Never by violence, or by a persuasive flow of language--the means used by the average mortal. No, indeed; but by mere gentleness and kindness; very often by absolute silence. Few people realize the force of silence on momentous occasions; but of course few people know how to remain silently silent--if I may so express it--in moments when their life is seriously at stake. Silence is indeed the greatest force a man can use, if he knows how to use it. It is certainly invaluable in exploring, when naturally one is not always thrown into contact with the best of people.

The animals strayed away during the night, and it took all the best part of four hours to recover them in the morning. Instinct is a wonderful thing. They had all travelled to a place where, over undulating country, fairly open campos, slightly wooded with stunted trees, were to be found, and where they could obtain something to eat. When we crossed those campos after our departure from camp, foliated rock showed through the surface soil in many spots, in strata either displaced and left vertical--in many cases at an angle of 38--or in its original horizontal plane. Elsewhere dips in all kinds of directions showed that there must have been a good deal of commotion in that region when that part of the country subsided and formed the basin we were then crossing. The typical feature of all those undulations was their arched backs.

We were at a low elevation--only 1,300 ft. above the sea level. We were travelling over immense quant.i.ties of marble pebbles and volcanic debris.

We there made the acquaintance of the _gramadin_, a plant with curved spikes, which seldom attained a height of more than one inch above the ground. It was terribly poisonous if touched.

We went over three successive ridges (elev. 1,300 ft.). On the summit of each ridge we found a profusion of marble debris and even large blocks immaculately white or else yellow--probably rendered of the latter colour by contact with iron, plentiful in that region.

On the summit of the sixth ridge (elev. 1,330 ft.), that day, we came upon large sheets of foliated rock--again almost absolutely vertical in its stratification--and great ma.s.ses of thin slate plates or foliations extending from east to west.

Farther on, from a high point, 1,450 ft. above the sea level, we could gaze once more upon a gorgeous panoramic view of the marvellous scenery we had left behind--the great plateaux of rock as red as fire, and "Church-rock" looming high against the sky. We kept on rising upon various undulations--that day's march was one of continuous ascents and descents. At 1,600 ft. we found more ma.s.ses of vertically foliated slate, ashes consolidated into easily-friable sheets, and large quant.i.ties of beautiful marble.

To the north and north-east we had delightful scenery, the _pao d'arco_ trees in full bloom, of a reddish-purple colour, adding greatly to the vivid colour-scheme of that view, with its cobalt blue of the distant mountains and the Veronese green of the campos in the foreground. Nearly all the ridges we had crossed which extended from north-east to south-west were well rounded--fairly well padded with sediments of earth, sand and ashes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Giant Dome of Lava.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Campos and Chapada of Matto Grosso.]

We descended to 1,300 ft. (above the sea level) through thin forest, in a valley where bamboo was abundant as well as _gamelleira_ trees with their winged roots of great size. The _gamelleira_ was somewhat larger than the _garappa_ or _garabu_. We found in that valley a beautiful grove of _akuri_ palms, the palms being 10 to 15 ft. high. In going through--cutting our way with _falcons_--long heavy-bladed knives specially made for cutting through forests--we were much worried by spiders' webs of great size, from which we had trouble in extricating our heads and hands as we went along. There were thousands of those webs at the entrance of the forest, and we dragged them all along on our pa.s.sage. With their viscous properties they clung to us, and we could only shake them off with difficulty.

Most interesting of all was the _cepa d'agua_--a powerful liana, four inches in diameter, festooned from the highest branches of trees, and which when cut ejected most delicious cool water. Then there was a tree called by the Brazilians "_mulher pobre_," or "poor woman's tree"--do you know why?--because from its juice it was possible to make soap, which saved the expense of buying it. There was a roundabout way of reasoning for you.

Eighteen kilometres from our last camp we came to a rapid streamlet of the most limpid water, the Rio Mazagan (elev. 1,300 ft. above the sea level), four metres wide and four inches deep. When we drank it it nearly made us ill, so foul was its taste of sulphur and lead. The treacherous stream flowed into the Cuyaba River.

There were many _tamburi_ trees of great proportions, handsome trees with clean, healthy white bark and minute leaves--at the summit of the tree only. In the forest, although the taller trees were generally far apart, none of them had branches or leaves lower than 30 to 40 ft. from the ground. The _angico_ or _angicu_ (_Piptadenia rigida_ Benth.), which was quite plentiful, was also a good-looking tree of appreciable height and circ.u.mference.

Upon emerging from the beautiful forest, quite clear underneath with only a few ferns, we crossed great campos--"_campina grande_," as my Brazilians called them. Skirting the forest in a northerly direction, we went over a low hill range with delightful clear campos and patches of forest. We crossed another streamlet of foul-tasting water--with a strong flavour apparently of lead.

In the great undulating valley we left behind--as we now altered our course slightly to the north-west--was prominent a double-humped hill which rose higher than any other except in the north-west portion of the landscape. There a high chain of hills could be seen.

When we crossed over the second ridge (elev. 1,400 ft.), strewn with yellow lava pellets, at the end of extensive campos we obtained an imposing view to the north. An elevated flat-topped table-land of great magnitude rose in front of us--a perfectly straight line against the sky, but terminating abruptly with three gigantic steps, with a subsidiary one upon the second step, at its western end. This plateau stood out, a brilliant ma.s.s of cobalt blue with great projecting spurs, like a half-section of a cone surmounted by a semi-cylindrical tower along the southern wall of the plateau. Then a strange hill ma.s.s of four distinct composite domed heights with minor peaks stood between the plateau and us--and extended, like most of the other ranges, from south-east to north-west.

CHAPTER XXV

The Blue Mountains--The Cuyaba River--Inaccurate Maps--A Rebellion in Camp--Infamy of Author's Followers--The Laga dos Veados and the Seven Lakes--Falling back on Diamantino--Another Mutiny--Slavery--Descending from the Tableland

WE had gone 96 kil. in four days' marching since leaving the Rio Manso.

We were only a few kilometres from the Serra Azul, or Blue Mountains--truly mountains of the most vivid and purest cobalt blue I had ever seen--quite a wonderful spectacle.

We made our camp in a prairie with good grazing for our animals. Although we were at a comparatively low elevation--1,150 ft. above the sea level--the minimum temperature of the atmosphere was 56 Fahr. during the night.

On leaving camp--still proceeding north--we descended to 1,100 ft. into a lovely stretch of magnificent gra.s.s with a lagoon. The level of the water was low, as we were then at the end of the dry season. On the flat gra.s.sy land were curious semi-spherical mounds, 4 to 6 metres in diameter and from 2 to 6 ft. high. On each of these mounds were a few stunted trees.

No trees whatever existed except upon these small mounds, the explanation being, I think, that the mounds had formed around the trees while these were growing, and not that the trees had grown upon the mounds.

As we were getting nearer, the Serra Azul to the north was most impressive. I think that it was partly due to the bluish foliage of the vegetation upon it that the range, even close by, appeared of so vivid a blue, and also to the deep blue shadows cast by the spurs which projected, some to the south-east, others due south--that is, it will be understood, on the southern face of the range.

Thick deposits of cinders lay in the valley. On approaching an intermediate and lower range we cut our way through scrub--chiefly of _sciadera_ trees, seldom growing to a greater height than 7 ft. The domed hills showed through the gra.s.s great blocks of volcanic rock, while at the foot of the hills could be noticed huge boulders of consolidated ashes with veins of crystals and marble. There, too, the stratification was vertical. There was lamination in some of the rock, but not in the granite blocks nor in the blocks of marble, which appeared to have been subjected to enormous heat. Some of the rock had been in a state of absolute ebullition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marvellous Scenery of the Central Brazilian Plateau.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Church rock" standing in the centre.]

At the spot where we crossed the range--starting our ascent from an elevation of 1,100 ft.--were immense holes, vents and cracks in the earth's crust. As we rose slightly higher among many chains of low hills, we were upon a horizontal stratum of laminated granite. Higher still we pa.s.sed a semicircular hill composed of immense blocks of granite. In the centre of the semicircle was a great round hole, 30 ft. in diameter--an extinct crater. Farther on, ascending upon an inclined plane, we came to another similar semicircle--not of rock that time, but of red earth and cinders. When we reached the highest point (elev. 1,270 ft.) of the divide we had to our left huge pinnacles and pillars of rock of the most fantastic shapes, monoliths from 10 to 15 ft. high, and rocks hollowed by the action of fire. Big boulders, which had become perfectly rounded by having been shot through the air and revolved at a great speed while in a half-solid condition, were to be seen scattered all over the inclined planes of the saddle of the divide. Giant cacti grew in abundance in the interstices between rocks. Although most of the rocks were blackened outside, by chipping off the outer surface one found that they contained inside beautiful white marble or else greyish granite. The latter was striated with thin layers--not more than a quarter or half an inch thick--of crystallized matter, forming veins in the blocks or dividing two strata.

Everywhere could be noticed remarkable perforations of all sizes in the rocks, great spherical or ovoid hollows, or cylindrical tubular channels.

In the ground were many volcanic vents with lips baked by fire.

On our right, a kilometre or so farther on, after having gone through an extensive stretch of red sand and lapilli, we came across three hills, the central one of which had the appearance of a cylindrical tower of masonry with windows and doors. It was a wonderful freak of nature. Under this huge tower were several caves and grottoes.