Across Unknown South America Part 6

AT the river were several picturesque two-wheeled carts waiting to be ferried across. Drawn by ten, twenty, and even as many as thirty oxen, these heavy hooded vehicles travelled across country in a most wonderful manner. Naturally they had to be of solid construction to stand the wear and tear demanded of them. Their wheels were heavy solid discs of hard wood encircled by powerful tyres of iron. A primitive system of brake--a mere bar of wood held in position by ropes--r.e.t.a.r.ded the speed of the vehicle down extra-steep declivities. When going up or down hill the friction of the wheels upon their axles produced a continuous shrill whistle, which, when heard from a distance, sounded not unlike the whistle of a locomotive. In the deathly stillness of the Goyaz landscape those whistles could be heard a long way off. The expectant farmers--expectant, because those trading carts conveyed to them a good deal of the food-stuff, salt, and other necessaries of life, as well as the luxuries they could afford--were clever at recognizing the whistles of the various carts, and they identified one special cart or another by what they poetically called the "voice of the wheel" or the "song of Goyaz."

There were some picturesque rapids just above the spot where we crossed the Corumba River, which flowed in a tortuous channel with a general direction of W.S.W.

To the east of our track, as we proceeded northward, stood a glorious range of hills with magnificent grazing land extending for many miles. In front of us to the north and N.N.E. towered a high plateau, the Serra de Callos, also called, I believe, Serra do Cusuzeiro.

Still travelling up and down and across several streamlets, we reached at sunset the Rio Boccagna (2,230 ft. above the sea level), which, soon after pa.s.sing the place where we crossed it, entered the large river Bagri, winding its way through a gorgeous forest. We had pa.s.sed during the day really wonderful grazing land on either side of the track, but princ.i.p.ally to the east, between the north bank of the Corumba River and Camp Mazagan. There were plenty of small streams in the hilly and sometimes slightly wooded valleys.

At seven o'clock, having ridden that day 76 kil., we halted after dark at the _moradoria_, or farm, of Mazagan (elev. 2,375 ft. above the sea level). We were politely asked to enter the house, and immediately preparations were made to clear out the best room for me. The illumination was not grand: an ancient metal arrangement--not unlike a Pompeian lamp--with a wick soaked in oil profusely smoking. In the dim light I could just distinguish in the background, reclining against the wall, a youth with a guitar, from which two chords--always the same two chords--were strummed. The boy seemed in a trance over this musical composition, and even our appearance had not disturbed his efforts. He had taken no notice whatever of us. Dinner was prepared--it took a long time--the musician all the time delighting his admiring family with the two monotonous chords.

"It is a pity," said his delighted mother to me, "that we cannot send him to school. He is a genius; he would astonish the world."

"Yes," I hastily agreed, "it _is_ a pity you cannot send him ...

somewhere!"

"Can you not take him with you?"

I explained to the poor woman that it required very civilized people to appreciate her son's music. Among the wild Indians I expected to find, later on in my journey, I was sure that with music like that, we should all be killed; they were such savages!

After two solid hours--and the two chords still continuing, with no signs whatever of relenting--I asked the musical genius if he could treat me to a different tune. Alas! he knew no other, but as he saw that I was so fond of music he would again, with the greatest pleasure, go on playing the same air--he called it an air.

"_Muito obrigado!_ (Thank you very much!)" I moaned, with a sickly smile on my lips and a violent internal wish to smash guitar and guitarist.

"_No hai de que!_ (Do not mention it!)" and here recommenced the repet.i.tion of the two chords.

"I should like to go to sleep now; thank you very much again for the lovely music," I next plaintively added, in my most approved Brazilian politeness.

"Oh, not at all: I shall go on playing while you are sleeping. It will give you pleasant dreams!"

It was too pathetic. Nothing short of murder could have stopped his enthusiasm. Being a traveller of years' experience, I was not to be outwitted. As he would not stop the music, I stopped hearing it by stuffing my ears tight with cotton-wool. So I slept soundly enough, notwithstanding the orchestral entertainment. At sunrise, when I opened my eyes again, the boy was still at it. I removed the cotton from my ears ... yes, indeed, the identical two chords!

The boy and the guitar will perhaps never know what a narrow escape they both had! In despair I gave orders to get the mules ready at once in order to depart immediately.

Those halts in farmhouses were dreary beyond words. The Brazilians of the interior--quite unlike those of the big towns in or near the coast--were sullen people, with no conversation--or else too much--no interest in anything, no art, no imagination. They were timid and vain to an incredible degree, suspicious, avaricious, and easily offended, so that the greatest tact had to be used with them. They were ignorant of everything even in their own immediate neighbourhood. Yet, mind you, with all that, extraordinarily kind and ultra-polite of speech. They all seemed turned out of the same mould. When you had seen one you had seen them all. There were, of course, a few exceptions--Brazilians of recent German, French, Italian or Spanish origin--but these exceptions were indeed very rare in the interior.

Ill-fed, his blood corrupted and impoverished to the utmost degree--his health, therefore, never in a normal condition--his finances at the lowest ebb, the Brazilian of the interior had little indeed to make him happy. His home at best was as miserable and dirty as possible. The room generally given to an honoured guest--the best in the house--was the granary. More than once was my camp-bed perched on a mound of Indian corn. And the furniture? A wooden bench of the roughest description--really an instrument of torture rather than an article of comfort; a few wooden pegs in the wall for hanging rifles or other things; an occasional wooden bedstead; seldom, very seldom, a stool or a chair--in any case, never a comfortable one such as you invariably find with peasants and old-established colonists of most other countries. They cared not for comfort. Their beds, a ma.s.s of rags, were shared by masters and hens and dogs. Everything was in an abandoned state, everything had fallen to rack and ruin. All looked as if they were tired of life, too indolent to move. They seldom saluted when you met them on the trail, nor when you entered their houses; if they did, they rapidly touched their dilapidated hats as if afraid to spoil them. Never did you perceive a smile upon their long-drawn countenances. When they greeted one another they laid their bodies close together as if about to dance the _tango_, and patted each other repeatedly on the shoulder-blades, turning their heads away as if to avoid their reciprocal evil odour. It is not the fashion in any part of Brazil to shake hands. Some say it is because of the unpleasant feeling of touching sweating hands; others suggest that it is to prevent the contagion of the many skin complaints from which people suffer. When they do shake hands--with a stranger, for instance--one might as well be grasping the very dead hand of a very dead man; it is done in so heartless a manner.

For a consideration they reluctantly gave a stranger what little they possessed, but they had not the remotest idea of the value of things. In one farmhouse you were charged the equivalent of a few pence for an egg or a chicken; in the next farm a small fortune was demanded for similar articles of convenience. Men, women, children, dogs, pigs and fowls, all lived--not happily, but most unhappily--together.

No sooner were we able to saddle the animals and pack the baggage and pay our hostess, than we tried to make our escape from that musical farm. But luck was hard on me that day. One mule was lost, a second received a terrible gash in his hind quarters from a powerful kick from another mule.

We went on among low, fairly gra.s.sy hills to the west, W.N.W. and to the east of us. We still had before us the Serra de Callos--a flat-topped tableland some 12 kil. in diameter on the summit, where it was almost circular. Its deeply grooved sides showed clearly the great work of erosion which had occurred and was still taking place in those regions.

With the exception of two spurs, which projected on the west and east sides of the plateau, its sky-line was quite clean and flat.

After rising to an elevation of 2,600 ft., then descending to 2,450 ft., we crossed two streamlets which afterwards joined a fairly important torrent. One was called the Rio Boa Vista. We gradually then rose to 2,750 ft. on another flat tableland to the east of the Serra de Callos, with its sides eroded in two distinct terraces, the higher one being almost a straight wall from two-thirds up the side of the range. In the lower portion a number of rounded mounds were to be observed, which, with a stretch of the imagination and for the sake of comparison, resembled, perhaps, elephants' heads.

North-east of the Serra stood a thickly-wooded, detached mound, while to the north as we went along there was displayed before us a magnificent view of the flat valley into which we were about to descend.

Where the country was wooded many trees and plants were to be found, useful for their tanning, medicinal, oliferous or lactiferous qualities: such as the Dedal, a yellowish-leafed shrub from which a yellow dye can be obtained; the tall thin Arariba Amarelho, or Amarelhino (_Centrolobium robustum_), a great number of Lobelia trees, with their elongated light green leaves and clean barked stems, which eject, from incisions, a caustic and poisonous juice. The tallest of all the trees in that region was perhaps the Jacaranda, with its tiny leaves.... There were four kinds of Jacaranda--the Jacaranda _cabiuna_, _rosa_, _tan_ and _violeta_, technically known as _Dalbergia nigra_, _Machaerium incorruptibile_, _Machaerium cencopterum_, _Machaerium Alemanni_, Benth. The three latter have a specific gravity higher than that of most woods in Brazil, except the Pao de ferro (_Caesalpina ferrea_), the very plentiful Barbatimao (_Stryphnodendron barbatimao_), a mimosa-like tree, and the Vinhatico amarello (_Echyrosperum Balthazarii_), the last of which has the highest specific gravity of all.

Then we found plenty of Sambaiba, an excellent wood, and Imuliana, a wood of great resistance, much used in certain parts of Brazil for constructing fences.

A peculiar tree with concave leaves shaped like a cup was locally called Ariticun or Articun. It produced a large fruit, quite good to eat.

Much botanical variety was indeed everywhere around us.... There was the _terra da folha miuta_, which, as its name tells, possessed minute shiny leaves; then the tall Faveiro (_Pterodon p.u.b.escens_), producing a bean, and having dark leaves not unlike those of mimosas. Then, many were the kinds of acacias we noticed as we went along.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Picturesque Ox-carts of Goyaz.]

Still descending, we arrived at the little town of Caldas de Goyaz--so called because there were three hot springs of water of different temperatures. I visited the three springs. The water tasted slightly of iron, was beautifully clear and quite good to drink. Two springs were found in a depression some 150 ft. lower than the village--viz., at an elevation of 2,450 ft., whereas the village itself was at 2,600 ft. These two springs were only 20 ft. away from a stream of cold water. A short distance from the cold stream was another stream of hot water emerging from the rocks.

Small rectangular tanks had been made at the two higher springs, which were said to possess wonderful curing qualities for eczema and other cutaneous troubles; also for rheumatism and blood complaints of all kinds. Whether those waters were really beneficial or not, it was not possible to ascertain on a pa.s.sing visit. I drank some of the water and it did me no harm, so if it does no good neither is it injurious.

The village of Caldas showed signs of having seen better days. It was clean-looking, but like all other villages of Goyaz it was dreary in the extreme. There were only a few houses in the place, and each had a shop; all the shops sold similar articles--nickel-plated revolvers, spurs and daggers, calicoes, gaudy wearing-apparel, perfumery, and so on.

For any one interested in the study of the effects of erosion on a gigantic scale, no more suitable country could be found than Central Brazil. Here again to the E.N.E. of Caldas stood the Serra do Sappe. In this case it was not a tableland, like the Serra de Caldas, but purely a hill range. The plateau of Serra de Caldas, I was told, measured on its summit 12 kil. by 18 kil.

Again, after leaving Caldas, we went through most wonderful grazing ground to the north-east and east of our route at the foot of the Serra do Sappe. We had descended to the Rio Lagiadi, 2,480 ft. above the sea level, which flowed into the Pirapitinga River (a tributary of the Corumba). Once more did we admire that evening the remarkable effect of solar radiation, this time a double radiation with one centre--the sun--to the west, and a second centre, at a point diametrically opposite, to the east. Those radiations, with a gradually expanded width, rose to the highest point of the celestial vault, where they met. The effect was gorgeous indeed, and gave the observer the impression of being enclosed in the immeasurable interior of an amazingly beautiful sea-sh.e.l.l turned inside out.

We arrived in the evening at the farm of Laza (elev. 2,450 ft.), where we had to abandon the wounded mule, and also another which, on coming down a steep incline, had badly injured its fore leg.

The pack-saddles used in the interior of Brazil (Minas Geraes, Goyaz and Matto Grosso) were the most impracticable, torturing arrangements I have ever had to use on my travels. The natives swore by them--it was sufficient for anything to be absurdly unpractical for them to do so. It only led, as it did with me at first, to continuous unpleasantness, wearying discussions and eventual failure if one tried to diverge from the local habits, or attempted to eradicate deeply-rooted ideas.

Let me describe a typical Brazilian pack-saddle. It weighed, with its inseparable protecting hide, well over 90 lbs. It was bulky and c.u.mbersome, most difficult to lift and set right on the animal's back. It consisted of two great parallel, clumsily-carved, heavy U-shaped pieces of wood supported upright on two enormous pads, at least double the size and thickness necessary. The breast and tail pieces were of extra thick leather of great width, which had the double disadvantage of being heavy and of producing bad sores by their constant friction and hard, saw-like, cutting edges. Then the saddle allowed the loads to hang much too low on the sides of the animal's body. This naturally saved trouble and effort to the men who packed the animals. Two of them simply lifted the loads simultaneously on the two sides and hooked them to the saddle by means of adjusted loops of leather or rope. Then came the difficulty of keeping the loads in position, so that they would not shift back and forth. This was done by pa.s.sing a leather thong over all and under the animal's belly, which was then squeezed beyond all measure. Result of this: continuous trouble to pack rebellious animals, who knew what was coming; painful marching for the animals, who thus had difficulty in breathing, and therefore extra long marches, almost an impossibility without much injury to them. We will not speak of sore backs, sore sides, sore chests, and sore tail root--which was a matter of course after a pack animal had borne for a few hours one of those torturing arrangements on its back.

I had tried to adopt lighter saddles of a more practical design, such as I had used on other expeditions; but as this involved a different method altogether of packing the animals, it led to much derision, unpleasantness, and refusal to do the work except in their own stupid way, so that in order to save time, expense and trouble I had to conform, much against my will, to the Brazilian method. It was an impossibility to induce a Brazilian of the interior to agree that any other way of doing anything was better or even as good as his own.

A painful phase of human existence, as the country became more and more spa.r.s.ely inhabited, was the number, relative to the population, of cases of s.e.xual insanity, due naturally to the great difficulty of intercourse.

We will not refer to s.e.xual vices--extremely common--which reduced the few inhabitants to a state of absolute idiocy. Thus at Laza farm there were only three women and no men. They were all of a certain age, and for many many years had been there alone, and had not seen a man. They had become absolutely insane, and it required no little tact to prevent a catastrophe. One--a repulsive, toothless black woman, formerly a slave--was in such an excited state of mind that I was really glad when I saw my troop of animals started on the march early the next morning.

On April 6th we were still on the north side of the Serra de Caldas, at the northernmost point of which flowed a _ribero_, or great river (elev.

2,450 ft.). Most beautiful grazing land spread to the north of us, enormous stretches of undulating country verdant with delicious gra.s.s.

The Sappe Mountains were still visible in the distance.

Marching through enchanting country--almost level, or merely rising or descending a few feet--with a magnificent view of distant mountains to our right and of low flat plains and far-away tablelands to our left, we arrived, after a morning's march of 36 kil., at the fazenda of Pouso Alto (elev. 2,600 ft.).

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Home in Central Brazil.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Clever Automatic Pounding Machine.]

Outwardly Pouso Alto was by far the neatest-looking fazenda we had yet seen since leaving Araguary, but on entering the house the floor was a ma.s.s of dirt. Fowls were running to and fro all over the rooms. A rough table of Portuguese origin, a couple of benches so dirty that one did not dare to sit on them, some roughly made bedsteads, miserable and filthy--but no washstands or basins, no articles of necessity were anywhere to be observed or found. The mattresses--if one can elevate them to the dignity of such a name: they were mere bags filled with anything that had been found handy, such as the leaves and stalks of Indian-corn, wool and dried gra.s.s--were rolled up in the daytime. Only one bed was still made up. On it a cackling hen was busy laying an egg. That egg--a very good egg--was triumphantly served to me for breakfast.

The walls of nearly all the farmhouses in the southern part of the Province of Goyaz were made of wooden lattice work, the square cavities formed by the cross sticks being filled in and the whole plastered over with mud, which eventually became hard when dry. Near the foundations the walls were strengthened with mud bricks half baked.

Evidently, as was the case with this particular old house, in former days, when Goyaz was more prosperous than it is now, in the time of the Emperor, most of the houses were whitewashed--a luxury which in these days of misery the farmers can no longer indulge in. The doors and windows were rambling, though the frames of them were generally solidly made, but one never saw a pane of gla.s.s in any window anywhere in the country. At night the people barricaded themselves tight into their rooms and let no air in. It was partly due to fear of attack. Whenever a building was whitewashed one invariably saw on it the impression of its owner's spread hand in outline, or else his signature in blue paint. The favourite colours in house decoration--where any were noticeable--were blue and a dirty cinnabar red.

Dogs were numerous everywhere, and, like their masters, were indolent and sleepy.

In the afternoon of that same day we travelled some 13 kil. more, on practically level ground intersected by a couple of streamlets. Marching through thinly wooded country, gra.s.sy here and there, one began to notice a variation in the scenery, which was gradually becoming more tropical in appearance. Palm trees, especially burity (_Mauritia vinifera_ M.), in single specimens, or in groups, could be seen in the great stretches of good grazing country which appeared on both sides of our course.

We spent the night at the fazenda of Ritiro Alegre (elev. 2,450 ft.), which words translated mean "the merry rest"--a most undeserved name, I can a.s.sure you, for neither merriment nor rest was to be obtained there.