With the World's Great Travellers Volume Ii Part 13

Near the Praia de Tamandua we acquainted ourselves with all the particulars respecting the collection and preparation of the caoutchouc at the cottage of a Bolivian seringueiro, Don Domingo Leigue. As I have already stated, the Siphonia grows, or at least thrives, only on a soil wherein its stem is annually submerged by the floods to the height of three feet or more. The best ground for it, therefore, is the _igapo_, the lowest and most recent deposit of the river; and there, in the immediate vicinity of the seringaes, may be seen the low thatches of the gatherers' huts, wretched hovels mostly, rendered tenantable during the inundations by the device of raising the floors on wooden piles of seven feet height, in which the canoe, the seringueiro's indispensable horse, also finds a protected harbor. Unenviable truly must be the life of the happy proprietor, who has nothing to do in the seringal during the wet season, and who then has ample leisure to calculate exactly the intervals between his fits of ague, and to let himself be devoured by _carapanas_, _piums_, _motucas_, and _mucuims_; under which euphonious names are known some of the most terrible of insect pests.

Narrow paths lead from the cottage, through the dense underwood, to each separate tree; and, as soon as the dry season sets in, the inmate of the palace just described betakes himself with his hatchet into the seringal, to cut little holes in the bark. The milk-white sap immediately begins to exude into pieces of bamboo tied below, over little clay cups set under the gashes to prevent their trickling down the stems. The collector travels thus from trunk to trunk; and, to facilitate operations, on his return visit he pours the contents of the bamboos into a large calabash provided with liana straps, which he empties at home into one of those large turtle-sh.e.l.ls so auxiliary to housekeeping in these regions, serving as they do for troughs, basins, etc.

Without any delay he sets about the smoking process, as the resinous parts will separate after a while, and the quality of the rubber so become inferior. An earthen jar, without bottom and with a narrow neck, is set by way of chimney over a fire of dry urucury, or uaua.s.su palm-nuts, whose smoke alone, strange to say, has the effect of instantly coagulating the caoutchouc sap, which, in this state, greatly resembles rich cow's milk. The workman, sitting beside this "chimney,"

through which roll dense clouds of a smothering white smoke, from a small calabash pours a little of the milk on a sort of light wooden shovel, always careful, by proper management of the latter, to distribute it evenly over the surface. Thrusting the shovel into the thick smoke over the opening of the jar, he turns it several times to and fro with great rapidity, when the milk is seen to consolidate and to take a grayish-yellow tinge.

Thus he puts layer upon layer, until at last the caoutchouc on both sides of the wood has reached about an inch in thickness, when he thinks the "plancha" ready. Cutting it on one side, he takes it off the shovel and suspends it in the sun to dry, as there is always some water between the several layers, which should, if possible, evaporate. A good workman is thus able to prepare five or six pounds of solid seringa in an hour.

The plancha, from its initial color of a clear silver-gray, turns shortly into a yellow, and finally becomes the well-known dark brown of the rubber, such as it is exported.

The more uniform, the denser and freer of bubbles, the whole ma.s.s is found to be, the better is its quality and the higher the price it fetches. Almost double the value is obtained for the first-rate article over that of the most inferior quality, the so-called sernamby or cabeca de negro (negro's head); which is nothing but the drops collected at the foot of the trees, with the remains of the milk sc.r.a.ped out of the bottoms of the calabashes. The rubber of India is said to be much like this sernamby, and, like it, to be mixed with sand and small pieces of bark. By way of testing the quality, every plancha is cut through again at Para; by which means discovery is made, not only of the bubbles, but also of any adulteration that might be effected with the milk of the mangaba, that fine plant with dark glossy leaves, now found so often in European saloons under the erroneous name of rubber-plant....

The wild cacao, with its large lancet-shaped hanging leaves, and its cuc.u.mber-like fruit springing directly from the stem, is one of the characteristic features of the _virgem_ [or solid soil] on which it often forms dense thickets, which are all the more impenetrable that the boughs--exhibiting frequently at the same time the small reddish flowers and the ripe golden fruit, in which the seeds lie embedded in a sweet white marrow--bend to the ground and there take root again.

But the india-rubber and the cacao are not the only treasures worth collecting in these forests. Even now the export of the Para nuts, the fruit of the _Bertholletia excelsa_, yields an annual revenue of two hundred thousand dollars; and the copaiba oil and the urucu, the seeds of the _Bixa orellana_, used for dyeing, about one hundred thousand dollars. These sums seem small enough, it is true, but there are perhaps a hundred times those values of the rich-flavored nuts rotting unheeded in the forests, and above a score of other rich oily seeds, at present collected only for the use of the natives, not to mention several resins which yield the finest varnishes, plants giving the most brilliant hues, and others with fibres that would serve not only for the finest weavings, but also for the strongest ropes; besides about forty of the most indispensable drugs, all which might become most valuable articles of export....

Notwithstanding the fertility of tropical vegetation, I doubt whether any other part of the world, in the same lat.i.tude, can offer as great a number of useful plants as does the Amazon Valley; and now, when all-transforming steam is about to open up to us this rich emporium, European industry should take advantage of the hitherto neglected treasures. What might not be done with the fibres, some of which surpa.s.s our hemp and flax in all respects? The curaua, for example, a sort of wild pine-apple, gives a delicate transparent flax of a silky l.u.s.tre, such as is used in the Philippine Islands, on a large scale, it appears. It is sold under the name of _palha_ at Rio de Janeiro. The tuc.u.m and the javary would make excellent ropes, cords, nets, etc., well calculated to resist moisture and rot; and the pia.s.saba, the murity, etc., would readily supply solid brushes, brooms, hammocks, hats, baskets, mats; while the snow-white bast of others would give excellent paper.

The lianas or cipos of these countries are, besides their minor uses, quite indispensable to the half-civilized natives for the construction of their light cottages, taking the place (as they do) of our nails and cramp-irons, beams, posts, and rafters. The whole palm-leaf roof is fastened, and artificially interwoven and intertwined, with tough creepers of nearly an inch thickness....

In the hot lowlands of the Amazon, in the shade of endless forest, there is many an herb of mysterious virtue, as yet known only to wild Indian tribes, while the fame of others has already spread over the ocean. Who has not heard of the _urary_, or _curare_, the quick arrow-poison which, in the hands of clever physiologists and physicians, promises not only to become a valuable drug, but to give us interesting disclosures on the activity of the nerves?

The wondrous tales of former travellers regarding the preparation of this urary have been rectified long ago. The venom of snakes is not used for it, but the juice of the bruised stems and leaves of several kinds of strychnos and apocyneas is simply boiled over a coal fire, mixed with tobacco-juice and capsic.u.m (Spanish pepper), and thickened with the sticky milk of some Euphorbiacea to a hard ma.s.s. This manipulation, moreover, is not undertaken by the old squaws of the tribe, devoting themselves to a painful death thereby, as the old stories ran, but, as there is no danger whatever, by the young wives of the warriors, who look upon it as part of their household duties, or by the men themselves. There are about eight or ten different poisons of similar, but not identical, composition and preparation, of which the urary of the Macusi Indians, and the curare, from Venezuela and New Granada, are considered the most powerful.

This dark-brown, pitchy substance, usually kept in little earthen pots, is lightly spread over the points of the weapons,--their long arrows, their light spears, and the thin wooden shafts, of about a foot long, which they shoot through immense blow-tubes (_sarabacanas_). Immediately upon the diffusion in the blood of the slightest portion of the poison, the limbs, one by one, refuse to work, as if overcome with torpor, while the mind apparently retains its activity until death ensues, which it does in a few minutes' time, from palsy of the lungs. It is strange that only those nerves are affected which regulate the movements depending on our own will, whereas those movements we cannot control--the beating of the heart, for example--continue unaltered to the very last. Experiments made by French physicians upon animals have shown that, if the lungs are artificially kept in activity for several hours, the poison will be rejected by natural means, and no bad consequences will ensue. Of late the princ.i.p.al objection to the employment of the urary in medicine--its unequal strength--has been completely overcome by the effective alkaloid--the curarin--being extracted. This is about twenty times as powerful as the urary, and has been used successfully in the treatment of teta.n.u.s. The Indians shoot birds and monkeys, which they wish to tame, with very weak curare, rousing them from the lethargy which overpowers them with large doses of salt or sugar-juice; and this treatment is said to be very effective, also, in the reduction of their wildness....

The gurana, prepared from the fruit of the _Paullinia sorbilis_, is a hard, chocolate-brown ma.s.s, of a slightly bitter taste, and of no smell whatever. It is usually sold in cylindric pieces of from ten inches to a foot in length, in which the half-bruised almond-like seeds are still distinguishable; the more h.o.m.ogeneous and the harder the ma.s.s, the better is its quality. To render it eatable, or rather drinkable, it is rasped as fine as possible on the rough, bony roof of the mouth of the _Sudis gigas_ (pira-rucu), and mixed with a little sugar and water. A teaspoonful in a cup of warm water is said to be an excellent remedy in slight attacks of ague.

The taste of this beverage, reminding one slightly of almonds, is very palatable; still, it scarcely accounts for the pa.s.sionate liking entertained for it by the inhabitants of the greater part of South America. It must be the stimulating effects of the paullinin it contains (an alkaloid like caffeine and thene) that render it so indispensable to those who have been accustomed to it. All the boats that come lightly freighted with ipecacuanha and deer- or tiger-hides, from Mato Grosso down the Arinos and the Tapajoz, in face of the considerable cataracts and rapids of the latter, take their full loads of guarana at Santarem; and the heavy boats of the Madeira also convey large quant.i.ties of it to Bolivia; for at Cuyaba, as well as at Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Cochabamba, there are many who cannot do without their guarana, for which they often have to pay thirty francs the pound, and who prefer all the rigors of fasting to abstinence from their favorite beverage. On the other hand, the mestizo population on the Amazon, where it is prepared on a large scale by the half-civilized tribes of the Mauhes and Mundurucus and sold at about three francs the pound, are not so pa.s.sionately attached to it; they rather take coffee and a sort of coa.r.s.e chocolate, which they manufacture for themselves.

CANOE- AND CAMP-LIFE ON THE MADEIRA.

FRANZ KELLER.

[To the extract just made from Keller's "Amazon and Madeira Rivers," we add the following, in which an interesting account of camp-life in the forest and river regions of Brazil is given.]

The lower course of the Madeira presents, for more than four hundred and sixty miles, a picture of grand simplicity, and, it must be owned, monotony, which, magnificent as it appears at first, wearies the eye and sickens the heart at last,--a dead calm on an unruffled, mirror-like sheet of water glaring in the sun, and, as far as the eye can reach, two walls of dark green forest, with the dark-blue firmament above them; in the foreground, slender palms and gigantic orchid-covered trunks, with blooming creepers hanging from the wave-worn sh.o.r.e, with its red earthslips, down into the turbid floods. No hill breaks the finely-indented line of the foliage, which everywhere bounds the horizon, only here and there a few palm-covered sheds peep out of the green; and still more rarely do we sight one of their quiet dark inmates. Stately kingfishers looking thoughtfully into the river, white herons standing for hours on one leg, and alligators lying so motionless at the mouth of some rivulet that their jaggy tails and scarcely protruding skulls might easily be taken for some half-sunken trunks, are the only animals to be seen, and certainly they do not increase the liveliness of the scene. Dreary and monotonous as the landscape, the days, too, pa.s.s in unvaried succession.

With the first dawn of day, before the white mist that hides the smooth surface of the river has disappeared with the rays of the rising sun, the day's work begins. The boatswains call their respective crews; the tents are broken up as quickly as possible; the cooking apparatus, the hammocks and hides that served as beds, are taken on board, together with our arms and mathematical instruments, and every one betakes himself to his post. The _pagaias_ (paddles) are dipped into the water, and the prows of our heavy boats turn slowly from the sh.o.r.e to the middle of the stream. Without the loss of a minute, the oars are plied for three or four hours at a steady but rather quick rate, until a spot on sh.o.r.e is discovered easy of access and offering a dry fire-place and some fuel for the preparation of breakfast. If it be on one of the long sand-banks, a roof is made of one of the sails, that rarely serve for anything else; if in the wood, the undergrowth, in the shade of some large tree, is cleared for the reception of our little table and tent-chairs.

The functions of the culinary _chef_ for the white faces, limited to the preparation of a dish of black beans, with some fish or turtle, are simple enough, but, to be appreciated, certainly require the hearty appet.i.te acquired by active life in the open air. The Indians have to cook by turns for their respective boats' crews; their unalterable bill of fare being a pap of flour of Indian corn or mandioca, with fresh or dried fish, or a piece of _jacare_ (alligator).

Most of those who are not busy cooking spend their time preparing new bast shirts, the material for which is found almost everywhere in the neighborhood of our halting-places. Soon the wood is alive with the sound of hatchets and the crack of falling trees; and, even before they are summoned to breakfast, they return with pieces of a silky bast of about four and a half yards long and somewhat less than one and a quarter yard wide. Their implements for shirt-making are of primitive simplicity,--a heavy wooden hammer with notches, called maceta, and a round piece of wood to work upon. Continuously beaten with the maceta, the fibres of the bast become loosened, until the originally hard piece of wood gets soft and flexible, and about double its former breadth.

After it has been washed, wrung out to remove the sap, and dried in the sun, it has the appearance of a coa.r.s.e woollen stuff of a bright whitish-yellow or light brown, disclosing two main layers of wavy fibres held together by smaller filaments. A more easily prepared and better working-garment for a tropical climate is hardly to be found than this, called cascara by the Indians of Bolivia, and turury by those of the Amazon. Its cut is as simple and cla.s.sical as its material. A hole is cut in the middle of a piece about ten feet long, to pa.s.s the head through, and the depending skirt is sewn together on both sides, from below up to the height of the girdle, which usually is a piece of cotton string or liana.

Another branch of industry our Indians were busy at, in their hours of leisure, was the fabrication of straw hats, with the young leaves of a kind of little palm, the same which supplies the excellent hats imported from Ecuador and Peru, and known in Europe under the name of Chile or Panama hats. Dexterity at all sorts of wicker-work seems to be innate to this race; and the prettiest little baskets and the finest mats of colored palm-leaves are to be bought on the Missions of the Mamore at the lowest prices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SOUTH SEA ISLAND]

But all these occupations are left at the call of the first mate, who has the proud t.i.tle of Capitano. The boats' crews crowd round their pots, each one receives his allotted portion in a calabash or a basin of horn, and their spoons of the same material are soon in full activity.

If a jacare has lately been shot, or caught in a _laco_ (sling), every one, after roasting his own piece of it on the spit, proceeds to cut at the large slices of the white meat (which, though in appearance like fish, is as tough as india-rubber) with the satisfaction usually produced by three or four hours of hard rowing on view of anything eatable. One tribe especially, the Canichanas, from the former Mission of San Pedro at the Mamore, think roast caiman the finest eating in the world; while others, the Cayuabas from Exaltacion, and the Mojos from Trinidad, whose palates are somewhat more refined, prefer beef, fish, or turtle to the musk-exhaling saurian. Notably the turtles, which are not found on the Guapore and Mamore (they are not met with above the rapids of the Madeira), are prized by them, though we grew rather tired of them, and no wonder. On the lower Madeira, at our fires, there was almost daily going on the cooking of turtles, of all sizes, from the full-grown one of a yard in length to the smallest of the size of a hand; and in every variety of preparation, too,--whole, and chopped up as for soup; stewed; and roasted in their own sh.e.l.l or on the spit.

Bathing in the river, immediately after meals, is a luxury invariably indulged in by all the Indians; and I never remarked that it was attended by any evil consequences to them.

After a rest of two hours' duration, the cooking utensils, the hammocks, and improvised tents were carried on board again, and the voyage continued. A second halt was made after rowing for two or three hours, when we came in sight of a good place for fishing, such as the mouth of some smaller river, or an extensive mud-bank. Such places were usually recognizable from afar, by the mult.i.tude of snow-white herons and of long caimans, which, finding it out before us, crowded there in peaceful unity, and with similar intentions. The vicinity of the scaly monsters is scarcely heeded by the Indians, who fish and take their bath, laughing and jesting, though somewhat hugging the sh.o.r.e, just as if there were no such thing as the tail or the tooth of the jacare in the world; and, indeed, these creatures are themselves in much greater danger than the red-skins. When the last steak of alligator has been consumed, one of the Canichanas is sure to ask leave to have some fun, and to provide at the same time for their next dinner. Of course the permission is always granted, as the sport keeps up their spirits and spares our provisions. Without loss of time, then, one of them, having carefully fastened a strong loop of raw hide at the end of a long pole, and having dexterously slipped off his bast shirt, creeps slowly through the shallow water, pole and sling in hand, as near as possible to the alligator, which looks on at these preparations with perfect apathy, only now and then betraying a sign of life by a lazy movement of its powerful tail. But it does not take its eyes off the Indian as he crawls nearer and nearer. The fatal sling is at arm's length from its muzzle, and yet it does not see it. As if under the influence of witchcraft, it continues to stare with its large protruding eyes at the bold hunter, who in the next moment has thrown the loop over its head, and suddenly drawn it to with a strong pull. The other Indians, who the while have been cowering motionless on sh.o.r.e, now rush into the water to the help of their companion, and four or five of them land the ugly creature that with all its might struggles to get back into the water, lashing the sand with its tail and showing its long teeth; but a few vigorous blows with an axe on the tail and skull soon render it tame enough. If, instead of dragging back, the alligator were only to rush forward boldly to the attack of the Indians, they would, of a certainty, leave pole and sling and run for their lives; but this bright idea never seems to occur to the uncouth animal, and the strife always ends with its death.

Though there were more than a dozen of them killed during the voyage, I never thought of sending a rifle-bullet through the thick skull of one, except on one occasion, when I was afraid that one of our Canichanas was about to make too close an acquaintance with the hard, jagged tail of an extraordinarily strong monster, which measured full sixteen and a half feet.

Even before the huge spoil is cut up, four musk-glands, placed by twos under its jaw, and on its belly, near the beginning of the tail, must be carefully taken out, to prevent the diffusion, over the whole body, of the penetrating odor of the greasy, brown liquid they contain. These glands, which are about an inch and a half long and as thick as a finger, are carefully tied up and suspended in the sun to dry. Mixed with a little rose-water, their contents serve, as we were told, to perfume the raven-black tresses of the elegant Bolivian ladies at Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Cochabamba, in spite of, or rather by reason of, their strong scent, which gives the headache to all save these strong-nerved senoritas, who love a bull-fight above everything, who know how to roll the cigarrito, and to dance the fandango with matchless grace, but who scarcely are able to write their own names.

After such a pleasant interlude of fishing or hunting, the paddles are plied with renewed vigor until the evening, when sleeping quarters are selected, either on a sand-bank or in the forest. The canoes are moored by strong pia.s.saba ropes in some recess of the bank, where they are protected against drifting trunks; the tents are erected, and preparations ensue for the princ.i.p.al meal. Meanwhile, after the very short interval of twilight usual in the tropics, night almost suddenly throws her dark veil over the valley, and the bright constellations of the southern sky in quiet majesty adorn the firmament.

While we prepare to take astronomical observations, half a dozen large fires are lighted round about, in whose fitful blaze the neighboring forest-trees appear like huge phantoms, looking contemptuously down on us, poor tiny mortals. Our Indians warm themselves in the cheerful glow, smoking, and chatting of the day's adventures, or rather of what are regarded as such,--unusual good or ill luck at fishing and hunting; the casual meeting of some canoe; or the sight of a seringueiro's poor cottage. Work over, they take off the rough cascara, and put on the camiseta, a cotton garment without sleeves, resembling a wide poncho sewn together at the sides, and whose dazzling whiteness is set off by two scarlet stripes along the seams. The ample folds and the simple cut of the garment, which is made by the Indian women of the Missions on very primitive looms, give quite a stately, cla.s.sical appearance to the numerous groups round the fires. Such must have been the aspect presented by the halting-places of those daring seafarers, the Phoenicians, who were the first to call into life an international commerce, and whose light-rigged barques first ventured to distant sh.o.r.es, to bring home the precious amber and the useful tin. Only the dense swarms of mosquitoes, which set in immediately after sunset, remind us rather unpleasantly that we are far off from those happy northern regions, where such a nuisance can hardly be well imagined.

Especially in the dense forest beneath cacao-bushes, or under the close leaf.a.ge of the large figueiras, where no breath of air incommodes those light-winged tormentors, it is quite impossible, for the European at least, to close an eye without the shelter of a mosquiteiro (mosquito-net); and we could but wonder at our Indians, most of whom did without it. After supper they simply spread a hide on the ground, on which, with no covering other than the starry firmament above them, they slept undisturbed till the dawn, only occasionally brushing away, as if by way of diversion, the most obtrusive of the little fiends. The capitanos only, and one or other of the older rowers, allow themselves the luxury of good cotton hammocks, which are also made by their wives in the Missions.

Such, with few variations, was the course of our daily life, until we reached the regions of the rapids, when, of course, the hundred little incidents connected with the dragging of the canoes through narrow, foaming channels, and with carrying the goods and the vessels themselves overland, disturbed the monotony of this rude forest life.

BESIEGED BY PECCARIES.

JAMES W. WELLS.

[It is to "Three Thousand Miles through Brazil, from Rio de Janeiro to Maranho," by James W. Wells, F.R.G.S., that we owe the following exciting example of the perils of a hunter's life in the wilds of the tropics. Mr. Wells and his fellow-travellers, while journeying up the valley of the Sapo, far in interior Brazil, came upon traces of the peccary, an animal which, from its fearlessness, and its habit of moving in troops, is occasionally a very unsafe creature to meet. What followed we shall leave the author to tell.]

We were down in the deep, narrow valley, where the slopes of the table-land surrounded us like a wall, up which there was no visible ascent. The tall, rank gra.s.s was also littered with boulders of sandstone and short, gnarled, and distorted cork-trees; it was a toilsome march for both men and animals, but there, certainly, must be the head-quarters of all the peccaries of the region, for everywhere the ground was furrowed and rooted up, the gra.s.s trodden down in long lanes, the pools of water turbid, from their wallowing, and the place odorous as a rank pigsty; and yet, strange to say, not a pig was to be seen, fortunately for us; for in such an inconvenient place an attack from these vicious animals in the numbers they could evidently collect would have enabled them to take us at great disadvantage.

We pushed on the animals to get out of this pig-set man-trap, and eventually got clear of the labyrinth on the farther side of the last feeder of the main mora.s.s, and, after some difficulty, found an ascent on to the _geraes_, where we made a bee-line to the Sapo across the flats.

During the pa.s.sage of the swamps the Don said,--

"Ah! Senhor Doctor, what a shame to leave such a lovely place; if you and I were only here to-night, what fun we would have with the peccaries; but, patience, they will make us a visit to-night, because of the trail of the dogs."

But neither time nor place would permit of carrying out the Don's desires, as there was neither water nor pasture for the animals. The Don's remark about the peccaries paying us a visit is owing to a popular belief that these animals, when in considerable numbers, will follow a dog's trail for many miles, and attack and kill him. In fact, it is customary with the hunters to imitate the barking of a dog to attract the attention of the pigs, and induce them to collect together and make an attack; when, the hunters being safely ensconced in trees, the game is perfectly safe, as the men have only to shoot what they require.

The ground traversed that afternoon was not so free from bush as we had hitherto found, being in many places thickly covered with dense cerrado (abounding in immense quant.i.ties of the india-rubber-producing Mangaba-tree), where progress was very slow and difficult, and required the free use of our wood-knives. After a long and wearisome march, we reached the valley of the Sapo again, quite eight miles from the peccaries' haunt.

I found the river valley presented much the same characteristics as we had found lower down. For the purposes of a railway it is admirable; the gradients are practically level, and the only works of art required would be in crossing the many _burity_ swamps that intersect the route, and these, although numerous, are narrow.

Even the Rio Sapo itself could doubtless be made into a good ca.n.a.l, in the absence of a railway, for there is plenty of water, and the ground offers great facilities for straightening its course.

Especial care was taken in preparing the camp that night. The Don and Jose superintended the operation of constructing the fort, the sides of which were further protected by spreading over them the hides used for covering the packs of the mules. Bush was also cut to make up and enlarge the defences, and a strong stake was driven into the ground inside the fort for the purpose of securing the dogs in case the peccaries arrived. The camp was made on the borders of a clump of trees, to which we were enabled to sling the hammocks, no one caring to sleep on terra firma that night, but two of the men who were unprovided with hammocks spread their hides on the ground inside the fort.

After dinner, of course, peccaries formed the sole subject of conversation, but hour after hour went by, yet no signs of their presence appeared; and, after arranging the watches for the night, we turned in, and with the fatigues of the day I was soon asleep.