Across Unknown South America Part 60

As my hat by that time had lost most of its brim, and the top of it had got loose and was moving up and down in the breeze, I thought I would not lose the opportunity of getting new headgear. So the purchase was made there and then, and thus fashionably attired I started once more down stream.

We pa.s.sed on the way most impressive sand banks and beaches--500, 700, and one 1,500 m. long. The river in some spots was 1,000 m. wide. A great island 4,000 m. in length--Bertino Miranda Island--was then pa.s.sed, with a beautiful spit of sand 15 ft. high at its southern end. Hillocks were visible first on the left bank, then on the right. Other elongated sand acc.u.mulations of great length were found beyond the big island, one a huge tail of sand extending towards the north for 1,000 m. Beyond those acc.u.mulations the river was not less than 1500 m. across, and there an immense beach of really extraordinary beauty ran on the right side for a length of 1 kil.

On that beach we halted for lunch. In the afternoon we continued, between banks on either side of alluvial formation, princ.i.p.ally silts and clay, light grey in colour or white. In fact, the soil in the section directly below the higher terrace of the great central plateau of Matto Grosso, was formed by extensive alluvial acc.u.mulations which had made an immense terrace extending right across all Central Brazil from west to east, roughly speaking from the Madeira River to the Araguaya and beyond.

After we had gone some 5 kil. in a straight line from our camp to 10 b.m., we perceived a headland with a hill upon it 200 ft. high. We had been greatly troubled in the afternoon for the last two days by heavy showers of rain and gusts of a north-westerly wind. Once or twice we got entangled in channels among the many islands, and had to retrace our course, but we went on until late in the evening, my men believing firmly that we had now reached civilization again and that the journey would be over in a few days. I did not care to disillusion them.

Late at night we camped on a magnificent beach, 1,000 m. long, at the end of Araujo Island, 1,200 m. in length.

We had gone that day, August 19th, 46 kil. 500 m.

My men hung their hammocks on the edge of the forest. That camp was extremely damp and unhealthy. When we woke up the next morning all my followers were attacked by fever and were shivering with cold.

We left at 7.30 a.m. under a limpid sky of gorgeous cobalt blue. We pa.s.sed two islands--one 700 m. long (Leda Island), the other 2,000 m.

(Leander Island). When we had gone but 11,500 m. we arrived at one of the most beautiful bits of river scenery I have ever gazed upon--the spot where the immense S. Manoel River or Tres Barras or Paranatinga met the Arinos-Juruena. The latter river at that spot described a sharp turn from 20 b.m. to 320 b.m. We perceived a range of hills before us to the north. Close to the bank gradually appeared a large shed with a clearing near it on a high headland some 200 ft. above the level of the river where the stream turned. On the left bank, before we arrived at the meeting-place of those two giant streams, we found a tributary, the Bararati, 30 m. broad.

The S. Manoel River showed in its centre an elongated island stretching in an E.N.E. direction. Where the Arinos-Juruena met the S. Manoel it was 1,000 m. wide, the S. Manoel being 800 m. wide at the point of junction.

No sooner had we turned to 320 b.m. than we perceived on our left the _collectoria_ of S. Manoel, with two or three neat buildings. Several astonished people rushed down to the water as they saw the canoe approaching. When I landed the Brazilian official in charge of that place and his a.s.sistants embraced me tenderly and took me inside their house.

When I told them how we had come down the river, tears streamed down their cheeks, so horrified were they.

"Did you come in that log of wood?" said the collector, pointing to my canoe. I said I had. "Good gracious me!" he exclaimed. "I will not let you go another yard in that dangerous conveyance. I will confiscate it, as I need a trough for my pigs and it will just do for that purpose, and not for navigating a dangerous river like this. If you want to go on by river I will supply you with a good boat."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Huge Canoe being taken through a Small Artificial Ca.n.a.l made in the Rocks by the Author and his Men.]

That was the last time I put my foot inside my canoe. I removed for good the British flag which had flown daily at her stern, and it gave me quite a _serrement de coeur_ when I patted the poor canoe on her nose and said good-bye to her for ever. Notwithstanding her miserable appearance she had done really remarkable work.

CHAPTER XVII

A Fiscal Agency--Former Atrocities--The Apiacar Indians--Plentiful Rubber--Unexploited Regions--Precious Fossils thrown away by Author's Followers--A Terrific Storm--Author's Canoe dashed to Pieces--The Mount S. Benedicto

THE State of Matto Grosso had recently established a fiscal agency at the junction of the two rivers in order to collect the tax on the rubber exported from that region. The Fiscal Agent, Mr. Jose Sotero Barretto, and his a.s.sistant, Mr. Julio Vieira Nery, were intelligent and polished gentlemen. Their predecessor was not like them. His barbarity, not only to the Apiacar Indians but also to the Brazilians in his employ, was almost incredible. For no reason whatever he killed men right and left, until one day as he was getting out of his canoe one of his men shot him in the back.

So much has been said of late of atrocities in the Putumayo Region that perhaps one may be allowed to say that the Putumayo Region is not the only place where atrocities have occurred. To any one not acquainted with those regions it is difficult to understand why those atrocities take place at all. Curiously enough, they are due to a large extent to medicine. Those regions are all extremely malarial. The people who are ordered there are afraid of being infected long before they start on their journey. They begin taking preventive quinine and a.r.s.enic, which renders them most irritable and ill-tempered; the solitude preys upon them, and they add to the poisoning from medicine the evil effects of excessive drinking. Add again to this that few men can manage to be brave for a long period of time, and that the brain gradually becomes unbalanced, and you have the reason why murders are committed wholesale in a stupid effort chiefly to preserve oneself.

The Apiacar Indians, I was told, were formerly much more numerous in that region than at present. Most of them had been killed off, and their women stolen. When Mr. Barretto arrived at the _collectoria_ he had great trouble in persuading the Indians to come near him; but he has been so extremely kind to them that now the entire tribe--some twenty people--have established themselves at the _collectoria_ itself, where they are given work to do as police, rubber collectors, and agriculturists combined. Mr. Barretto and his a.s.sistant were much respected and loved by the natives. Unlike his predecessor, he treated them with the greatest consideration and generosity.

Mr. Barretto furnished me with an interesting table showing the amount of production and export of rubber from that district for the year 1910.

From this table it appears that from May 3rd to December 31st 30,356 kil.

of the finest quality rubber, 10,153 kil. of _sernamby_ (or sc.r.a.p rubber), 4,858 kil. of _caoutchouc_, and 30,655 kil. of _sernamby caoutchouc_--altogether a total of 76,022 kil.--pa.s.sed through the _collectoria_ on the Matto Grosso side, which does not include the opposite side of the river, belonging to the Province of Para, where another _collectoria_ has been established. That quant.i.ty of rubber had been collected by some eighty people, all told, including the local Indians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mundurucu Indians.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mundurucu Indians.]

It was impossible to get labour up that river. The few _seringueiros_, chiefly negroes who were there in absolute slavery, had been led and established by their masters up the river, with no chance of getting away. Their masters came, of course, every year to bring down the rubber that had been collected. Twenty times the quant.i.ty could easily be brought down to the coast if labour were obtainable. Not only was the Juruena River itself almost absolutely untouched commercially--as we have seen, we did not meet a soul during the fifty days we navigated it--but even important tributaries close to S. Manoel, such as the Euphrasia, the So Thome, the So Florencio, the Misericordia, and others, were absolutely desert regions, although the quant.i.ty of rubber to be found along those streams must be immense. The difficulty of transport, even on the Tapajoz--from the junction of the two rivers the Juruena took the name of Tapajoz River--was very great, although the many rapids there encountered were mere child's play in comparison with those we had met with up above. In them, nevertheless, many lives were lost and many valuable cargoes disappeared for ever yearly. The rubber itself was not always lost when boats were wrecked, as rubber floats, and some of it was generally recovered. The expense of a journey up that river was enormous; it took forty to sixty days from the mouth of the Tapajoz to reach the _collectoria_ of S. Manoel. Thus, on an average the cost of freight on each kilo (about 2 lb.) of rubber between those two points alone was not less than sevenpence or eightpence.

As the River Tapajoz is extremely tortuous and troublesome, I think that some day, in order to exploit that region fully, it will be found necessary to cut a road through the forest from S. Manoel to one of the tributaries of the Madeira, such as the River Secundury-Canuma, from which the rubber could be taken down to the Amazon in a few days.

From the point of junction of the River Tres Barras or S. Manoel and the Juruena, the river was fairly well known. It was partly in order to ascertain whether the project of the road from S. Manoel to the Madeira were feasible, that I decided to leave the river and cross the forest due west as far as the Madeira River.

I spent two or three most delightful days enjoying the generous hospitality of Mr. Barretto. I was able to purchase from him a quant.i.ty of provisions, enough to last us some three months, and consisting of tinned food, rice, beans, _farinha_, sugar, coffee, and dried meat.

Mr. Barretto kindly arranged to send his a.s.sistant, Mr. Julio Nery, and three Apiacar Indians in order to help me along during the first two or three days of our journey into the forest.

As I should be travelling on foot from that point across virgin forest, and we should have to carry whatever baggage we had, it was necessary for me to abandon all the things which were not of absolute importance, so as to make the loads as light as possible.

I left behind at S. Manoel a tent, some of my rifles, a quant.i.ty of cartridges, etc., the only articles I took along with me besides provisions being my cameras, instruments, the photographic plates already exposed, with some two hundred plates for further work, and the geological and botanical collections, which by that time had got to be valuable.

As I was unpacking the different cases in order to sort out the baggage, I came to the box where I expected to find the precious fossil human skull and the vertebrae I had discovered in Matto Grosso. To my horror the fossils were to be found nowhere. I asked Alcides and the other men, and pressed them for an answer. I received a terrible blow indeed when they confessed that nearly a month before, one night while I was asleep, they had taken the valuable possessions and had flung them into the river.

Their excuse was that the loads were heavy enough in carting baggage along the rapids, and they would not be burdened with what they called "stupid stones."

This last bit of infamy turned me so much against my men that I could not bear the sight of them. It will be easily understood that when you go to such great expense and risk as I did in obtaining valuable material, and had obtained it, to be deprived of it through the ignorance and meanness of one's own men, who were treated with the greatest generosity from beginning to end, was certainly most exasperating. In a half-hearted way I packed up all the other things and made ready to continue the journey.

The contempt I had for my men from that day, nevertheless, made it quite painful to me to be in their company. At S. Manoel the men gave me no end of trouble. Benedicto refused to go on any longer. The other men wanted to halt there for a month in order to recuperate their strength. Filippe the negro was drunk, and slept all the time we were there.

I know too well that on expeditions it is fatal to halt anywhere; therefore I was anxious to push on at once. The night before our departure Mr. Barretto gave a grand dinner-party in my honour, long speeches being read out by him and his a.s.sistant, when we sat down on rough wooden benches and packing-cases to a most elaborate meal of fried fish, grilled fish, boiled fish, tortoise eggs--quant.i.ties of them--stewed pork and roast pork. A whole sucking-pig adorned the table.

The greatest happiness reigned that night at table, and I owe a deep debt of grat.i.tude to Mr. Barretto for his exquisite kindness during the two or three days I was his guest. My men were also asked to the banquet, and had a good fill. But I felt extremely sad, quite broken-hearted, over the loss of the fossils, and I could really enjoy nothing notwithstanding outward appearances.

After dinner, when my men had retired, Mr. Barretto and his a.s.sistant expressed great surprise at my not having been murdered by my followers before then. They said that in their whole experience they had never come across such impossible creatures. They could not understand how the Governor of Goyaz could possibly let me start in such company. They seemed most anxious for me, as some of my men had evidently, while drunk, spoken at the _collectoria_ and said things which had greatly upset and frightened the fiscal agent.

Three days after my arrival in S. Manoel I was ready to depart, having conceived a plan to go some 60 kil. farther by river to a point from where I would strike due west across the forest as far as the Madeira River. I was just about to go on board the boat placed at my disposal by Mr. Barretto, when a terrific storm broke out, with lightning and thunder, and a howling wind which blew with fury, raising high waves in the river--very wide at that point. It was a wonderful spectacle, with the river in commotion and the dazzling flashes of lightning across the inky sky. Amidst it I saw my faithful canoe being dashed mercilessly by the waves time after time against some sharp rocks, until she broke in two and foundered. I was sorry to see her disappear, for she had served me well.

When after a couple of hours the storm cleared, I took my departure, on August 24th. During my stay at S. Manoel I had taken observations for lat.i.tude (7 16'9 S.), longitude (58 34' W.), and elevation (601 ft.

a.s.l. on the river, 721 ft. at the _collectoria_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Author taking Astronomical Observations on a Sandy Beach of the River Arinos-Juruena.]

Just across the river, at the mouth of the Tres Barras, was the _collectoria_ for the State of Para. The Para _seringueiros_ worked on the Rio Tres Barras and its tributaries on its right side--that is to say, the Annipiri, the Igarape Preto, the Cururu, and another (nameless) stream. There were, perhaps, altogether some eighty or a hundred _seringueiros_, all told, working in that immense region on the Para side. In the year 1910, 90,000 kil. of rubber were collected by those few _seringueiros_, and in the year 1911 a slightly larger amount was sent down the river from that point. The Para Fiscal Agency was only established there on December 11th, 1910. The _collectoria_ was situated in a most beautiful spot on a high point overlooking the mouth of the Tres Barras, and directly facing the Juruena-Arinos. On the Juruena previous to reaching S. Manoel on the left side was a stream in which gold was to be found.

Amid the affectionate farewells of Mr. Barretto I left S. Manoel in a beautiful boat belonging to the fiscal agent. The effects of light on the water were wonderful after the storm. The river, immensely wide, flowed in a N.N.W. direction, then due north in great straight stretches from 2 to 4 kil. in length. As we had left late in the afternoon we were not able to go far. We pa.s.sed some beautiful islands, one particularly of immense length, with an extensive sandy beach at its southern end. After going some 18 kil. we came to a great barrier of rocks extending across the river from south-west to north-east. Some distance below those rocks a great sand-bank spread half-way across the stream.

We halted for the night at the _fazenda_ of Colonel Gregorio, a _seringueiro_ from whom I expected to get an Indian who knew the forest well and who could be of some a.s.sistance to me in going across it. The house of Col. Gregorio--a mere big shed--was a regular armoury, a great many rifles of all ages, sizes, and shapes adorning the walls; then there were fishing spears and harpoons, vicious-looking knives and axes. In the princ.i.p.al room was a large altar with a carved figure of the Virgin standing with joined hands before lighted candles and a bottle of green peppermint. The latter was not an offering to the sacred image, but it was placed on the revered spot so that none of Gregorio's men should touch it. Enormous b.a.l.l.s of rubber filled the greater portion of the floor, waiting to be taken down the river.

With great trouble the Indian--a man called Miguel--was induced to accompany me; also a young boy, who, at a salary of 15_s._ a day, agreed to act as carrier.

It was not until late in the afternoon on August 25th that we left the _fazenda_ in order to proceed down the stream. We pa.s.sed the tributary river Roncador on the left side, with its beautiful high waterfall a short distance before it enters the Tapajoz. We came soon afterwards to the island of S. Benedicto, south of which on the left bank was the hill of the Veado, 120 ft. high. Directly in front of the island, also on the left bank, was the Mount of S. Benedicto, where legends say an image of that saint exists carved out by nature in the high rocky cliff.

As we pa.s.sed under the hill our crew fired several volleys in honour of the saint; then we landed and I climbed up to go and see the wonderful image. Many candles had been burnt on a platform of rock on the cliff side, and the sailors who came up with me brought a new supply of stearine and set them ablaze on that natural altar. The men pointed out to me the figure of the saint, but with all the best intentions in the world I could see no resemblance whatever to a human being.

"There it is! there it is!" they shouted, as I twisted my head one way and the other to see if I could find a point of view from which I could see the saint. The men knelt down and prayed fervently for some minutes, as they believed it was necessary to pay these signs of respect in order to ensure a good journey down the river. Some went as far as to tear off pieces of their garments and leave them on the rocky platform as offerings.

The eastern face of the S. Benedicto Mount was a vertical wall 200 ft.

high in horizontal strata of a deep grey colour, and some 300 m. in length along the river.

We had wasted so much time, and the men rowed so badly, that we made poor progress. We only went 21 kil. that day. We halted for the night near a _seringueiro's_ hut at the small rapid of Meia Carga, or Half-charge Rapid, because at low water the boats have to be half unloaded in order to get over that spot.