Across Unknown South America

by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

The company of my men was a great trial to me—a penance I had to bear in silence. What was more, I could not let it appear in the slightest degree that it was a penance to me, if I did not wish to make matters worse. Pusillanimity and fear are two qualities which I cannot quite understand nor admit in men. Hence, it is well to be imagined what I suffered in being with followers who, with the exception of Alcides and Filippe the negro, were afraid of everything.

One of the men had a toothache. His last tooth in the lower jaw was so badly decayed that merely the outside shell remained. No doubt it gave him great pain. I offered to remove it for him—without a guarantee of painless extraction. The fear of greater pain than he endured—even for a few minutes—was too much for him. He would not hear of parting with what remained of the tooth. Result: for twelve consecutive days and nights that fellow cried and moaned incessantly—holding his jaw with both hands while riding a quiet mule, and sobbing hai, hai, hai, hai! all day long at each step of the animal—with variations of hoi, hoi, hoi, hoi, when the mule went a little quicker, and significant loud shrieks of uppeppé, uppeppé, uppeppé when the animal began to trot, giving the rider an extra pang. That intense pain invariably stopped at meal-times, and it did not seem to have an appreciable effect on the man's ravenous appetite. My men never let a chance go by to let their companions share to the fullest extent in their sufferings. They had no consideration whatever for other people's feelings. In all the months they were with me they never once showed the slightest trace of thoughtfulness towards me, or indeed even towards any of their comrades.

Mean to an incredible degree in their nature—and I am certain no one could have been more generous than I was to them in every possible way—they believed that no matter what I did was due to wishing to save money. If I would not allow them to blaze away dozens of cartridges at a rock or a lizard—cartridges were a most expensive luxury in Central Brazil, and, what was more, could not be replaced—it was because I wished to economize. If one day I ate a smaller tin of sardines because I was not so hungry, remarks flew freely about that I was a miser; if I did not pitch a tent because I preferred, for many reasons, sleeping out in the open on fine nights, it was, according to them, because I wished to spare the tent to sell it again at a higher price when I returned home! They discussed these things in a high voice and in a most offensive way, making my hands itch on many occasions and my blood boil. But I had made up my mind that I would never lose my temper with them, nor my calm; and I never did, trying as it was to keep my promise.

With all this meanness of which they were accusing me, these poltroons were clothed in garments such as they had never before possessed in their lives; they were gorging themselves with food such as they had never dreamt of having in their homes, where they had lived like pariah dogs—and huge heaps were thrown daily to the dogs—and they were paid a salary five times higher than they could have possibly earned under Brazilian employers.

What annoyed me a great deal with these men was the really criminal way in which they—notwithstanding my instructions—always tried to smash my cameras and scientific instruments and to injure anything I possessed. Those men were vandals by nature. The more valuable an object was, the greater the pleasure they seemed to take in damaging it.

Thus another and unnecessary burden was placed upon me in order to save my instruments from destruction, not only from natural accidents but through the infamy of my followers. Those fellows seemed to take no pride in anything. Even the beautiful and expensive repeating rifles and automatic pistols I had given each man had been reduced to scrap-iron. Yet they were so scared of Indians that the first time we met some, they handed over to them anything that took their fancy—and which belonged to me, of course—for fear of incurring their ill-favour. During my absence from camp they even gave away to the Indians a handsome dog I had, which I never was able to trace again.

Like all people with a dastardly nature, they could on no account speak the truth—even when it would have been to their advantage. They could never look you straight in the face. Hence, full of distrust for everybody, all the responsibility of every kind of work in connection with the expedition fell upon me. I not only had to do my own scientific work, but had to supervise in its minutest detail all the work done by them, and all the time. It was indeed like travelling with a band of mischievous demented people. The mental strain was considerable for me.

On that day's march we had passed two crosses erected, the Salesians had told me, on the spot where two men had been murdered by passing Brazilians—not by Indians. Their usual way of procedure was to shoot people in the back—never in front—or else when you were asleep. Nearly all carried a razor on their person—not to shave with, but in order to cut people's throats as a vengeance, or even under less provocation. This was usually done in a quick way by severing the artery at the neck while the person to be killed was asleep.

The Brazilians of the interior were almost altogether the descendants of criminal Portuguese, who had been exiled to the country, and intermarried with the lowest possible class of African slaves. They seemed to feel strongly their inferiority when facing a European, and imagined—in which they were not far wrong—the contempt with which, although it was covered by the greatest politeness, one looked down upon them. That was perhaps the only excuse one could offer for their vile behaviour, which, according to their low mental qualities, they liked to display in order to prove their independence and superiority.

We made our camp in a heavenly spot—barring the devilish borrachudo (mosquitoes)—on the bank of a crystal-like streamlet flowing north (elev. 2,200 ft.). We were really fortunate to have excellent and plentiful water all the time. The thermometer went down during the night to a minimum of 54° Fahr. There were more shivers and moans from my men. Only Alcides and Filippe behaved in a manly way. The others were in terror of attacks from the onça pintada (felis onça) or spotted jaguar of Brazil, and of the terrivel tamanduas bandeira, a toothless pachyderm, with a long and hairy tail, long nails, and powerful arms, the embrace of which is said to be sufficient to kill a man, or even a jaguar, so foolish as to endeavour wrestling with it. It had a long protruding nose or proboscis, which it inserted into ant-heaps. A tongue of abnormal length was further pushed out, and then quickly withdrawn when crammed with attacking ants. Ants were its favourite food. Although my men talked all the time of the terrible bandeiras, we never had the good fortune to receive the fond embraces of one.