Through the Brazilian Wilderness
by
Theodore Roosevelt
Part 4 out of 6
But pioneering in the wilderness is grim work for both man and beast.
Continually, as we journeyed onward, under the pitiless glare of the
sun or through blinding torrents of rain, we passed desolate little
graves by the roadside. They marked the last resting places of men who
had died by fever, or dysentery, or Nhambiquara arrows. We raised our
hats as our mules plodded slowly by through the sand. On each grave
was a frail wooden cross, and this and the paling round about were
already stained by the weather as gray as the tree trunks of the
stunted forest that stretched endlessly on every side.
The skeletons of mules and oxen were frequent along the road. Now and
then we came across a mule or ox which had been abandoned by Captain
Amilcar's party, ahead of us. The animal had been left with the hope
that when night came it would follow along the trail to water.
Sometimes it did so. Sometimes we found it dead, or standing
motionless waiting for death. From time to time we had to leave behind
one of our own mules.
It was not always easy to recognize what pasturage the mules would
accept as good. One afternoon we pitched camp by a tiny rivulet, in
the midst of the scrubby upland forest; a camp, by the way, where the
piums, the small, biting flies, were a torment during the hours of
daylight, while after dark their places were more than taken by the
diminutive gnats which the Brazilians expressively term "polvora," or
powder, and which get through the smallest meshes of a mosquito-net.
The feed was so scanty, and the cover so dense, at this spot that I
thought we would have great difficulty in gathering the mules next
morning. But we did not. A few hours later, in the afternoon, we
camped by a beautiful open meadow; on one side ran a rapid brook, with
a waterfall eight feet high, under which we bathed and swam. Here the
feed looked so good that we all expressed pleasure. But the mules did
not like it, and after nightfall they hiked back on the trail, and it
was a long and arduous work to gather them next morning.
I have touched above on the insect pests. Men unused to the South
American wilderness speak with awe of the danger therein from jaguars,
crocodiles, and poisonous snakes. In reality, the danger from these
sources is trivial, much less than the danger of being run down by an
automobile at home. But at times the torment of insect plagues can
hardly be exaggerated. There are many different species of mosquitoes,
some of them bearers of disease. There are many different kinds of
small, biting flies and gnats, loosely grouped together under various
titles. The ones more especially called piums by my companions were
somewhat like our northern black flies. They gorged themselves with
blood. At the moment their bites did not hurt, but they left an
itching scar. Head-nets and gloves are a protection, but are not very
comfortable in stifling hot weather. It is impossible to sleep without
mosquito-biers. When settlers of the right type come into a new land
they speedily learn to take the measures necessary to minimize the
annoyance caused by all these pests. Those that are winged have plenty
of kinsfolk in so much of the northern continent as has not yet been
subdued by man. But the most noxious of the South American ants have,
thank heaven, no representatives in North America. At the camp of the
piums a column of the carnivorous foraging ants made its appearance
before nightfall, and for a time we feared it might put us out of our
tents, for it went straight through camp, between the kitchen-tent and
our own sleeping tents. However, the column turned neither to the
right nor the left, streaming uninterruptedly past for several hours,
and doing no damage except to the legs of any incautious man who
walked near it.
On the afternoon of February 15 we reached Campos Novos. This place
was utterly unlike the country we had been traversing. It was a large
basin, several miles across, traversed by several brooks. The brooks
ran in deep swampy valleys, occupied by a matted growth of tall
tropical forest. Between them the ground rose in bold hills, bare of
forest and covered with grass, on which our jaded animals fed eagerly.
On one of these rounded hills a number of buildings were ranged in a
quadrangle, for the pasturage at this spot is so good that it is
permanently occupied. There were milch cows, and we got delicious
fresh milk; and there were goats, pigs, turkeys, and chickens. Most of
the buildings were made of upright poles with roofs of palm thatch.
One or two were of native brick, plastered with mud, and before these
there was an enclosure with a few ragged palms, and some pineapple
plants. Here we halted. Our attendants made two kitchens: one was out
in the open air, one was under a shelter of ox-hide. The view over the
surrounding grassy hills, riven by deep wooded valleys, was lovely.
The air was cool and fresh. We were not bothered by insects, although
mosquitoes swarmed in every belt of timber. Yet there has been much
fever at this beautiful and seemingly healthy place. Doubtless when
settlement is sufficiently advanced a remedy will be developed. The
geology of this neighborhood was interesting--Oliveira found fossil
tree-trunks which he believed to be of cretaceous age.
Here we found Amilcar and Mello, who had waited for us with the rear-
guard of their pack-train, and we enjoyed our meeting with the two
fine fellows, than whom no military service of any nation could
produce more efficient men for this kind of difficult and responsible
work. Next morning they mustered their soldiers, muleteers, and pack-
ox men and marched off. Reinisch the taxidermist was with them. We
followed in the late afternoon, camping after a few miles. We left the
oxcart at Campos Novos; from thence on the trail was only for pack-
animals.
In this neighborhood the two naturalists found many birds which we had
not hitherto met. The most conspicuous was a huge oriole, the size of
a small crow, with a naked face, a black-and-red bill, and gaudily
variegated plumage of green, yellow, and chestnut. Very interesting
was the false bellbird, a gray bird with loud, metallic notes. There
was also a tiny soft-tailed woodpecker, no larger than a kinglet; a
queer humming-bird with a slightly flexible bill; and many species of
ant-thrush, tanager, manakin, and tody. Among these unfamiliar forms
was a vireo looking much like our solitary vireo. At one camp Cherrie
collected a dozen perching birds; Miller a beautiful little rail; and
Kermit, with the small Luger belt-rifle, a handsome curassow, nearly
as big as a turkey--out of which, after it had been skinned, the cook
made a delicious canja, the thick Brazilian soup of fowl and rice than
which there is nothing better of its kind. All these birds were new to
the collection--no naturalists had previously worked this region--so
that the afternoon's work represented nine species new to the
collection, six new genera, and a most excellent soup.
Two days after leaving Campos Novos we reached Vilhena, where there is
a telegraph station. We camped once at a small river named by Colonel
Rondon the "Twelfth of October," because he reached it on the day
Columbus discovered America--I had never before known what day it
was!--and once at the foot of a hill which he had named after Lyra,
his companion in the exploration. The two days' march--really one full
day and part of two others--was through beautiful country, and we
enjoyed it thoroughly, although there were occasional driving rain-
storms, when the rain came in almost level sheets and drenched every
one and everything. The country was like that around Campos Novos, and
offered a striking contrast to the level, barren, sandy wastes of the
chapadao, which is a healthy region, where great industrial centres
can arise, but not suited for extensive agriculture as are the lowland
flats. For these forty-eight hours the trail climbed into and out of
steep valleys and broad basins and up and down hills. In the deep
valleys were magnificent woods, in which giant rubber-trees towered,
while the huge leaves of the low-growing pacova, or wild banana, were
conspicuous in the undergrowth. Great azure butterflies flitted
through the open, sunny glades, and the bellbirds, sitting
motionless, uttered their ringing calls from the dark stillness of the
columned groves. The hillsides were grassy pastures or else covered
with low, open forest.
A huge frog, brown above, with a light streak down each side, was
found hiding under some sticks in a damp place in one of the
improvised kitchens; and another frog, with disks on his toes, was
caught on one of the tents. A coral-snake puzzled us. Some coral-
snakes are harmless; others are poisonous, although not aggressive.
The best authorities give an infallible recipe for distinguishing them
by the pattern of the colors, but this particular specimen, although
it corresponded exactly in color pattern with the description of the
poisonous snakes, nevertheless had no poison-fangs that even after the
most minute examination we could discover. Miller and one of the dogs
caught a sariema, a big, long-legged, bustard-like bird, in rather a
curious way. We were on the march, plodding along through as heavy a
tropic downpour as it was our ill fortune to encounter. The sariema,
evidently as drenched and uncomfortable as we were, was hiding under a
bush to avoid the pelting rain. The dog discovered it, and after the
bird valiantly repelled him, Miller was able to seize it. Its stomach
contained about half a pint of grass-hoppers and beetles and young
leaves. At Vilhena there was a tame sariema, much more familiar and at
home than any of the poultry. It was without the least fear of man or
dog. The sariema (like the screamer and the curassow) ought to be
introduced into our barnyards and on our lawns, at any rate in the
Southern States; it is a good-looking, friendly, and attractive bird.
Another bird we met is in some places far more intimate, and
domesticates itself. This is the pretty little honey-creeper. In
Colombia Miller found the honey-creepers habitually coming inside the
houses and hotels at meal-times, hopping about the table, and climbing
into the sugar-bowl.
Along this part of our march there was much of what at a hasty glance
seemed to be volcanic rock; but Oliveira showed me that it was a kind
of conglomerate, with bubbles or hollows in it, made of sand and iron-
bearing earth. He said it was a superficial quaternary deposit formed
by erosion from the cretaceous rocks, and that there were here no
tertiary deposits. He described the geological structure of the lands
through which we had passed as follows: The pantanals were of
Pleistocene age. Along the upper Sepotuba, in the region of the
rapids, there were sandstones, shales, and clays of Permian age. The
rolling country east of this contained eruptive rocks--a porphyritic
disbase, with zeolite, quartz, and agate of Triassic age. With the
chapadao of the Parecis plateau we came to a land of sand and clay,
dotted with lumps of sandstone and pieces of petrified wood; this,
according to Oliveira, is of Mesozoic age, possibly cretaceous and
similar to the South African formation. There are geologists who
consider it as of Permian age.
At Vilhena we were on a watershed which drained into the Gy-Parana,
which itself runs into the Madeira nearly midway between its sources
and its mouth. A little farther along and northward we again came to
streams running ultimately into the Tapajos; and between them, and
close to them, were streamlets which drained into the Duvida and
Ananas, whose courses and outlets were unknown. This point is part of
the divide between the basins of the Madeira and Tapajos. A singular
topographical feature of the Plan Alto, the great interior sandy
plateau of Brazil, is that at its westernmost end the southward
flowing streams, instead of running into the Paraguay as they do
farther east, form the headwaters of the Guapore, which may, perhaps,
be called the upper main stream of the Madeira. These westernmost
streams from the southern edge of the plateau, therefore, begin by
flowing south; then for a long stretch they flow southwest; then
north, and finally northeast into the Amazon. According to some
exceptionally good geological observers, this is probably due to the
fact that in a remote geologic past the ocean sent in an arm from the
south, between the Plan Alto and what is now the Andean chain. These
rivers then emptied into the Andean Sea. The gradual upheaval of the
soil has resulted in substituting dry land for this arm of the ocean
and in reversing the course of what is now the Madeira, just as,
according to these geologists, in somewhat familiar fashion the Amazon
has been reversed, it having once been, at least for the upper two
thirds of its course, an affluent of the Andean Sea.
From Vilhena we travelled in a generally northward direction. For a
few leagues we went across the chapadao, the sands or clays of the
nearly level upland plateau, grassy or covered with thin, stunted
forest, the same type of country that had been predominant ever since
we ascended the Parecis table-land on the morning of the third day
after leaving the Sepotuba. Then, at about the point where the trail
dipped into a basin containing the head-springs of the Ananas, we left
this type of country and began to march through thick forest, not very
high. There was little feed for the animals on the Chapadao. There was
less in the forest. Moreover, the continual heavy rains made the
travelling difficult and laborious for them, and they weakened.
However, a couple of marches before we reached Tres Burity, where
there is a big ranch with hundreds of cattle, we were met by ten fresh
pack-oxen, and our serious difficulties were over.
There were piums in plenty by day, but neither mosquitoes nor sand-flies
by night; and for us the trip was very pleasant, save for moments of
anxiety about the mules. The loose bullocks furnished us abundance of
fresh beef, although, as was inevitable under the circumstances, of a
decidedly tough quality. One of the biggest of the bullocks was
attacked one night by a vampire bat, and next morning his withers were
literally bathed in blood.
With the chapadao we said good-by to the curious, gregarious, and
crepuscular or nocturnal spiders which we found so abundant along the
line of the telegraph wire. They have offered one of the small
problems with which the commission has had to deal. They are not
common in the dry season. They swarm during the rains; and, when their
tough webs are wet, those that lead from the wire to the ground
sometimes effectually short circuit the wire. They have on various
occasions caused a good deal of trouble in this manner.
The third night out from Vilhena we emerged for a moment from the
endless close-growing forest in which our poor animals got such scanty
pickings, and came to a beautiful open country, where grassy slopes,
dotted with occasional trees, came down on either side of a little
brook which was one of the headwaters of the Duvida. It was a pleasure
to see the mules greedily bury their muzzles in the pasturage. Our
tents were pitched in the open, near a shady tree, which sent out its
low branches on every side. At this camp Cherrie shot a lark, very
characteristic of the open upland country, and Miller found two bats
in the rotten wood of a dead log. He heard them squeaking and dug them
out; he could not tell by what method they had gotten in.
Here Kermit, while a couple of miles from our tents, came across an
encampment of Nhambiquaras. There were twenty or thirty of them--men,
women, and a few children. Kermit, after the manner of honest folk in
the wilderness, advanced ostentatiously in the open, calling out to
give warning of his coming. Like surroundings may cause like manners.
The early Saxons in England deemed it legal to kill any man who came
through the woods without shouting or blowing a horn; and in
Nhambiquara land at the present time it is against etiquette, and may
be very unhealthy, to come through the woods toward strangers without
loudly announcing one's presence. The Nhambiquaras received Kermit
with the utmost cordiality, and gave him pineapple-wine to drink. They
were stark naked as usual; they had no hammocks or blankets, and their
huts were flimsy shelters of palm-branches. Yet they were in fine
condition. Half a dozen of the men and a couple of boys accompanied
Kermit back to our camp, paying not slightest heed to the rain which
was falling. They were bold and friendly, good-natured--at least
superficially--and very inquisitive. In feasting, the long reeds
thrust through holes in their lips did not seem to bother them, and
they laughed at the suggestion of removing them; evidently to have
done so would have been rather bad manners--like using a knife as an
aid in eating ice-cream. They held two or three dances, and we were
again struck by the rhythm and weird, haunting melody of their
chanting. After supper they danced beside the camp-fire; and finally,
to their delight, most of the members of our own party, Americans and
Brazilians, enthusiastically joined the dance, while the colonel and I
furnished an appreciative and applauding audience. Next morning, when
we were awakened by the chattering and screaming of the numerous
macaws, parrots, and parakeets, we found that nearly all the Indians,
men and women, were gathered outside the tent. As far as clothing was
concerned, they were in the condition of Adam and Eve before the fall.
One of the women carried a little squirrel monkey. She put it up the
big tree some distance from the tents; and when she called, it came
scampering to her across the grass, ran up her, and clung to her neck.
They would have liked to pilfer; but as they had no clothes it was
difficult for them to conceal anything. One of the women was observed
to take a fork; but as she did not possess a rag of clothing of any
kind all she did do was to try to bury the fork in the sand and then
sit on it; and it was reclaimed without difficulty. One or two of the
children wore necklaces and bracelets made of the polished wood of the
tucum palm, and of the molars of small rodents.
Next day's march led us across a hilly country of good pastureland.
The valleys were densely wooded, palms of several kinds being
conspicuous among the other trees; and the brooks at the bottoms we
crossed at fords or by the usual rude pole bridges. On the open
pastures were occasional trees, usually slender bacaba palms, with
heads which the winds had dishevelled until they looked like mops. It
was evidently a fine natural cattle country, and we soon began to see
scores, perhaps hundreds, of the cattle belonging to the government
ranch at Tres Burity, which we reached in the early afternoon. It is
beautifully situated: the view roundabout is lovely, and certainly the
land will prove healthy when settlements have been definitely
established. Here we revelled in abundance of good fresh milk and
eggs; and for dinner we had chicken canja and fat beef roasted on big
wooden spits; and we even had watermelons. The latter were from seeds
brought down by the American engineers who built the Madeira Marmore
Railroad--a work which stands honorably distinguished among the many
great and useful works done in the development of the tropics of
recent years.
Amilcar's pack-oxen, which were nearly worn out, had been left in
these fertile pastures. Most of the fresh oxen which he took in their
places were unbroken, and there was a perfect circus before they were
packed and marched off; in every direction, said the gleeful
narrators, there were bucking oxen and loads strewed on the ground.
This cattle ranch is managed by the colonel's uncle, his mother's
brother, a hale old man of seventy, white-haired but as active and
vigorous as ever; with a fine, kindly, intelligent face. His name is
Miguel Evangalista. He is a native of Matto Grosso, of practically
pure Indian blood, and was dressed in the ordinary costume of the
Caboclo--hat, shirt, trousers, and no shoes or stockings. Within the
last year he had killed three jaguars, which had been living on the
mules; as long as they could get mules they did not at this station
molest the cattle.
It was with this uncle's father, Colonel Rondon's own grandfather,
that Colonel Rondon as an orphan spent the first seven years of his
life. His father died before he was born, and his mother when he was
only a year old. He lived on his grandfather's cattle-ranch, some
fifty miles from Cuyaba. Then he went to live in Cuyaba with a kinsman
on his father's side, from whom he took the name of Rondon; his own
father's name was DaSilva. He studied in the Cuyaba Government School,
and at sixteen was inscribed as one of the instructors. Then he went
to Rio, served for a year in the army as an enlisted man in the ranks,
and succeeded finally in getting into the military school. After five
years as pupil he served three years as professor of mathematics in
this school; and then, as a lieutenant of engineers in the Brazilian
army, he came back to his home in Matto Grosso and began his life-work
of exploring the wilderness.
Next day we journeyed to the telegraph station at Bonofacio, through
alternate spells of glaring sunshine and heavy rain. On the way we
stopped at an aldea-village of Nhambiquaras. We first met a couple of
men going to hunt, with bows and arrows longer than themselves. A
rather comely young woman, carrying on her back a wickerwork basket,
or creel, supported by a forehead band, and accompanied by a small
child, was with them. At the village there were a number of men,
women, and children. Although as completely naked as the others we had
met, the members of this band were more ornamented with beads, and
wore earrings made from the inside of mussel-shells or very big snail-
shells. They were more hairy than the ones we had so far met. The
women, but not the men, completely remove the hair from their bodies--
and look more, instead of less, indecent in consequence. The chief,
whose body was painted red with the juice of a fruit, had what could
fairly be styled a mustache and imperial; and one old man looked
somewhat like a hairy Ainu, or perhaps even more like an Australian
black fellow. My companion told me that this probably represented an
infusion of negro blood, and possibly of mulatto blood, from runaway
slaves of the old days, when some of the Matto Grosso mines were
worked by slave labor. They also thought it possible that this
infiltration of African negroes might be responsible for the curious
shape of the bigger huts, which were utterly unlike their flimsy,
ordinary shelters, and bore no resemblance in shape to those of the
other Indian tribes of this region; whereas they were not unlike the
ordinary beehive huts of the agricultural African negroes. There were
in this village several huts or shelters open at the sides, and two of
the big huts. These were of closely woven thatch, circular in outline,
with a rounded dome, and two doors a couple of feet high opposite each
other, and no other opening. There were fifteen or twenty people to
each hut. Inside were their implements and utensils, such as wicker
baskets (some of them filled with pineapples), gourds, fire-sticks,
wooden knives, wooden mortars, and a board for grating mandioc, made
of a thick slab of wood inset with sharp points of a harder wood. From
the Brazilians one or two of them had obtained blankets, and one a
hammock; and they had also obtained knives, which they sorely needed,
for they are not even in the stone age. One woman shielded herself
from the rain by holding a green palm-branch down her back. Another
had on her head what we at first thought to be a monkey-skin head-
dress. But it was a little, live, black monkey. It stayed habitually
with its head above her forehead, and its arms and legs spread so that
it lay moulded to the shape of her head; but both woman and monkey
showed some reluctance about having their photographs taken.
Bonofacio consisted of several thatched one-room cabins, connected by
a stockade which was extended to form an enclosure behind them. A
number of tame parrots and parakeets, of several different species,
scrambled over the roofs and entered the houses. In the open pastures
near by were the curious, extensive burrows of a gopher rat, which ate
the roots of grass, not emerging to eat the grass but pulling it into
the burrows by the roots. These burrows bore a close likeness to those
of our pocket gophers. Miller found the animals difficult to trap.
Finally, by the aid of Colonel Rondon, several Indians, and two or
three of our men, he dug one out. From the central shaft several
surface galleries radiated, running for many rods about a foot below
the surface, with, at intervals of half a dozen yards, mounds where
the loose earth had been expelled. The central shaft ran straight down
for about eight feet, and then laterally for about fifteen feet, to a
kind of chamber. The animal dug hard to escape, but when taken and put
on the surface of the ground it moved slowly and awkwardly. It showed
vicious courage. In looks it closely resembled our pocket gophers, but
it had no pockets. This was one of the most interesting small mammals
that we secured.
After breakfast at Bonofacio a number of Nhambiquaras--men, women, and
children--strolled in. The men gave us an exhibition of not very good
archery; when the bow was bent, it was at first held so that the arrow
pointed straight upwards and was then lowered so that the arrow was
aimed at the target. Several of the women had been taken from other
tribes, after their husbands or fathers had been killed; for the
Nhambiquaras are light-hearted robbers and murderers. Two or three
miserable dogs accompanied them, half-starved and mangy, but each
decorated with a collar of beads. The headmen had three or four wives
apiece, and the women were the burden-bearers, but apparently were not
badly treated. Most of them were dirty, although well-fed looking, and
their features were of a low type; but some, especially among the
children, were quite attractive.
From Bonofacio we went about seven miles, across a rolling prairie
dotted with trees and clumps of shrub. There, on February 24, we
joined Amilcar, who was camped by a brook which flowed into the
Duvida. We were only some six miles from our place of embarkation on
the Duvida, and we divided our party and our belongings. Amilcar,
Miller, Mello, and Oliveira were to march three days to the Gy-Parana,
and then descend it, and continue down the Madeira to Manaos. Rondon,
Lyra, the doctor, Cherrie, Kermit, and I, with sixteen paddlers, in
seven canoes, were to descend the Duvida, and find out whether it led
into the Gy-Parana, our purpose was to return and descend the Ananas,
whose outlet was also unknown. Having this in view, we left a
fortnight's provisions for our party of six at Bonofacio. We took with
us provisions for about fifty days; not full rations, for we hoped in
part to live on the country--on fish, game, nuts, and palm-tops. Our
personal baggage was already well cut down: Cherrie, Kermit, and I
took the naturalist's fly to sleep under, and a very light little tent
extra for any one who might fall sick. Rondon, Lyra, and the doctor
took one of their own tents. The things that we carried were
necessities--food, medicines, bedding, instruments for determining the
altitude and longitude and latitude--except a few books, each in small
compass: Lyra's were in German, consisting of two tiny volumes of
Goethe and Schiller; Kermit's were in Portuguese; mine, all in
English, included the last two volumes of Gibbon, the plays of
Sophocles, More's "Utopia," Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, the two
latter lent me by a friend, Major Shipton of the regulars, our
military attache at Buenos Aires.
If our canoe voyage was prosperous we would gradually lighten the
loads by eating the provisions. If we met with accidents, such as
losing canoes and men in the rapids, or losing men in encounters with
Indians, or if we encountered overmuch fever and dysentery, the loads
would lighten themselves. We were all armed. We took no cartridges for
sport. Cherrie had some to be used sparingly for collecting specimens.
The others were to be used--unless in the unlikely event of having to
repel an attack--only to procure food. The food and the arms we
carried represented all reasonable precautions against suffering and
starvation; but, of course, if the course of the river proved very
long and difficult, if we lost our boats over falls or in rapids, or
had to make too many and too long portages, or were brought to a halt
by impassable swamps, then we would have to reckon with starvation as
a possibility. Anything might happen. We were about to go into the
unknown, and no one could say what it held.
NOTE:
The first four days, before we struck the upper rapids, and during
which we made nearly seventy kilometres, are of course not included
when I speak of our making our way down the rapids.
I hope that this year the Ananas, or Pineapple, will also be put on
the map. One of Colonel Rondon's subordinates is to attempt the
descent of the river. We passed the headwaters of the Pineapple on the
high plateau, very possibly we passed its mouth, although it is also
possible that it empties into the Canama or Tapajos. But it will not
be "put on the map" until some one descends and finds out where, as a
matter of fact, it really does go.
It would be well if a geographical society of standing would
investigate the formal and official charges made by Colonel Rondon, an
officer and gentleman of the highest repute, against Mr. Savage
Landor. Colonel Rondon, in an official report to the Brazilian
Government, has written a scathing review of Mr. Landor. He states
that Mr. Savage Landor did not perform, and did not even attempt to
perform, the work he had contracted to do in exploration for the
Brazilian Government. Mr. Landor had asserted and promised that he
would go through unknown country along the line of eleven degrees
latitude south, and, as Colonel Rondon states, it was because of this
proposal of his that the Brazilian Government gave him material
financial assistance in advance. However, Colonel Rondon sets forth
that Mr. Landor did not keep his word or make any serious effort to
fulfil his moral obligation to do as he had said he would do. In a
letter to me under date of May 1, 1914--a letter which has been
published in full in France--Colonel Rondon goes at length into the
question of what territory Mr. Landor had traversed. Colonel Rondon
states that--excepting on one occasion, when Mr. Landor, wandering off
a beaten trail, immediately got lost and shortly returned to his
starting-point without making any discoveries--he kept to old, well-
travelled routes. One sentence of the colonel's letter to me runs as
follows: "I can guarantee to you that in Brazil Mr. Landor did not
cross a hand's breadth of land that had not been explored, the greater
part of it many centuries ago." As regards Mr. Landor's sole and brief
experience in leaving a beaten route, Colonel Rondon states that at
Sao Manoel Mr. Landor engaged from Senhor Jose Sotero Barreto (the
revenue officer of Matto Grosso, at Sao Manoel) a guide to lead him
across a well-travelled trail which connects the Tapajos with the
Madeira via the Canama. The guide, however, got lost, and after a few
days they all returned to the point of departure instead of going
through to the Canama.
Senhor Barreto, a gentleman of high standing, related this last
incident to Fiala when Fiala descended the Tapajos (and, by the way,
Fiala's trip down the Papagaio, Juruena, and Tapajos was infinitely
more important than all the work Mr. Landor did in South America put
together). Lieutenants Pyrineus and Mello, mentioned in the body of
this work, informed me that they accompanied Mr. Landor on most of his
overland trip before he embarked on the Arinos, and that he simply
followed the highroad or else the telegraph-line, and furthermore,
Colonel Rondon states that the Indians whom Mr. Landor encountered and
photographed were those educated at the missions.
Colonel Rondon's official report to the Brazilian Government and his
letter to me are of interest to all geographers and other scientific
men who have any concern with the alleged discoveries of Mr. Landor.
They contain very grave charges, with which it is not necessary for me
to deal. Suffice it to say that Mr. Landor's accounts of his alleged
exploration cannot be considered as entitled to the slightest serious
consideration until he has satisfactorily and in detail answered
Colonel Rondon; and this he has thus far signally failed to do.
Fortunately, there are numerous examples of exactly the opposite type
of work. From the days of Humboldt and Spix and Martius to the present
time, German explorers have borne a conspicuous part in the
exploration of South America. As representatives of the men and women
who have done such capital work, who have fronted every hazard and
hardship and labored in the scientific spirit, and who have added
greatly to our fund of geographic, biologic, and ethnographic
knowledge, I may mention Miss Snethlage and Herr Karl von den Steinen.
VIII. THE RIVER OF DOUBT
On February 27, 1914, shortly after midday, we started down the River
of Doubt into the unknown. We were quite uncertain whether after a
week we should find ourselves in the Gy-Parana, or after six weeks in
the Madeira, or after three months we knew not where. That was why the
river was rightly christened the Duvida.
We had been camped close to the river, where the trail that follows
the telegraph line crosses it by a rough bridge. As our laden dugouts
swung into the stream, Amilcar and Miller and all the others of the
Gy-Parana party were on the banks and the bridge to wave farewell and
wish us good-by and good luck. It was the height of the rainy season,
and the swollen torrent was swift and brown. Our camp was at about 12
degrees 1 minute latitude south and 60 degrees 15 minutes longitude
west of Greenwich. Our general course was to be northward toward the
equator, by waterway through the vast forest.
We had seven canoes, all of them dugouts. One was small, one was
cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky. The other three were
good. The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was
lashed to one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the
smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other
paddlers in the next largest; and the doctor, Cherrie, and I in the
largest with three paddlers. The remaining eight camaradas--there were
sixteen in all--were equally divided between our two pairs of lashed
canoes. Although our personal baggage was cut down to the limit
necessary for health and efficiency, yet on such a trip as ours, where
scientific work has to be done and where food for twenty-two men for
an unknown period of time has to be carried, it is impossible not to
take a good deal of stuff; and the seven dugouts were too heavily
laden.
The paddlers were a strapping set. They were expert rivermen and men
of the forest, skilled veterans in wilderness work. They were lithe as
panthers and brawny as bears. They swam like waterdogs. They were
equally at home with pole and paddle, with axe and machete; and one
was a good cook and others were good men around camp. They looked like
pirates in the pictures of Howard Pyle or Maxfield Parrish; one or two
of them were pirates, and one worse than a pirate; but most of them
were hard-working, willing, and cheerful. They were white,--or,
rather, the olive of southern Europe,--black, copper-colored, and of
all intermediate shades. In my canoe Luiz the steersman, the headman,
was a Matto Grosso negro; Julio the bowsman was from Bahia and of pure
Portuguese blood; and the third man, Antonio, was a Parecis Indian.
The actual surveying of the river was done by Colonel Rondon and Lyra,
with Kermit as their assistant. Kermit went first in his little canoe
with the sighting-rod, on which two disks, one red and one white, were
placed a metre apart. He selected a place which commanded as long
vistas as possible up-stream and down, and which therefore might be at
the angle of a bend; landed; cut away the branches which obstructed
the view; and set up the sighting-pole--incidentally encountering
maribundi wasps and swarms of biting and stinging ants. Lyra, from his
station up-stream, with his telemetre established the distance, while
Colonel Rondon with the compass took the direction, and made the
records. Then they moved on to the point Kermit had left, and Kermit
established a new point within their sight. The first half-day's work
was slow. The general course of the stream was a trifle east of north,
but at short intervals it bent and curved literally toward every point
of the compass. Kermit landed nearly a hundred times, and we made but
nine and a third kilometres.
My canoe ran ahead of the surveying canoes. The height of the water
made the going easy, for most of the snags and fallen trees were well
beneath the surface. Now and then, however, the swift water hurried us
toward ripples that marked ugly spikes of sunken timber, or toward
uprooted trees that stretched almost across the stream. Then the
muscles stood out on the backs and arms of the paddlers as stroke on
stroke they urged us away from and past the obstacle. If the leaning
or fallen trees were the thorny, slender-stemmed boritana palms, which
love the wet, they were often, although plunged beneath the river, in
full and vigorous growth, their stems curving upward, and their frond-
crowned tops shaken by the rushing water. It was interesting work, for
no civilized man, no white man, had ever gone down or up this river or
seen the country through which we were passing. The lofty and matted
forest rose like a green wall on either hand. The trees were stately
and beautiful. The looped and twisted vines hung from them like great
ropes. Masses of epiphytes grew both on the dead trees and the living;
some had huge leaves like elephants' ears. Now and then fragrant
scents were blown to us from flowers on the banks. There were not many
birds, and for the most part the forest was silent; rarely we heard
strange calls from the depths of the woods, or saw a cormorant or
ibis.
My canoe ran only a couple of hours. Then we halted to wait for the
others. After a couple of hours more, as the surveyors had not turned
up, we landed and made camp at a spot where the bank rose sharply for
a hundred yards to a level stretch of ground. Our canoes were moored
to trees. The axemen cleared a space for the tents; they were pitched,
the baggage was brought up, and fires were kindled. The woods were
almost soundless. Through them ran old tapir trails, but there was no
fresh sign. Before nightfall the surveyors arrived. There were a few
piums and gnats, and a few mosquitoes after dark, but not enough to
make us uncomfortable. The small stingless bees, of slightly aromatic
odor, swarmed while daylight lasted and crawled over our faces and
hands; they were such tame, harmless little things that when they
tickled too much I always tried to brush them away without hurting
them. But they became a great nuisance after a while. It had been
raining at intervals, and the weather was overcast; but after the sun
went down the sky cleared. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the
new moon hung in the west. It was a pleasant night, the air almost
cool, and we slept soundly.
Next morning the two surveying canoes left immediately after
breakfast. An hour later the two pairs of lashed canoes pushed off. I
kept our canoe to let Cherrie collect, for in the early hours we could
hear a number of birds in the woods near by. The most interesting
birds he shot were a cotinga, brilliant turquoise-blue with a magenta-
purple throat, and a big woodpecker, black above and cinnamon below
with an entirely red head and neck. It was almost noon before we
started. We saw a few more birds; there were fresh tapir and paca
tracks at one point where we landed; once we heard howler monkeys from
the depth of the forest, and once we saw a big otter in midstream. As
we drifted and paddled down the swirling brown current, through the
vivid rain-drenched green of the tropic forest, the trees leaned over
the river from both banks. When those that had fallen in the river at
some narrow point were very tall, or where it happened that two fell
opposite each other, they formed barriers which the men in the leading
canoes cleared with their axes. There were many palms, both the burity
with its stiff fronds like enormous fans, and a handsome species of
bacaba, with very long, gracefully curving fronds. In places the palms
stood close together, towering and slender, their stems a stately
colonnade, their fronds an arched fretwork against the sky.
Butterflies of many hues fluttered over the river. The day was
overcast, with showers of rain. When the sun broke through rifts in
the clouds, his shafts turned the forest to gold.
In mid-afternoon we came to the mouth of a big and swift affluent
entering from the right. It was undoubtedly the Bandeira, which we had
crossed well toward its head, some ten days before, on our road to
Bonofacio. The Nhambiquaras had then told Colonel Rondon that it
flowed into the Duvida. After its junction, with the added volume of
water, the river widened without losing its depth. It was so high that
it had overflowed and stood among the trees on the lower levels. Only
the higher stretches were dry. On the sheer banks where we landed we
had to push the canoes for yards or rods through the branches of the
submerged trees, hacking and hewing. There were occasional bays and
ox-bows from which the current had shifted. In these the coarse marsh
grass grew tall.
This evening we made camp on a flat of dry ground, densely wooded, of
course, directly on the edge of the river and five feet above it. It
was fine to see the speed and sinewy ease with which the choppers
cleared an open space for the tents. Next morning, when we bathed
before sunrise, we dived into deep water right from the shore, and
from the moored canoes. This second day we made sixteen and a half
kilometres along the course of the river, and nine kilometres in a
straight line almost due north.
The following day, March 1, there was much rain--sometimes showers,
sometimes vertical sheets of water. Our course was somewhat west of
north and we made twenty and a half kilometres. We passed signs of
Indian habitation. There were abandoned palm-leaf shelters on both
banks. On the left bank we came to two or three old Indian fields,
grown up with coarse fern and studded with the burned skeletons of
trees. At the mouth of a brook which entered from the right some
sticks stood in the water, marking the site of an old fish-trap. At
one point we found the tough vine hand-rail of an Indian bridge
running right across the river, a couple of feet above it. Evidently
the bridge had been built at low water. Three stout poles had been
driven into the stream-bed in a line at right angles to the current.
The bridge had consisted of poles fastened to these supports, leading
between them and from the support at each end to the banks. The rope
of tough vines had been stretched as a hand-rail, necessary with such
precarious footing. The rise of the river had swept away the bridge,
but the props and the rope hand-rail remained. In the afternoon, from
the boat, Cherrie shot a large dark-gray monkey with a prehensile
tail. It was very good eating.
We camped on a dry level space, but a few feet above, and close
beside, the river--so that our swimming-bath was handy. The trees were
cleared and camp was made with orderly hurry. One of the men almost
stepped on a poisonous coral-snake, which would have been a serious
thing, as his feet were bare. But I had on stout shoes, and the fangs
of these serpents--unlike those of the pit-vipers--are too short to
penetrate good leather. I promptly put my foot on him, and he bit my
shoe with harmless venom. It has been said that the brilliant hues of
the coral-snake when in its native haunts really confer on it a
concealing coloration. In the dark and tangled woods, and to an only
less extent in the ordinary varied landscape, anything motionless,
especially if partially hidden, easily eludes the eye. But against the
dark-brown mould of the forest floor on which we found this coral-
snake its bright and varied coloration was distinctly revealing;
infinitely more so than the duller mottling of the jararaca and other
dangerous snakes of the genus lachecis. In the same place, however, we
found a striking example of genuine protective or mimetic coloration
and shape. A rather large insect larva--at least we judged it to be a
larval form, but we were none of us entomologists--bore a resemblance
to a partially curled dry leaf which was fairly startling. The tail
exactly resembled the stem or continuation of the midrib of the dead
leaf. The flattened body was curled up at the sides, and veined and
colored precisely like the leaf. The head, colored like the leaf,
projected in front.
We were still in the Brazilian highlands. The forest did not teem with
life. It was generally rather silent; we did not hear such a chorus of
birds and mammals as we had occasionally heard even on our overland
journey, when more than once we had been awakened at dawn by the
howling, screaming, yelping, and chattering of monkeys, toucans,
macaws, parrots, and parakeets. There were, however, from time to
time, queer sounds from the forest, and after nightfall different
kinds of frogs and insects uttered strange cries and calls. In volume
and frequency these seemed to increase until midnight. Then they died
away and before dawn everything was silent.
At this camp the carregadores ants completely devoured the doctor's
undershirt, and ate holes in his mosquito-net; and they also ate the
strap of Lyra's gun-case. The little stingless bees, of many kinds,
swarmed in such multitudes, and were so persevering, that we had to
wear our head-nets when we wrote or skinned specimens.
The following day was almost without rain. It was delightful to drift
and paddle slowly down the beautiful tropical river. Until mid-
afternoon the current was not very fast, and the broad, deep, placid
stream bent and curved in every direction, although the general course
was northwest. The country was flat, and more of the land was under
than above water. Continually we found ourselves travelling between
stretches of marshy forest where for miles the water stood or ran
among the trees. Once we passed a hillock. We saw brilliantly colored
parakeets and trogons. At last the slow current quickened. Faster it
went, and faster, until it began to run like a mill-race, and we heard
the roar of rapids ahead. We pulled to the right bank, moored the
canoes, and while most of the men pitched camp two or three of them
accompanied us to examine the rapids. We had made twenty kilometres.
We soon found that the rapids were a serious obstacle. There were many
curls, and one or two regular falls, perhaps six feet high. It would
have been impossible to run them, and they stretched for nearly a
mile. The carry, however, which led through woods and over rocks in a
nearly straight line, was somewhat shorter. It was not an easy portage
over which to carry heavy loads and drag heavy dugout canoes. At the
point where the descent was steepest there were great naked flats of
friable sandstone and conglomerate. Over parts of these, where there
was a surface of fine sand, there was a growth of coarse grass. Other
parts were bare and had been worn by the weather into fantastic
shapes--one projection looked like an old-fashioned beaver hat upside
down. In this place, where the naked flats of rock showed the
projection of the ledge through which the river had cut its course,
the torrent rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, and extremely narrow
channel. At one point it was less than two yards across, and for quite
a distance not more than five or six yards. Yet only a mile or two
above the rapids the deep, placid river was at least a hundred yards
wide. It seemed extraordinary, almost impossible, that so broad a
river could in so short a space of time contract its dimensions to the
width of the strangled channel through which it now poured its entire
volume.
This has for long been a station where the Nhambiquaras at intervals
built their ephemeral villages and tilled the soil with the rude and
destructive cultivation of savages. There were several abandoned old
fields, where the dense growth of rank fern hid the tangle of burnt
and fallen logs. Nor had the Nhambiquaras been long absent. In one
trail we found what gypsies would have called a "pateran," a couple of
branches arranged crosswise, eight leaves to a branch; it had some
special significance, belonging to that class of signals, each with
some peculiar and often complicated meaning, which are commonly used
by many wild peoples. The Indians had thrown a simple bridge,
consisting of four long poles, without a hand-rail, across one of the
narrowest parts of the rock gorge through which the river foamed in
its rapid descent. This sub-tribe of Indians was called the Navaite;
we named the rapids after them, Navaite Rapids. By observation Lyra
found them to be (in close approximation to) latitude 11 degrees 44
minutes south and longitude 60 degrees 18 minutes west from Greenwich.
We spent March 3 and 4 and the morning of the 5th in portaging around
the rapids. The first night we camped in the forest beside the spot
where we had halted. Next morning we moved the baggage to the foot of
the rapids, where we intended to launch the canoes, and pitched our
tents on the open sandstone flat. It rained heavily. The little bees
were in such swarms as to be a nuisance. Many small stinging bees were
with them, which stung badly. We were bitten by huge horse-flies, the
size of bumblebees. More serious annoyance was caused by the pium and
boroshuda flies during the hours of daylight, and by the polvora, the
sand-flies, after dark. There were a few mosquitoes. The boroshudas
were the worst pests; they brought the blood at once, and left marks
that lasted for weeks. I did my writing in head-net and gauntlets.
Fortunately we had with us several bottles of "fly dope"--so named on
the label--put up, with the rest of our medicine, by Doctor Alexander
Lambert; he had tested it in the north woods and found it excellent. I
had never before been forced to use such an ointment, and had been
reluctant to take it with me; but now I was glad enough to have it,
and we all of us found it exceedingly useful. I would never again go
into mosquito or sand-fly country without it. The effect of an
application wears off after half an hour or so, and under many
conditions, as when one is perspiring freely, it is of no use; but
there are times when minute mosquitoes and gnats get through head-nets
and under mosquito-bars, and when the ointments occasionally renewed
may permit one to get sleep or rest which would otherwise be
impossible of attainment. The termites got into our tent on the sand-
flat, ate holes in Cherrie's mosquito-net and poncho, and were
starting to work at our duffel-bags, when we discovered them.
Packing the loads across was simple. Dragging the heavy dugouts was
labor. The biggest of the two water-logged ones was the heaviest. Lyra
and Kermit did the job. All the men were employed at it except the
cook, and one man who was down with fever. A road was chopped through
the forest and a couple of hundred stout six-foot poles, or small
logs, were cut as rollers and placed about two yards apart. With block
and tackle the seven dugouts were hoisted out of the river up the
steep banks, and up the rise of ground until the level was reached.
Then the men harnessed themselves two by two on the drag-rope, while
one of their number pried behind with a lever, and the canoe, bumping
and sliding, was twitched through the woods. Over the sandstone flats
there were some ugly ledges, but on the whole the course was down-hill
and relatively easy. Looking at the way the work was done, at the
good-will, the endurance, and the bull-like strength of the camaradas,
and at the intelligence and the unwearied efforts of their commanders,
one could but wonder at the ignorance of those who do not realize the
energy and the power that are so often possessed by, and that may be
so readily developed in, the men of the tropics. Another subject of
perpetual wonder is the attitude of certain men who stay at home, and
still more the attitude of certain men who travel under easy
conditions, and who belittle the achievements of the real explorers
of, the real adventures in, the great wilderness. The impostors and
romancers among explorers or would-be explorers and wilderness
wanderers have been unusually prominent in connection with South
America (although the conspicuous ones are not South Americans, by the
way); and these are fit subjects for condemnation and derision. But
the work of the genuine explorer and wilderness wanderer is fraught
with fatigue, hardship, and danger. Many of the men of little
knowledge talk glibly of portaging as if it were simple and easy. A
portage over rough and unknown ground is always a work of difficulty
and of some risk to the canoe; and in the untrodden, or even in the
unfrequented, wilderness risk to the canoe is a serious matter. This
particular portage at Navaite Rapids was far from being unusually
difficult; yet it not only cost two and a half days of severe and
incessant labor, but it cost something in damage to the canoes. One in
particular, the one in which I had been journeying, was split in a
manner which caused us serious uneasiness as to how long, even after
being patched, it would last. Where the canoes were launched, the bank
was sheer, and one of the water-logged canoes filled and went to the
bottom; and there was more work in raising it.
We were still wholly unable to tell where we were going or what lay
ahead of us. Round the camp-fire, after supper, we held endless
discussions and hazarded all kinds of guesses on both subjects. The
river might bend sharply to the west and enter the Gy-Parana high up
or low down, or go north to the Madeira, or bend eastward and enter
the Tapajos, or fall into the Canuma and finally through one of its
mouths enter the Amazon direct. Lyra inclined to the first, and
Colonel Rondon to the second, of these propositions. We did not know
whether we had one hundred or eight hundred kilometres to go, whether
the stream would be fairly smooth or whether we would encounter
waterfalls, or rapids, or even some big marsh or lake. We could not
tell whether or not we would meet hostile Indians, although no one of
us ever went ten yards from camp without his rifle. We had no idea how
much time the trip would take. We had entered a land of unknown
possibilities.
We started down-stream again early in the afternoon of March 5. Our
hands and faces were swollen from the bites and stings of the insect
pests at the sand-flat camp, and it was a pleasure once more to be in
the middle of the river, where they did not come, in any numbers,
while we were in motion. The current was swift, but the river was so
deep that there were no serious obstructions. Twice we went down over
slight riffles, which in the dry season were doubtless rapids; and
once we struck a spot where many whirlpools marked the presence
underneath of boulders which would have been above water had not the
river been so swollen by the rains. The distance we covered in a day
going down-stream would have taken us a week if we had been going up.
The course wound hither and thither, sometimes in sigmoid curves; but
the general direction was east of north. As usual, it was very
beautiful; and we never could tell what might appear around any curve.
In the forest that rose on either hand were tall rubber-trees. The
surveying canoes, as usual, went first, while I shepherded the two
pairs of lashed cargo canoes. I kept them always between me and the
surveying canoes--ahead of me until I passed the surveying canoes,
then behind me until, after an hour or so, I had chosen a place to
camp. There was so much overflowed ground that it took us some little
time this afternoon before we found a flat place high enough to be
dry. Just before reaching camp Cherrie shot a jacu, a handsome bird
somewhat akin to, but much smaller than, a turkey; after Cherrie had
taken its skin, its body made an excellent canja. We saw parties of
monkeys; and the false bellbirds uttered their ringing whistles in
the dense timber around our tents. The giant ants, an inch and a
quarter long, were rather too plentiful around this camp; one stung
Kermit; it was almost like the sting of a small scorpion, and pained
severely for a couple of hours. This half-day we made twelve
kilometres.
On the following day we made nineteen kilometres, the river twisting
in every direction, but in its general course running a little west of
north. Once we stopped at a bee-tree, to get honey. The tree was a
towering giant, of the kind called milk-tree, because a thick milky
juice runs freely from any cut. Our camaradas eagerly drank the white
fluid that flowed from the wounds made by their axes. I tried it. The
taste was not unpleasant, but it left a sticky feeling in the mouth.
The helmsman of my boat, Luiz, a powerful negro, chopped into the
tree, balancing himself with springy ease on a slight scaffolding. The
honey was in a hollow, and had been made by medium-sized stingless
bees. At the mouth of the hollow they had built a curious entrance of
their own, in the shape of a spout of wax about a foot long. At the
opening the walls of the spout showed the wax formation, but elsewhere
it had become in color and texture indistinguishable from the bark of
the tree. The honey was delicious, sweet and yet with a tart flavor.
The comb differed much from that of our honey-bees. The honey-cells
were very large, and the brood-cells, which were small, were in a
single instead of a double row. By this tree I came across an example
of genuine concealing coloration. A huge tree-toad, the size of a
bullfrog, was seated upright--not squatted flat--on a big rotten limb.
It was absolutely motionless; the yellow brown of its back, and its
dark sides, exactly harmonized in color with the light and dark
patches on the log; the color was as concealing, here in its natural
surroundings, as is the color of our common wood-frog among the dead
leaves of our woods. When I stirred it up it jumped to a small twig,
catching hold with the disks of its finger-tips, and balancing itself
with unexpected ease for so big a creature, and then hopped to the
ground and again stood motionless. Evidently it trusted for safety to
escaping observation. We saw some monkeys and fresh tapir sign, and
Kermit shot a jacu for the pot.
At about three o'clock I was in the lead, when the current began to
run more quickly. We passed over one or two decided ripples, and then
heard the roar of rapids ahead, while the stream began to race. We
drove the canoe into the bank, and then went down a tapir trail, which
led alongside the river, to reconnoiter. A quarter of a mile's walk
showed us that there were big rapids, down which the canoes could not
go; and we returned to the landing. All the canoes had gathered there,
and Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit started down-stream to explore. They
returned in an hour, with the information that the rapids continued
for a long distance, with falls and steep pitches of broken water, and
that the portage would take several days. We made camp just above the
rapids. Ants swarmed, and some of them bit savagely. Our men, in
clearing away the forest for our tents, left several very tall and
slender accashy palms; the bole of this palm is as straight as an
arrow and is crowned with delicate, gracefully curved fronds. We had
come along the course of the river almost exactly a hundred
kilometres; it had twisted so that we were only about fifty-five
kilometres north of our starting-point. The rock was porphyritic.
The 7th, 8th, and 9th we spent in carrying the loads and dragging and
floating the dugouts past the series of rapids at whose head we had
stopped.
The first day we shifted camp a kilometre and a half to the foot of
this series of rapids. This was a charming and picturesque camp. It
was at the edge of the river, where there was a little, shallow bay
with a beach of firm sand. In the water, at the middle point of the
beach, stood a group of three burity palms, their great trunks rising
like columns. Round the clearing in which our tents stood were several
very big trees; two of them were rubber-trees. Kermit went down-stream
five or six kilometres, and returned, having shot a jacu and found
that at the point which he had reached there was another rapids,
almost a fall, which would necessitate our again dragging the canoes
over a portage. Antonio, the Parecis, shot a big monkey; of this I was
glad because portaging is hard work, and the men appreciated the
meat. So far Cherrie had collected sixty birds on the Duvida, all of
them new to the collection, and some probably new to science. We saw
the fresh sign of paca, agouti, and the small peccary, and Kermit with
the dogs roused a tapir, which crossed the river right through the
rapids; but no one got a shot at it.
Except at one or perhaps two points a very big dugout, lightly loaded,
could probably run all these rapids. But even in such a canoe it would
be silly to make the attempt on an exploring expedition, where the
loss of a canoe or of its contents means disaster; and moreover such a
canoe could not be taken, for it would be impossible to drag it over
the portages on the occasions when the portages became inevitable. Our
canoes would not have lived half a minute in the wild water.
On the second day the canoes and loads were brought down to the foot
of the first rapids. Lyra cleared the path and laid the logs for
rollers, while Kermit dragged the dugouts up the bank from the water
with block and tackle, with strain of rope and muscle. Then they
joined forces, as over the uneven ground it needed the united strength
of all their men to get the heavy dugouts along. Meanwhile the colonel
with one attendant measured the distance, and then went on a long
hunt, but saw no game. I strolled down beside the river for a couple
of miles, but also saw nothing. In the dense tropical forest of the
Amazonian basin hunting is very difficult, especially for men who are
trying to pass through the country as rapidly as possible. On such a
trip as ours getting game is largely a matter of chance.
On the following day Lyra and Kermit brought down the canoes and
loads, with hard labor, to the little beach by the three palms where
our tents were pitched. Many pacovas grew round about. The men used
their immense leaves, some of which were twelve feet long and two and
a half feet broad, to roof the flimsy shelters under which they hung
their hammocks. I went into the woods, but in the tangle of vegetation
it would have been a mere hazard had I seen any big animal. Generally
the woods were silent and empty. Now and then little troops of birds
of many kinds passed--wood-hewers, ant-thrushes, tanagers,
flycatchers; as in the spring and fall similar troops of warblers,
chickadees, and nuthatches pass through our northern woods. On the
rocks and on the great trees by the river grew beautiful white and
lilac orchids, the sobralia, of sweet and delicate fragrance. For the
moment my own books seemed a trifle heavy, and perhaps I would have
found the day tedious if Kermit had not lent me the Oxford Book of
French Verse. Eustache Deschamp, Joachim du Bellay, Ronsard, the
delightful La Fontaine, the delightful but appalling Villon, Victor
Hugo's "Guitare," Madame Desbordes-Valmore's lines on the little girl
and her pillow, as dear little verses about a child as ever were
written--these and many others comforted me much, as I read them in
head-net and gauntlets, sitting on a log by an unknown river in the
Amazonian forest.
On the 10th we again embarked and made a kilometre and a half,
spending most of the time in getting past two more rapids. Near the
first of these we saw a small cayman, a jacare-tinga. At each set of
rapids the canoes were unloaded and the loads borne past on the
shoulders of the camaradas; three of the canoes were paddled down by a
couple of naked paddlers apiece; and the two sets of double canoes
were let down by ropes, one of one couple being swamped but rescued
and brought safely to shore on each occasion. One of the men was upset
while working in the swift water, and his face was cut against the
stones. Lyra and Kermit did the actual work with the camaradas.
Kermit, dressed substantially like the camaradas themselves, worked in
the water, and, as the overhanging branches were thronged with crowds
of biting and stinging ants, he was marked and blistered over his
whole body. Indeed, we all suffered more or less from these ants;
while the swarms of biting flies grew constantly more numerous. The
termites ate holes in my helmet and also in the cover of my cot. Every
one else had a hammock. At this camp we had come down the river about
102 kilometres, according to the surveying records, and in height had
descended nearly 100 metres, as shown by the aneroid--although the
figure in this case is only an approximation, as an aneroid cannot be
depended on for absolute accuracy of results.
Next morning we found that during the night we had met with a serious
misfortune. We had halted at the foot of the rapids. The canoes were
moored to trees on the bank, at the tail of the broken water. The two
old canoes, although one of them was our biggest cargo-carrier, were
water-logged and heavy, and one of them was leaking. In the night the
river rose. The leaky canoe, which at best was too low in the water,
must have gradually filled from the wash of the waves. It sank,
dragging down the other; they began to roll, bursting their moorings;
and in the morning they had disappeared. A canoe was launched to look
for them; but, rolling over the boulders on the rocky bottom, they had
at once been riven asunder, and the big fragments that were soon
found, floating in eddies, or along the shore, showed that it was
useless to look farther. We called these rapids Broken Canoe Rapids.
It was not pleasant to have to stop for some days; thanks to the
rapids, we had made slow progress, and with our necessarily limited
supply of food, and no knowledge whatever of what was ahead of us, it
was important to make good time. But there was no alternative. We had
to build either one big canoe or two small ones. It was raining
heavily as the men started to explore in different directions for good
canoe trees. Three--which ultimately proved not very good for the
purpose--were found close to camp; splendid-looking trees, one of them
five feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The axemen
immediately attacked this one under the superintendence of Colonel
Rondon. Lyra and Kermit started in opposite directions to hunt. Lyra
killed a jacu for us, and Kermit killed two monkeys for the men.
Toward night fall it cleared. The moon was nearly full, and the
foaming river gleamed like silver.
Our men were "regional volunteers," that is, they had enlisted in the
service of the Telegraphic Commission especially to do this wilderness
work, and were highly paid, as was fitting, in view of the toil,
hardship, and hazard to life and health. Two of them had been with
Colonel Rondon during his eight months' exploration in 1909, at which
time his men were regulars, from his own battalion of engineers. His
four aides during the closing months of this trip were Lieutenants
Lyra, Amarante, Alencarliense, and Pyrineus. The naturalist Miranda
Ribeiro also accompanied him. This was the year when, marching on foot
through an absolutely unknown wilderness, the colonel and his party
finally reached the Gy-Parana, which on the maps was then (and on most
maps is now) placed in an utterly wrong course, and over a degree out
of its real position. When they reached the affluents of the Gy-Parana
a third of the members of the party were so weak with fever that they
could hardly crawl. They had no baggage. Their clothes were in
tatters, and some of the men were almost naked. For months they had
had no food except what little game they shot, and especially the wild
fruits and nuts; if it had not been for the great abundance of the
Brazil-nuts they would all have died. At the first big stream they
encountered they built a canoe, and Alencarliense took command of it
and descended to map the course of the river. With him went Ribeiro,
the doctor Tanageira, who could no longer walk on account of the
ulceration of one foot, three men whom the fever had rendered unable
longer to walk, and six men who were as yet well enough to handle the
canoe. By the time the remainder of the party came to the next
navigable river eleven more fever-stricken men had nearly reached the
end of their tether. Here they ran across a poor devil who had for
four months been lost in the forest and was dying of slow starvation.
He had eaten nothing but Brazil-nuts and the grubs of insects. He
could no longer walk, but could sit erect and totter feebly for a few
feet. Another canoe was built, and in it Pyrineus started down-stream
with the eleven fever patients and the starving wanderer. Colonel
Rondon kept up the morale of his men by still carrying out the forms
of military discipline. The ragged bugler had his bugle. Lieutenant
Pyrineus had lost every particle of his clothing except a hat and a
pair of drawers. The half-naked lieutenant drew up his eleven fever
patients in line; the bugle sounded; every one came to attention; and
the haggard colonel read out the orders of the day. Then the dugout
with its load of sick men started down-stream, and Rondon, Lyra,
Amarante, and the twelve remaining men resumed their weary march. When
a fortnight later they finally struck a camp of rubber-gatherers three
of the men were literally and entirely naked. Meanwhile Amilcar had
ascended the Jacyparana a month or two previously with provisions to
meet them; for at that time the maps incorrectly treated this river as
larger, instead of smaller, than the Gy-Parana, which they were in
fact descending; and Colonel Rondon had supposed that they were going
down the former stream. Amilcar returned after himself suffering much
hardship and danger. The different parties finally met at the mouth of
the Gy-Parana, where it enters the Madeira. The lost man whom they had
found seemed on the road to recovery, and they left him at a ranch, on
the Madeira, where he could be cared for; yet after they had left him
they heard that he had died.
On the 12th the men were still hard at work hollowing out the hard
wood of the big tree, with axe and adze, while watch and ward were
kept over them to see that the idlers did not shirk at the expense of
the industrious. Kermit and Lyra again hunted; the former shot a
curassow, which was welcome, as we were endeavoring in all ways to
economize our food supply. We were using the tops of palms also. I
spent the day hunting in the woods, for the most part by the river,
but saw nothing. In the season of the rains game is away from the
river and fish are scarce and turtles absent. Yet it was pleasant to
be in the great silent forest. Here and there grew immense trees, and
on some of them mighty buttresses sprang from the base. The lianas and
vines were of every size and shape. Some were twisted and some were
not. Some came down straight and slender from branches a hundred feet
above. Others curved like long serpents around the trunks. Others were
like knotted cables. In the shadow there was little noise. The wind
rarely moved the hot, humid air. There were few flowers or birds.
Insects were altogether too abundant, and even when travelling slowly
it was impossible always to avoid them--not to speak of our constant
companions the bees, mosquitoes, and especially the boroshudas or
bloodsucking flies. Now while bursting through a tangle I disturbed a
nest of wasps, whose resentment was active; now I heedlessly stepped
among the outliers of a small party of the carnivorous foraging ants;
now, grasping a branch as I stumbled, I shook down a shower of fire-
ants; and among all these my attention was particularly arrested by
the bite of one of the giant ants, which stung like a hornet, so that
I felt it for three hours. The camarades generally went barefoot or
only wore sandals; and their ankles and feet were swollen and inflamed
from the bites of the boroshudas and ants, some being actually
incapacitated from work. All of us suffered more or less, our faces
and hands swelling slightly from the boroshuda bites; and in spite of
our clothes we were bitten all over our bodies, chiefly by ants and
the small forest ticks. Because of the rain and the heat our clothes
were usually wet when we took them off at night, and just as wet when
we put them on again in the morning.
All day on the 13th the men worked at the canoe, making good progress.
In rolling and shifting the huge, heavy tree-trunk every one had to
assist now and then. The work continued until ten in the evening, as
the weather was clear. After nightfall some of the men held candles
and the others plied axe or adze, standing within or beside the great,
half-hollowed logs, while the flicker of the lights showed the tropic
forest rising in the darkness round about. The night air was hot and
still and heavy with moisture. The men were stripped to the waist.
Olive and copper and ebony, their skins glistened as if oiled, and
rippled with the ceaseless play of the thews beneath.
On the morning of the 14th the work was resumed in a torrential tropic
downpour. The canoe was finished, dragged down to the water, and
launched soon after midday, and another hour or so saw us under way.
The descent was marked, and the swollen river raced along. Several
times we passed great whirlpools, sometimes shifting, sometimes
steady. Half a dozen times we ran over rapids, and, although they were
not high enough to have been obstacles to loaded Canadian canoes, two
of them were serious to us. Our heavily laden, clumsy dugouts were
sunk to within three or four inches of the surface of the river, and,
although they were buoyed on each side with bundles of burity-palm
branch-stems, they shipped a great deal of water in the rapids. The
two biggest rapids we only just made, and after each we had hastily to
push ashore in order to bail. In one set of big ripples or waves my
canoe was nearly swamped. In a wilderness, where what is ahead is
absolutely unknown, alike in terms of time, space, and method--for we
had no idea where we would come out, how we would get out, or when we
would get out--it is of vital consequence not to lose one's outfit,
especially the provisions; and yet it is of only less consequence to
go as rapidly as possible lest all the provisions be exhausted and the
final stages of the expedition be accomplished by men weakened from
semi-starvation, and therefore ripe for disaster. On this occasion, of
the two hazards, we felt it necessary to risk running the rapids; for
our progress had been so very slow that unless we made up the time, it
was probable that we would be short of food before we got where we
could expect to procure any more except what little the country in the
time of the rains and floods, might yield. We ran until after five, so
that the work of pitching camp was finished in the dark. We had made
nearly sixteen kilometres in a direction slightly east of north. This
evening the air was fresh and cool.
The following morning, the 15th of March, we started in good season.
For six kilometres we drifted and paddled down the swift river without
incident. At times we saw lofty Brazil-nut trees rising above the rest
of the forest on the banks; and back from the river these trees grow
to enormous proportions, towering like giants. There were great
rubber-trees also, their leaves always in sets of threes. Then the
ground on either hand rose into boulder-strewn, forest-clad hills and
the roar of broken water announced that once more our course was
checked by dangerous rapids. Round a bend we came on them; a wide
descent of white water, with an island in the middle, at the upper
edge. Here grave misfortune befell us, and graver misfortune was
narrowly escaped.
Kermit, as usual, was leading in his canoe. It was the smallest and
least seaworthy of all. He had in it little except a week's supply of
our boxed provisions and a few tools; fortunately none of the food for
the camaradas. His dog Trigueiro was with him. Besides himself, the
crew consisted of two men: Joao, the helmsman, or pilot, as he is
called in Brazil, and Simplicio, the bowsman. Both were negroes and
exceptionally good men in every way. Kermit halted his canoe on the
left bank, above the rapids, and waited for the colonel's canoe. Then
the colonel and Lyra walked down the bank to see what was ahead.
Kermit took his canoe across to the island to see whether the descent
could be better accomplished on the other side. Having made his
investigation, he ordered the men to return to the bank he had left,
and the dugout was headed up-stream accordingly. Before they had gone
a dozen yards, the paddlers digging their paddles with all their
strength into the swift current, one of the shifting whirlpools of
which I have spoken came down-stream, whirled them around, and swept
them so close to the rapids that no human power could avoid going over
them. As they were drifting into them broadside on, Kermit yelled to
the steersman to turn her head, so as to take them in the only way
that offered any chance whatever of safety. The water came aboard,
wave after wave, as they raced down. They reached the bottom with the
canoe upright, but so full as barely to float, and the paddlers urged
her toward the shore. They had nearly reached the bank when another
whirlpool or whirling eddy tore them away and hurried them back to
midstream, where the dugout filled and turned over. Joao, seizing the
rope, started to swim ashore; the rope was pulled from his hand, but
he reached the bank. Poor Simplicio must have been pulled under at
once and his life beaten out on the boulders beneath the racing
torrent. He never rose again, nor did we ever recover his body. Kermit
clutched his rifle, his favorite 405 Winchester with which he had done
most of his hunting both in Africa and America, and climbed on the
bottom of the upset boat. In a minute he was swept into the second
series of rapids, and whirled away from the rolling boat, losing his
rifle. The water beat his helmet down over his head and face and drove
him beneath the surface; and when he rose at last he was almost
drowned, his breath and strength almost spent. He was in swift but
quiet water, and swam toward an overhanging branch. His jacket
hindered him, but he knew he was too nearly gone to be able to get it
off, and, thinking with the curious calm one feels when death is but a
moment away, he realized that the utmost his failing strength could do
was to reach the branch. He reached, and clutched it, and then almost
lacked strength to haul himself out on the land. Good Trigueiro had
faithfully swum alongside him through the rapids, and now himself
scrambled ashore. It was a very narrow escape. Kermit was a great
comfort and help to me on the trip; but the fear of some fatal
accident befalling him was always a nightmare to me. He was to be
married as soon as the trip was over; and it did not seem to me that I
could bear to bring bad tidings to his betrothed and to his mother.
Simplicio was unmarried. Later we sent to his mother all the money
that would have been his had he lived. The following morning we put on
one side of the post erected to mark our camping-spot the following
inscription, in Portuguese:
"IN THESE RAPIDS DIED POOR SIMPLICIO."
On an expedition such as ours death is one of the accidents that may
at any time occur, and narrow escapes from death are too common to be
felt as they would be felt elsewhere. One mourns sincerely, but
mourning cannot interfere with labor. We immediately proceeded with
the work of the portage. From the head to the tail of this series of
rapids the distance was about six hundred yards. A path was cut along
the bank, over which the loads were brought. The empty canoes ran the
rapids without mishap, each with two skilled paddlers. One of the
canoes almost ran into a swimming tapir at the head of the rapids; it
went down the rapids, and then climbed out of the river. Kermit
accompanied by Joao, went three or four miles down the river, looking
for the body of Simplicio and for the sunk canoe. He found neither.
But he found a box of provisions and a paddle, and salvaged both by
swimming into midstream after them. He also found that a couple of
kilometres below there was another stretch of rapids, and following
them on the left-hand bank to the foot he found that they were worse
than the ones we had just passed, and impassable for canoes on this
left-hand side.
We camped at the foot of the rapids we had just passed. There were
many small birds here, but it was extremely difficult to see or shoot
them in the lofty tree tops, and to find them in the tangle beneath if
they were shot. However, Cherrie got four species new to the
collection. One was a tiny hummer, one of the species known as
woodstars, with dainty but not brilliant plumage; its kind is never
found except in the deep, dark woods, not coming out into the
sunshine. Its crop was filled with ants; when shot it was feeding at a
cluster of long red flowers. He also got a very handsome trogon and an
exquisite little tanager, as brilliant as a cluster of jewels; its
throat was lilac, its breast turquoise, its crown and forehead topaz,
while above it was glossy purple-black, the lower part of the back
ruby-red. This tanager was a female; I can hardly imagine that the
male is more brilliantly colored. The fourth bird was a queer hawk of
the genus ibycter, black, with a white belly, naked red cheeks and
throat and red legs and feet. Its crop was filled with the seeds of
fruits and a few insect remains; an extraordinary diet for a hawk.
The morning of the 16th was dark and gloomy. Through sheets of
blinding rain we left our camp of misfortune for another camp where
misfortune also awaited us. Less than half an hour took our dugouts to
the head of the rapids below. As Kermit had already explored the left-
hand side, Colonel Rondon and Lyra went down the right-hand side and
found a channel which led round the worst part, so that they deemed it
possible to let down the canoes by ropes from the bank. The distance
to the foot of the rapids was about a kilometre. While the loads were
being brought down the left bank, Luiz and Antonio Correa, our two
best watermen, started to take a canoe down the right side, and
Colonel Rondon walked ahead to see anything he could about the river.
He was accompanied by one of our three dogs, Lobo. After walking about
a kilometre he heard ahead a kind of howling noise, which he thought
was made by spider-monkeys. He walked in the direction of the sound
and Lobo ran ahead. In a minute he heard Lobo yell with pain, and
then, still yelping, come toward him, while the creature that was
howling also approached, evidently in pursuit. In a moment a second
yell from Lobo, followed by silence, announced that he was dead; and
the sound of the howling when near convinced Rondon that the dog had
been killed by an Indian, doubtless with two arrows. Probably the
Indian was howling to lure the spider-monkeys toward him. Rondon fired
his rifle in the air, to warn off the Indian or Indians, who in all
probability had never seen a civilized man, and certainly could not
imagine that one was in the neighborhood. He then returned to the foot
of the rapids, where the portage was still going on, and, in company
with Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Parecis, the Indian, walked back to
where Lobo's body lay. Sure enough he found him, slain by two arrows.
One arrow-head was in him, and near by was a strange stick used in the
very primitive method of fishing of all these Indians. Antonio
recognized its purpose. The Indians, who were apparently two or three
in number, had fled. Some beads and trinkets were left on the spot to
show that we were not angry and were friendly.
Meanwhile Cherrie stayed at the head and I at the foot of the portage
as guards. Luiz and Antonio Correa brought down one canoe safely. The
next was the new canoe, which was very large and heavy, being made of
wood that would not float. In the rapids the rope broke, and the canoe
was lost, Luiz being nearly drowned.
It was a very bad thing to lose the canoe, but it was even worse to
lose the rope and pulleys. This meant that it would be physically
impossible to hoist big canoes up even small hills or rocky hillocks,
such as had been so frequent beside the many rapids we had
encountered. It was not wise to spend the four days necessary to build
new canoes where we were, in danger of attack from the Indians.
Moreover, new rapids might be very near, in which case the new canoes
would hamper us. Yet the four remaining canoes would not carry all the
loads and all the men, no matter how we cut the loads down; and we
intended to cut everything down at once. We had been gone eighteen
days. We had used over a third of our food. We had gone only 125
kilometres, and it was probable that we had at least five times,
perhaps six or seven times, this distance still to go. We had taken a
fortnight to descend rapids amounting in the aggregate to less than
seventy yards of fall; a very few yards of fall makes a dangerous
rapid when the river is swollen and swift and there are obstructions.
We had only one aneroid to determine our altitude, and therefore could
make merely a loose approximation to it, but we probably had between
two and three times this descent in the aggregate of rapids ahead of
us. So far the country had offered little in the way of food except
palm-tops. We had lost four canoes and one man. We were in the country
of wild Indians, who shot well with their bows. It behooved us to go
warily, but also to make all speed possible, if we were to avoid
serious trouble.
The best plan seemed to be to march thirteen men down along the bank,
while the remaining canoes, lashed two and two, floated down beside
them. If after two or three days we found no bad rapids, and there
seemed a reasonable chance of going some distance at decent speed, we
could then build the new canoes--preferably two small ones, this time,
instead of one big one. We left all the baggage we could. We were
already down as far as comfort would permit; but we now struck off
much of the comfort. Cherrie, Kermit, and I had been sleeping under a
very light fly; and there was another small light tent for one person,
kept for possible emergencies. The last was given to me for my cot,
and all five of the others swung their hammocks under the big fly.
This meant that we left two big and heavy tents behind. A box of
surveying instruments was also abandoned. Each of us got his personal
belongings down to one box or duffel-bag--although there was only a
small diminution thus made; because we had so little that the only way
to make a serious diminution was to restrict ourselves to the clothes
on our backs.
The biting flies and ants were to us a source of discomfort and at
times of what could fairly be called torment. But to the camaradas,
most of whom went barefoot or only wore sandals--and they never did or
would wear shoes--the effect was more serious. They wrapped their legs
and feet in pieces of canvas or hide; and the feet of three of them
became so swollen that they were crippled and could not walk any
distance. The doctor, whose courage and cheerfulness never flagged,
took excellent care of them. Thanks to him, there had been among them
hitherto but one or two slight cases of fever. He administered to each
man daily a half-gram--nearly eight grains--of quinine, and every
third or fourth day a double dose.
The following morning Colonel Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, Cherrie, and nine
of the camaradas started in single file down the bank, while the
doctor and I went in the two double canoes, with six camaradas, three
of them the invalids with swollen feet. We halted continually, as we
went about three times as fast as the walkers; and we traced the
course of the river. After forty minutes' actual going in the boats we
came to some rapids; the unloaded canoes ran them without difficulty,
while the loads were portaged. In an hour and a half we were again
under way, but in ten minutes came to other rapids, where the river
ran among islands, and there were several big curls. The clumsy,
heavily laden dugouts, lashed in couples, were unwieldy and hard to
handle. The rapids came just round a sharp bend, and we got caught in
the upper part of the swift water and had to run the first set of
rapids in consequence. We in the leading pair of dugouts were within
an ace of coming to grief on some big boulders against which we were
swept by a cross current at the turn. All of us paddling hard--
scraping and bumping--we got through by the skin of our teeth, and
managed to make the bank and moor our dugouts. It was a narrow escape
from grave disaster. The second pair of lashed dugouts profited by our
experience, and made the run--with risk, but with less risk--and
moored beside us. Then all the loads were taken out, and the empty
canoes were run down through the least dangerous channels among the
islands.
This was a long portage, and we camped at the foot of the rapids,
having made nearly seven kilometres. Here a little river, a rapid
stream of volume equal to the Duvida at the point where we first
embarked, joined from the west. Colonel Rondon and Kermit came to it
first, and the former named it Rio Kermit. There was in it a waterfall
about six or eight feet high, just above the junction. Here we found
plenty of fish. Lyra caught two pacu, good-sized, deep-bodied fish.
They were delicious eating. Antonio the Parecis said that these fish
never came up heavy rapids in which there were falls they had to jump.
We could only hope that he was correct, as in that case the rapids we
would encounter in the future would rarely be so serious as to
necessitate our dragging the heavy dugouts overland. Passing the
rapids we had hitherto encountered had meant severe labor and some
danger. But the event showed that he was mistaken. The worst rapids
were ahead of us.
While our course as a whole had been almost due north, and sometimes
east of north, yet where there were rapids the river had generally,
although not always, turned westward. This seemed to indicate that to
the east of us there was a low northward projection of the central
plateau across which we had travelled on mule-back. This is the kind
of projection that appears on the maps of this region as a sierra.
Probably it sent low spurs to the west, and the farthest points of
these spurs now and then caused rapids in our course (for the rapids
generally came where there were hills) and for the moment deflected
the river westward from its general downhill trend to the north. There
was no longer any question that the Duvida was a big river, a river of
real importance. It was not a minor affluent of some other affluent.
But we were still wholly in the dark as to where it came out. It was
still possible, although exceedingly improbable, that it entered the
Gy-Parana, as another river of substantially the same size, near its
mouth. It was much more likely, but not probable, that it entered the
Tapajos. It was probable, although far from certain, that it entered
the Madeira low down, near its point of junction with the Amazon. In
this event it was likely, although again far from certain, that its
mouth would prove to be the Aripuanan. The Aripuanan does not appear
on the maps as a river of any size; on a good standard map of South
America which I had with me its name does not appear at all, although
a dotted indication of a small river or creek at about the right place
probably represents it. Nevertheless, from the report of one of his
lieutenants who had examined its mouth, and from the stories of the
rubber-gatherers, or seringueiros, Colonel Rondon had come to the
conclusion that this was the largest affluent of the Madeira, with
such a body of water that it must have a big drainage basin. He
thought that the Duvida was probably one of its head streams--although
every existing map represented the lay of the land to be such as to
render impossible the existence of such a river system and drainage
basin. The rubber-gatherers reported that they had gone many days'
journey up the river, to a point where there was a series of heavy
rapids with above them the junction point of two large rivers, one
entering from the west. Beyond this they had difficulties because of
the hostility of the Indians; and where the junction point was no one
could say. On the chance Colonel Rondon had directed one of his
subordinate officers, Lieutenant Pyrineus, to try to meet us, with
boats and provisions, by ascending the Aripuanan to the point of entry
of its first big affluent. This was the course followed when Amilcar
had been directed to try to meet the explorers who in 1909 came down
the Gy-Parana. At that time the effort was a failure, and the two
parties never met; but we might have better luck, and in any event the
chance was worth taking.
On the morning following our camping by the mouth of the Rio Kermit,
Colonel Rondon took a good deal of pains in getting a big post set up
at the entry of the smaller river into the Duvida. Then he summoned
me, and all the others, to attend the ceremony of its erection. We
found the camaradas drawn up in line, and the colonel preparing to
read aloud "the orders of the day." To the post was nailed a board
with "Rio Kermit" on it; and the colonel read the orders reciting that
by the direction of the Brazilian Government, and inasmuch as the
unknown river was evidently a great river, he formally christened it
the Rio Roosevelt. This was a complete surprise to me. Both Lauro
Miller and Colonel Rondon had spoken to me on the subject, and I had
urged, and Kermit had urged, as strongly as possible, that the name be
kept as Rio da Duvida. We felt that the "River of Doubt" was an
unusually good name; and it is always well to keep a name of this
character. But my kind friends insisted otherwise, and it would have
been churlish of me to object longer. I was much touched by their
action, and by the ceremony itself. At the conclusion of the reading
Colonel Rondon led in cheers for the United States and then for me and
for Kermit; and the camaradas cheered with a will. I proposed three
cheers for Brazil and then for Colonel Rondon, and Lyra, and the
doctor, and then for all the camaradas. Then Lyra said that everybody
had been cheered except Cherrie; and so we all gave three cheers for
Cherrie, and the meeting broke up in high good humor.
Immediately afterward the walkers set off on their march downstream,
looking for good canoe trees. In a quarter of an hour we followed with
the canoes. As often as we overtook them we halted until they had
again gone a good distance ahead. They soon found fresh Indian sign,
and actually heard the Indians; but the latter fled in panic. They
came on a little Indian fishing village, just abandoned. The three
low, oblong huts, of palm leaves, had each an entrance for a man on
all fours, but no other opening. They were dark inside, doubtless as a
protection against the swarms of biting flies. On a pole in this
village an axe, a knife, and some strings of red beads were left, with
the hope that the Indians would return, find the gifts, and realize
that we were friendly. We saw further Indian sign on both sides of the
river.
After about two hours and a half we came on a little river entering
from the east. It was broad but shallow, and at the point of entrance
rushed down, green and white, over a sharply inclined sheet of rock.
It was a lovely sight and we halted to admire it. Then on we went,
until, when we had covered about eight kilometres, we came on a
stretch of rapids. The canoes ran them with about a third of the
loads, the other loads being carried on the men's shoulders. At the
foot of the rapids we camped, as there were several good canoe trees
near, and we had decided to build two rather small canoes. After dark
the stars came out; but in the deep forest the glory of the stars in
the night of the sky, the serene radiance of the moon, the splendor of
sunrise and sunset, are never seen as they are seen on the vast open
plains.
The following day, the 19th, the men began work on the canoes. The
ill-fated big canoe had been made of wood so hard that it was
difficult to work, and so heavy that the chips sank like lead in the
water. But these trees were araputangas, with wood which was easier to
work, and which floated. Great buttresses, or flanges, jutted out from
their trunks at the base, and they bore big hard nuts or fruits which
stood erect at the ends of the branches. The first tree felled proved
rotten, and moreover it was chopped so that it smashed a number of
lesser trees into the kitchen, overthrowing everything, but not
inflicting serious damage. Hardworking, willing, and tough though the
camaradas were, they naturally did not have the skill of northern
lumberjacks.
We hoped to finish the two canoes in three days. A space was cleared
in the forest for our tents. Among the taller trees grew huge-leafed
pacovas, or wild bananas. We bathed and swam in the river, although in
it we caught piranhas. Carregadores ants swarmed all around our camp.
As many of the nearest of their holes as we could we stopped with
fire; but at night some of them got into our tents and ate things we
could ill spare. In the early morning a column of foraging ants
appeared, and we drove them back, also with fire. When the sky was not
overcast the sun was very hot, and we spread out everything to dry.
There were many wonderful butterflies round about, but only a few
birds. Yet in the early morning and late afternoon there was some
attractive bird music in the woods. The two best performers were our
old friend the false bellbird, with its series of ringing whistles,
and a shy, attractive ant-thrush. The latter walked much on the
ground, with dainty movements, curtseying and raising its tail; and in
accent and sequence, although not in tone or time, its song resembled
that of our white-throated sparrow.
It was three weeks since we had started down the River of Doubt. We
had come along its winding course about 140 kilometres, with a descent
of somewhere in the neighborhood of 124 metres. It had been slow
progress. We could not tell what physical obstacles were ahead of us,
nor whether the Indians would be actively hostile. But a river
normally describes in its course a parabola, the steep descent being
in the upper part; and we hoped that in the future we should not have
to encounter so many and such difficult rapids as we had already
encountered, and that therefore we would make better time--a hope
destined to failure.
IX. DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER INTO THE EQUATORIAL FOREST
The mightiest river in the world is the Amazon. It runs from west to
east, from the sunset to the sunrise, from the Andes to the Atlantic.
The main stream flows almost along the equator, while the basin which
contains its affluents extends many degrees north and south of the
equator. The gigantic equatorial river basin is filled with an immense
forest, the largest in the world, with which no other forest can be
compared save those of western Africa and Malaysia. We were within the
southern boundary of this great equatorial forest, on a river which
was not merely unknown but unguessed at, no geographer having ever
suspected its existence. This river flowed northward toward the
equator, but whither it would go, whether it would turn one way or
another, the length of its course, where it would come out, the
character of the stream itself, and the character of the dwellers
along its banks--all these things were yet to be discovered.
One morning while the canoes were being built Kermit and I walked a
few kilometres down the river and surveyed the next rapids below. The
vast still forest was almost empty of life. We found old Indian signs.
There were very few birds, and these in the tops of the tall trees. We
saw a recent tapir track; and under a cajazeira tree by the bank there
were the tracks of capybaras which had been eating the fallen fruit.
This fruit is delicious and would make a valuable addition to our
orchards. The tree although tropical is hardy, thrives when
domesticated, and propagates rapidly from shoots. The Department of
Agriculture should try whether it would not grow in southern
California and Florida. This was the tree from which the doctor's
family name was taken. His parental grandfather, although of
Portuguese blood, was an intensely patriotic Brazilian. He was a very
young man when the independence of Brazil was declared, and did not
wish to keep the Portuguese family name; so he changed it to that of
the fine Brazilian tree in question. Such change of family names is
common in Brazil. Doctor Vital Brazil, the student of poisonous
serpents, was given his name by his father, whose own family name was
entirely different; and his brother's name was again different.
There were tremendous downpours of rain, lasting for a couple of hours
and accompanied by thunder and lightning. But on the whole it seemed
as if the rains were less heavy and continuous than they had been. We
all of us had to help in building the canoes now and then. Kermit,
accompanied by Antonio the Parecis and Joao, crossed the river and
walked back to the little river that had entered from the east, so as
to bring back a report of it to Colonel Rondon. Lyra took
observations, by the sun and by the stars. We were in about latitude
11 degrees 2 minutes south, and due north of where we had started. The
river had wound so that we had gone two miles for every one we made
northward. Our progress had been very slow; and until we got out of
the region of incessant rapids, with their attendant labor and hazard,
it was not likely that we should go much faster.
On the morning of March 22 we started in our six canoes. We made ten
kilometres. Twenty minutes after starting we came to the first rapids.
Here every one walked except the three best paddlers, who took the
canoes down in succession--an hour's job. Soon after this we struck a
bees' nest in the top of a tree overhanging the river; our steersman
climbed out and robbed it, but, alas! lost the honey on the way back.
We came to a small steep fall which we did not dare run in our over-
laden, clumsy, and cranky dugouts. Fortunately, we were able to follow
a deep canal which led off for a kilometre, returning just below the
falls, fifty yards from where it had started. Then, having been in the
boats and in motion only one hour and a half, we came to a long
stretch of rapids which it took us six hours to descend, and we camped
at the foot. Everything was taken out of the canoes, and they were run
down in succession. At one difficult and perilous place they were let
down by ropes; and even thus we almost lost one.
We went down the right bank. On the opposite bank was an Indian
village, evidently inhabited only during the dry season. The marks on
the stumps of trees showed that these Indians had axes and knives; and
there were old fields in which maize, beans, and cotton had been
grown. The forest dripped and steamed. Rubber-trees were plentiful. At
one point the tops of a group of tall trees were covered with yellow-
white blossoms. Others bore red blossoms. Many of the big trees, of
different kinds, were buttressed at the base with great thin walls of
wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, showed an even
stranger peculiarity. The trunk, near the base, but sometimes six or
eight feet from the ground, was split into a dozen or twenty branches
or small trunks which sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming
a root. The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were
seated on the tops of the pole frames of Indian tepees. At one point
in the stream, to our great surprise, we saw a flying fish. It skimmed
the water like a swallow for over twenty yards.
Although we made only ten kilometres we worked hard all day. The last
canoes were brought down and moored to the bank at nightfall. Our
tents were pitched in the darkness.
Next day we made thirteen kilometres. We ran, all told, a little over
an hour and three-quarters. Seven hours were spent in getting past a
series of rapids at which the portage, over rocky and difficult
ground, was a kilometre long. The canoes were run down empty--a
hazardous run, in which one of them upset.
Yet while we were actually on the river, paddling and floating
downstream along the reaches of swift, smooth water, it was very
lovely. When we started in the morning the day was overcast and the
air was heavy with vapor. Ahead of us the shrouded river stretched
between dim walls of forest, half seen in the mist. Then the sun
burned up the fog, and loomed through it in a red splendor that
changed first to gold and then to molten white. In the dazzling light,
under the brilliant blue of the sky, every detail of the magnificent
forest was vivid to the eye: the great trees, the network of bush
ropes, the caverns of greenery, where thick-leaved vines covered all
things else. Wherever there was a hidden boulder the surface of the
current was broken by waves. In one place, in midstream, a pyramidal
rock thrust itself six feet above the surface of the river. On the
banks we found fresh Indian sign.
At home in Vermont Cherrie is a farmer, with a farm of six hundred
acres, most of it woodland. As we sat at the foot of the rapids,
watching for the last dugouts with their naked paddlers to swing into
sight round the bend through the white water, we talked of the
northern spring that was just beginning. He sells cream, eggs,
poultry, potatoes, honey, occasionally pork and veal; but at this
season it was the time for the maple sugar crop. He has a sugar
orchard, where he taps twelve hundred trees and hopes soon to tap as
many more in addition. Said Cherrie: "It's a busy time now for Fred
Rice"--Fred Rice is the hired man, and in sugar time the Cherrie boys
help him with enthusiasm, and, moreover, are paid with exact justice
for the work they do. There is much wild life about the farm, although
it is near Brattleboro. One night in early spring a bear left his
tracks near the sugar house; and now and then in summer Cherrie has
had to sleep in the garden to keep the deer away from the beans,
cabbages, and beets.
There was not much bird life in the forest, but Cherrie kept getting
species new to the collection. At this camp he shot an interesting
little ant-thrush. It was the size of a warbler, jet-black, with white
under-surfaces of the wings and tail, white on the tail-feathers, and
a large spot of white on the back, normally almost concealed, the
feathers on the back being long and fluffy. When he shot the bird, a
male, it was showing off before a dull-colored little bird, doubtless
the female; and the chief feature of the display was this white spot
on the back. The white feathers were raised and displayed so that the
spot flashed like the "chrysanthemum" on a prongbuck whose curiosity
has been aroused. In the gloom of the forest the bird was hard to see,
but the flashing of this patch of white feathers revealed it at once,
attracting immediate attention. It was an excellent example of a
coloration mark which served a purely advertising purpose; apparently
it was part of a courtship display. The bird was about thirty feet up
in the branches.
In the morning, just before leaving this camp, a tapir swam across
stream a little way above us; but unfortunately we could not get a
shot at it. An ample supply of tapir beef would have meant much to us.
We had started with fifty days' rations; but this by no means meant
full rations, in the sense of giving every man all he wanted to eat.
We had two meals a day, and were on rather short commons--both our
mess and the camaradas'--except when we got plenty of palm-tops. For
our mess we had the boxes chosen by Fiala, each containing a day's
rations for six men, our number. But we made each box last a day and a
half, or at times two days, and in addition we gave some of the food
to the camaradas. It was only on the rare occasions when we had killed
some monkeys or curassows, or caught some fish, that everybody had
enough. We would have welcomed that tapir. So far the game, fish, and
fruit had been too scarce to be an element of weight in our food
supply. In an exploring trip like ours, through a difficult and
utterly unknown country, especially if densely forested, there is
little time to halt, and game cannot be counted on. It is only in
lands like our own West thirty years ago, like South Africa in the
middle of the last century, like East Africa to-day that game can be
made the chief food supply. On this trip our only substantial food
supply from the country hitherto had been that furnished by the
palmtops. Two men were detailed every day to cut down palms for food.
A kilometre and a half after leaving this camp we came on a stretch of
big rapids. The river here twists in loops, and we had heard the
roaring of these rapids the previous afternoon. Then we passed out of
earshot of them; but Antonio Correa, our best waterman, insisted all
along that the roaring meant rapids worse than any we had encountered
for some days. "I was brought up in the water, and I know it like a
fish, and all its sounds," said he. He was right. We had to carry the
loads nearly a kilometre that afternoon, and the canoes were pulled
out on the bank so that they might be in readiness to be dragged
overland next day. Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Correa explored
both sides of the river. On the opposite or left bank they found the
mouth of a considerable river, bigger than the Rio Kermit, flowing in
from the west and making its entrance in the middle of the rapids.
This river we christened the Taunay, in honor of a distinguished
Brazilian, an explorer, a soldier, a senator, who was also a writer of
note. Kermit had with him two of his novels, and I had read one of his
books dealing with a disastrous retreat during the Paraguayan
war.
Next morning, the 25th, the canoes were brought down. A path was
chopped for them and rollers laid; and half-way down the rapids Lyra
and Kermit, who were overseeing the work as well as doing their share
of the pushing and hauling, got them into a canal of smooth water,
which saved much severe labor. As our food supply lowered we were
constantly more desirous of economizing the strength of the men. One
day more would complete a month since we had embarked on the Duvida as
we had started in February, the lunar and calendar months coincided.
We had used up over half our provisions. We had come only a trifle
over 160 kilometres, thanks to the character and number of the rapids.
We believed we had three or four times the distance yet to go before
coming to a part of the river where we might hope to meet assistance,
either from rubber-gatherers, or from Pyrineus, if he were really
coming up the river which we were going down. If the rapids continued
to be as they had been it could not be much more than three weeks
before we were in straits for food, aside from the ever-present danger
of accident in the rapids; and if our progress were no faster than it
had been--and we were straining to do our best--we would in such event
still have several hundreds of kilometres of unknown river before us.
We could not even hazard a guess at what was in front. The river was
now a really big river, and it seemed impossible that it could flow
either into the Gy-Parana or the Tapajos. It was possible that it went
into the Canuma, a big affluent of the Madeira low down, and next to
the Tapajos. It was more probable that it was the headwaters of the
Aripuanan, a river which, as I have said, was not even named on the
excellent English map of Brazil I carried. Nothing but the mouth had
been known to any geographer; but the lower course had long been known
to rubber-gatherers, and recently a commission from the government of
Amazonas had partway ascended one branch of it--not as far as the
rubber-gatherers had gone, and, as it turned out, not the branch we
came down.
Two of our men were down with fever. Another man, Julio, a fellow of
powerful frame, was utterly worthless, being an inborn, lazy shirk
with the heart of a ferocious cur in the body of a bullock. The others
were good men, some of them very good indeed. They were under the
immediate supervision of Pedrinho Craveiro, who was first-class in
every way.
This camp was very lovely. It was on the edge of a bay, into which the
river broadened immediately below the rapids. There was a beach of
white sand, where we bathed and washed our clothes. All around us, and
across the bay, and on both sides of the long water-street made by the
river, rose the splendid forest. There were flocks of parakeets
colored green, blue, and red. Big toucans called overhead, lustrous
green-black in color, with white throats, red gorgets, red-and-yellow
tail coverts, and huge black-and-yellow bills. Here the soil was
fertile; it will be a fine site for a coffee-plantation when this
region is open to settlement. Surely such a rich and fertile land
cannot be permitted to remain idle, to lie as a tenantless wilderness,
while there are such teeming swarms of human beings in the
overcrowded, over-peopled countries of the Old World. The very rapids
and waterfalls which now make the navigation of the river so difficult
and dangerous would drive electric trolleys up and down its whole
length and far out on either side, and run mills and factories, and
lighten the labor on farms. With the incoming of settlement and with
the steady growth of knowledge how to fight and control tropical
diseases, fear of danger to health would vanish. A land like this is a
hard land for the first explorers, and perhaps for their immediate
followers, but not for the people who come after them.
In mid-afternoon we were once more in the canoes; but we had paddled
with the current only a few minutes, we had gone only a kilometre,
when the roar of rapids in front again forced us to haul up to the
bank. As usual, Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit, with Antonio Correa,
explored both sides while camp was being pitched. The rapids were
longer and of steeper descent than the last, but on the opposite or
western side there was a passage down which we thought we could get
the empty dugouts at the cost of dragging them only a few yards at one
spot. The loads were to be carried down the hither bank, for a
kilometre, to the smooth water. The river foamed between great rounded
masses of rock, and at one point there was a sheer fall of six or
eight feet. We found and ate wild pineapples. Wild beans were in
flower. At dinner we had a toucan and a couple of parrots, which were
very good.
All next day was spent by Lyra in superintending our three best
watermen as they took the canoes down the west side of the rapids, to
the foot, at the spot to which the camp had meantime been shifted. In
the forest some of the huge sipas, or rope vines, which were as big as
cables, bore clusters of fragrant flowers. The men found several
honey-trees, and fruits of various kinds, and small cocoanuts; they
chopped down an ample number of palms, for the palm-cabbage; and, most
important of all, they gathered a quantity of big Brazil-nuts, which
when roasted tasted like the best of chestnuts and are nutritious; and
they caught a number of big piranhas, which were good eating. So we
all had a feast, and everybody had enough to eat and was happy.
By these rapids, at the fall, Cherrie found some strange carvings on a
bare mass of rock. They were evidently made by men a long time ago. As
far as is known, the Indians thereabouts make no such figures now.
They were in two groups, one on the surface of the rock facing the
land, the other on that facing the water. The latter were nearly
obliterated. The former were in good preservation, the figures sharply
cut into the rock. They consisted, upon the upper flat part of the
rock, of four multiple circles with a dot in the middle (O), very
accurately made and about a foot and a half in diameter; and below
them, on the side of the rock, four multiple m's or inverted w's (M).
What these curious symbols represented, or who made them, we could
not, of course, form the slightest idea. It may be that in a very
remote past some Indian tribes of comparatively advanced culture had
penetrated to this lovely river, just as we had now come to it. Before
white men came to South America there had already existed therein
various semi-civilizations, some rude, others fairly advanced, which
rose, flourished, and persisted through immemorial ages, and then
vanished. The vicissitudes in the history of humanity during its stay
on this southern continent have been as strange, varied, and
inexplicable as paleontology shows to have been the case, on the same
continent, in the history of the higher forms of animal life during
the age of mammals. Colonel Rondon stated that such figures as these
are not found anywhere else in Matto Grosso where he has been, and
therefore it was all the more strange to find them in this one place
on the unknown river, never before visited by white men, which we were
descending.
Next morning we went about three kilometers before coming to some
steep hills, beautiful to look upon, clad as they were in dense, tall,
tropical forest, but ominous of new rapids. Sure enough, at their foot
we had to haul up and prepare for a long portage. The canoes we ran
down empty. Even so, we were within an ace of losing two, the lashed
couple in which I ordinarily journeyed. In a sharp bend of the rapids,
between two big curls, they were swept among the boulders and under
the matted branches which stretched out from the bank. They filled,
and the racing current pinned them where they were, one partly on the
other. All of us had to help get them clear. Their fastenings were
chopped asunder with axes. Kermit and half a dozen of the men,
stripped to the skin, made their way to a small rock island in the
little falls just above the canoes, and let down a rope which we tied
to the outermost canoe. The rest of us, up to our armpits and barely
able to keep our footing as we slipped and stumbled among the boulders
in the swift current, lifted and shoved while Kermit and his men
pulled the rope and fastened the slack to a half-submerged tree. Each
canoe in succession was hauled up the little rock island, baled, and
then taken down in safety by two paddlers. It was nearly four o'clock
before we were again ready to start, having been delayed by a rain-
storm so heavy that we could not see across the river. Ten minutes'
run took us to the head of another series of rapids; the exploring
party returned with the news that we had an all day's job ahead of us;
and we made camp in the rain, which did not matter much, as we were
already drenched through. It was impossible, with the wet wood, to
make a fire sufficiently hot to dry all our soggy things, for the rain
was still falling. A tapir was seen from our boat, but, as at the
moment we were being whisked round in a complete circle by a
whirlpool, I did not myself see it in time to shoot.
Next morning we went down a kilometre, and then landed on the other
side of the river. The canoes were run down, and the loads carried to
the other side of a little river coming in from the west, which
Colonel Rondon christened Cherrie River. Across this we went on a
bridge consisting of a huge tree felled by Macario, one of our best
men. Here we camped, while Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Correa
explored what was ahead. They were absent until mid-afternoon. Then
they returned with the news that we were among ranges of low
mountains, utterly different in formation from the high plateau region
to which the first rapids, those we had come to on the 2nd of March,
belonged. Through the first range of these mountains the river ran in
a gorge, some three kilometres long, immediately ahead of us. The
ground was so rough and steep that it would be impossible to drag the
canoes over it and difficult enough to carry the loads; and the rapids
were so bad, containing several falls, one of at least ten metres in
height, that it was doubtful how many of the canoes we could get down
them. Kermit, who was the only man with much experience of rope work,
was the only man who believed we could get the canoes down at all; and
it was, of course, possible that we should have to build new ones at
the foot to supply the place of any that were lost or left behind. In
view of the length and character of the portage, and of all the
unpleasant possibilities that were ahead, and of the need of keeping
every pound of food, it was necessary to reduce weight in every
possible way and to throw away everything except the barest
necessities.
We thought we had reduced our baggage before; but now we cut to the
bone. We kept the fly for all six of us to sleep under. Kermit's shoes
had gone, thanks to the amount of work in the water which he had been
doing; and he took the pair I had been wearing, while I put on my
spare pair. In addition to the clothes I wore, I kept one set of
pajamas, a spare pair of drawers, a spare pair of socks, half a dozen
handkerchiefs, my wash-kit, my pocket medicine-case, and a little bag
containing my spare spectacles, gun-grease, some adhesive plaster,
some needles and thread, the "fly-dope," and my purse and letter of
credit, to be used at Manaos. All of these went into the bag
containing my cot, blanket, and mosquito-net. I also carried a
cartridge-bag containing my cartridges, head-net, and gauntlets.
Kermit cut down even closer; and the others about as close.
The last three days of March we spent in getting to the foot of the
rapids in this gorge. Lyra and Kermit, with four of the best watermen,
handled the empty canoes. The work was not only difficult and
laborious in the extreme, but hazardous; for the walls of the gorge
were so sheer that at the worst places they had to cling to narrow
shelves on the face of the rock, while letting the canoes down with
ropes. Meanwhile Rondon surveyed and cut a trail for the burden-
bearers, and superintended the portage of the loads. The rocky sides
of the gorge were too steep for laden men to attempt to traverse them.
Accordingly the trail had to go over the top of the mountain, both the
ascent and the descent of the rock-strewn, forest-clad slopes being
very steep. It was hard work to carry loads over such a trail. From
the top of the mountain, through an opening in the trees on the edge
of a cliff, there was a beautiful view of the country ahead. All
around and in front of us there were ranges of low mountains about the
height of the lower ridges of the Alleghenies. Their sides were steep
and they were covered with the matted growth of the tropical forest.
Our next camping-place, at the foot of the gorge, was almost beneath
us, and from thence the river ran in a straight line, flecked with
white water, for about a kilometre. Then it disappeared behind and
between mountain ridges, which we supposed meant further rapids. It
was a view well worth seeing; but, beautiful although the country
ahead of us was, its character was such as to promise further
hardships, difficulty, and exhausting labor, and especially further
delay; and delay was a serious matter to men whose food supply was
beginning to run short, whose equipment was reduced to the minimum,
who for a month, with the utmost toil, had made very slow progress,
and who had no idea of either the distance or the difficulties of the
route in front of them.
There was not much life in the woods, big or little. Small birds were
rare, although Cherrie's unwearied efforts were rewarded from time to
time by a species new to the collection. There were tracks of tapir,
deer, and agouti; and if we had taken two or three days to devote to
nothing else than hunting them we might perchance have killed
something; but the chance was much too uncertain, the work we were
doing was too hard and wearing, and the need of pressing forward
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