Across Unknown South America Part 37

[Ill.u.s.tration: Method of Pressing Rubber into Cakes.

The alum process of coagulation being used.]

Several ways were employed in order to coagulate the latex. The simplest was the one used in Matto Grosso. The latex was poured into a rectangular wooden mould, 061 m. long (2 ft.), 046 m. wide (1 ft.), and 015 m.

deep (about 6 in.). Upon the latex was placed a solution of alum and warm water. Then coagulation took place. In order to compress the coagulating latex into solid cakes, a primitive lever arrangement was used--merely a heavy wooden bar, one end of which was inserted into the cavity of a tree, above the wooden mould, while at the other end of the bar heavy logs of wood were suspended. One night was sufficient for the latex to coagulate thoroughly and be properly compressed into cakes, weighing each about 22 kils. The cakes were lifted out by belts of liane which had been previously laid into the moulds.

The discoverer of the method of coagulating rubber with alum was Henry S.

Strauss. He also found that by keeping the latex in hermetically sealed vessels it could be preserved in a liquid state. The same result could be obtained with ammonia.

In the Amazon and Para Provinces a different process was used. The latex was coagulated by placing it near the fire. The heat evaporated the aqueous part and coagulated the vegetable alb.u.men. In order to make what was called a _garrafa_, or large ball of rubber--some weighed 20, 30, 40 kils. and more--a small ball of latex was made to coagulate round a horizontal bar of wood. That ball was gradually increased in circ.u.mference by smearing it over with more latex, which became gradually coagulated and dried by the heat and smoke produced by the burning of certain woods, and of the oily seeds of the _urucuri_ palm, technically known as the _Attalea excelsa_. In this process the rubber did not remain white, as with the alum process; in fact, it became dark brown, almost black, owing, of course, to the smoke. Locally, the smoking process was said to be the better of the two, for the coagulation with alum took away somewhat from the elasticity of the rubber.

Interesting was the _sorveira_ (_Collophora utilis_), a tree which gave latex that was quite delicious to drink, but could not be coagulated. The trees, to any untrained person, closely resembled the seringueira, only the leaves were more minute and differently shaped. It must be remembered that nearly all the trees of the Brazilian forest had leaves only at a very great height above the ground, and it was not always easy to see their shape, especially when close to other trees where the foliage got interwoven into an almost solid ma.s.s. We frequently enjoyed the sweet milk of the _sorveira_--it tasted slightly of fresh walnuts with sugar on them. It was unsafe to drink too much of it, as it had injurious effects upon one's digestive organs.

There was there also the _leiteiro_ (or producer of milk), a smaller tree, and the liana _macaco_, which both produced abundant milk, but in neither case had a way, so far, been found to coagulate it.

The two days spent at Porto Velho were interesting. The four men who had remained with me behaved fairly well, princ.i.p.ally owing to the prospect, that, in drifting down stream, they would not have to work, and would be saved the heavy trouble of grooming, packing and unpacking the animals, and the tedious job every morning of riding miles through the country in order to recover those that had strayed away during the night.

"Thank heaven!" exclaimed Antonio, as he gazed at the canoe, "we shall not have to hunt for her every morning!"

"Yes," answered Filippe, "no more pack-saddles to fix, no more leading the animals to drink. She"--pointing to the canoe--"can drink all the time if she likes...."

Filippe was a prophet. The canoe did "drink" all the time, much to our concern. Little did my men suspect before we started that they would have the hardest time of their lives--so hard, indeed, that it was amazing humans could endure it at all.

One of the three seringueiros at Porto Velho interested me greatly. He was a tall, gentlemanly, refined person, who seldom uttered a word. I noticed that he avoided meeting me, and, although extremely civil, seemed afraid to enter into conversation. The little shed he had built himself (7 ft. by 4 ft., and 7 ft. high) was extraordinarily neat, and open on all sides--quite unlike the sheds Brazilian rubber collectors build themselves.

From my tent I watched him. The man got up before sunrise every day, going at once to the river for a swim. Humming some sort of a song, he would then go through a series of gymnastic exercises, interrupted by sonorous slaps upon different parts of his anatomy to kill impertinent mosquitoes, of which there were swarms on the Arinos River. That done, he would a.s.sume a suit of working-clothes, and, returning to his shed, would pick up his tools and noiselessly depart, so as not to disturb our sleep!

At sunset, when he returned, he immediately proceeded to the river to have another swim and to get rid of the many insects which always collected upon one's person in going through the forest. Then he put on a clean suit of clothes, and, saluting us from a distance, went to his shed to rest.

I was certain the man was not a Brazilian, but as curiosity is not one of my chief characteristics I took no special notice of him. This brought him round to my tent one evening. The man was a German by birth, of a good family and excellent education. He could speak German, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese to perfection, and was well versed in the literature of those languages. He had evidently drifted about for many years in many parts of South America in search of a fortune, in the Argentine, in Uruguay, and had ended by becoming a slave in Brazil. Yes, the poor old man was a voluntary slave. He had borrowed from his employer and was unable to repay. He was therefore a slave in the true sense of the word, as his employer could, according to local custom, sell him to any one he chose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Upper Arinos River.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Arinos River above the Rapids.]

I was terribly upset to see a European in such a position, and, what was worse, I was not in a position to help. Nor indeed was help asked for or wanted. The old fellow bore the burden bravely, and said he had never been happier in his life. Supposing he were made to return to his own country--from which he had been absent so many years--he philosophically argued, what could he be, with no money and no friends, but a most unhappy man? All his relatives and friends must have died; the habits he had acquired in the wilds were not suitable for European cities; he was too old to change them. The German was an extraordinarily fine type of a man, honest, straightforward, brave. He spoke in the kindest and fairest way of his master. He had sold himself because of necessity. It was now a matter of honour, and he would remain a slave until it was possible to repay the purchase money--some four hundred pounds sterling, if I remember rightly--which he never expected to be able to repay at all.

The German told me some interesting things about the immediate neighbourhood of the camp. The Indians of the Cayapo tribe, who lived close by, did not interfere with the seringueiros. He had been there several years in succession, and he had never seen an Indian. The seringueiros only went to collect rubber during some three or four months each year, after which time they returned to the distant towns south as far as Cuyaba and Corumba. At the beginning of the rainy season, when the time came for them to retire, the Indians generally began to remind the seringueiros that it was time to go, by placing obstacles on the estrada, by removing cups or even the collars from the rubber trees. But so far in that region, although footmarks of Indians and other signs of them had been noticed, not one individual had been actually seen. Their voices were frequently heard in the distance singing war songs.

"Hark!" said the German to me, "do you hear them?"

I listened attentively. Far, far down the river a faint chorus of voices could just be heard--intermittent sounds of "hua ... hua ... hua ...

hua." In the stillness of the night the sound could be distinguished clearly. It went on until sunrise, when it gradually died out.

There was a big lagoon to the west of Porto Velho, formed by the river at high water. The lagoon dried up during the dry season. It was separated from the river only by a narrow tongue of land, 80 ft. high.

I took careful and repeated observations for lat.i.tude, longitude, and alt.i.tude, the latter by a boiling-point thermometer, from our point of departure at the headwaters of the Arinos River. The elevation of the river was there 1,200 ft. by aneroid, 1,271 ft. by the hypsometrical apparatus. The lat.i.tude was 14 2'2 South; the longitude 56 17' West of Greenwich.

We were having beautiful, clear skies. Only on July 4th at sunset a solitary streak of mist extended to the summit of the sky.

I had two plans in my mind when I decided to descend the Arinos River. One was to abandon that river at the point where it met the Juruena River and strike across country westward until the Madeira-Mamore Railway was met. The other plan--even more difficult--was to continue down the river as far as its junction with the Tres Barras, from which place I would strike across the virgin forest as far as the Madeira River. I had not the faintest idea how I could realize either plan with the ridiculously meagre resources at my disposal. I had money enough, but unfortunately that was one of the few spots on earth where money was of little use. Again I trusted in Providence to come to our help. Both plans involved thousands of kilometres of navigation of a diabolical river, in an almost uncontrollable canoe, with an insufficient and absolutely incapable crew. Then would come the crossing of the virgin forest on foot, for some hundreds of kilometres--n.o.body knew how many. The least number of men necessary in order to be able to carry provisions sufficient to execute either plan was thirty. I only had four. Yet I started. The second plan was successfully carried out, but necessarily at the cost almost of all our lives, and with sufferings unimaginable.

CHAPTER II

Hoisting the British Flag--An Escaped Slave--A Dilemma--Benedicto--The _Lutra Brasiliensis_--The Seringueiros--A Marvellous River--Rapids

ON July 6th we packed the canoe with our baggage and dogs. The British flag was hoisted at the stern of the canoe, and with tender embraces from the seringueiros, whose eyes were wet with tears--they imagined that we were going to certain death--we pulled out of Porto Velho at seven minutes to eleven o'clock a.m.

"We will pray with all our hearts that you may reach the end of your journey safely!... Beware of the rapids; they are terrible.... Be careful because the canoe does not steer true.... Do not let the canoe knock too hard against rocks, or she may split in two!... Good-bye!... good-bye!"

With those encouraging remarks from the seringueiros, who were sobbing bitterly, we drifted with the current, Antonio and Filippe the negro paddling in the style generally adopted for scooping soup with a spoon out of a dish.

I had provided the canoe with a number of improvised paddles we had cut ourselves. There were no two of equal size, shape, or weight. We had chopped them with an axe from sections of a tree. They were originally all intended to be the same, but what we intended to have and what we got were two different matters, as the five of us each worked on a separate paddle.

The seringueiros stood on the high bank, waving their arms in the air.

One of them blew plaintive sounds on one of the horns used by them for calling their companions while in the forest. Those horns could be heard enormous distances. Filippe the white man, who was not paddling, fired back a salute of ten shots. There was nothing my men loved more than to waste ammunition. Fortunately we had plenty.

The average width of the river was there from 80 to 100 metres, with a fairly swift current. It was lucky that ours was the only boat on that river, for indeed we needed all that breadth of water in our snake-like navigation. I remonstrated with Alcides, who was at the helm, and advised him to keep the nose of the canoe straight ahead, as we were coming to a _corrideira_ or small rapid.

Alcides, who could never be told anything, became enraged at my words of warning, and also at the derision of the other men, as we were drifting side on and he could not straighten her course. Just as we were entering the rapid, in his fury Alcides, in disgust, let go the steering-gear, which he said was useless. We were seized by the current and swung round with some violence, dashing along, sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the canoe on rocks, and b.u.mping now on one side, now on the other, until eventually we were dashed violently over a lot of submerged trees, where the bank had been eroded by the current and there had been a landslide. The canoe nearly capsized, the three dogs and some top baggage being thrown out into the water by the impact. We got stuck so hard among the branches of the trees that we all had to remove our lower garments and get into the water trying to get the canoe off.

My men used pretty language. That small accident was lucky for us. The shouts of my men attracted to the bank a pa.s.sing man. Half-scared, a wild figure of a mulatto with long, unkempt hair and beard, his body covered by what must have once been a suit of clothes, stood gazing at us, clutching a double-barrelled gun in his hands.

"Is there a revolution in Matto Grosso?" he inquired when I caught sight of him. "Why do you fly the red flag?"

"That is not the flag of revolution, that is the flag of peace. It is the English flag."

"The English flag! The English flag!" he exclaimed, running down the slope of the river bank. "You are English!... Oh, sir, take me with you!

I entreat you take me with you! I am an escaped slave.... I owe my master much money.... I can never repay it.... I am a seringueiro. My estrada is some miles down the river. I have been there alone suffering for months.

I had no more food, nothing. There is very little fish in the river. The life is too terrible. I can stand it no more. If you do not take me with you I shall kill myself."

I tried to persuade the strange figure to return to his master--the master lived in comfort in the city of Cuyaba. "If you chose to borrow money and sell yourself, it was only right that you should repay your debt." That was the only way I could look at it. But the man would not hear of it. If I did not take him he would kill himself--there, before me, he repeated; that was all.

So difficult a dilemma to solve--at so inconvenient a moment, when we were as busy as busy could be, trying to disentangle the canoe--was rather tiresome. The strange man, having laid his gun upon the ground, helped us with all his might in our work. When the canoe got off, the strange man, gun and all, jumped clumsily into her and nearly capsized her a second time. He implored me with tears in his eyes to take him along. He would work day and night; he would present me with his double-barrelled gun (an old muzzle-loader); he did not want pay--he only wanted to get freed from his master, who, he said, robbed and ill-treated him.

"Do you swear upon all that is most sacred that you have made up your mind not to go back to your master?"

"Yes. If you say 'No' to me, I shall kill myself now."

Benedicto--that was his name--spoke with quiet determination.

"Very good, Benedicto. You can remain. What is more, you shall receive from this moment the same pay as the other men. You can keep your old gun, too."

Benedicto embraced and kissed my hands, then my feet. The poor man's joy was so great that it was really worth living to see that such moments of happiness could be procured in a man's lifetime.