CHAPTER IV
The Terminus of the Railway—An Unpleasant Incident—The Purchase of Animals—On the March with the Caravan
A great crowd had assembled at the station. The train had hardly stopped when my car was invaded by boisterous people, who embraced me and patted me on the back in the most approved Brazilian style. Before I could inquire who they were, one fellow, more boisterous than the others, informed me that he had purchased a great many mules for me, that he had engaged men for me, and also procured riding and pack-saddles, harness, implements, clothing and bedding for the men he had engaged, and I do not know what else. Everything was paid for. I could return the sum paid out the next day. Another man said he had already prepared a sumptuous apartment for me in the best hotel in the town.
When asked who had instructed them to make such arrangements, they were vague, and on being pressed for an answer gave names of people of whose existence I was perfectly ignorant. Before I could realize what all this meant I discovered—much to my annoyance—that all my baggage had been taken out of the train and had been conveyed to the hotel. I was therefore compelled to proceed there myself, in the company of my new "friends," who shouted everything they had to say at the top of their voices, so that I should not fail to understand. It was already night, and the streets of the town were in such a terrible condition that the overladen carriage—there were people on all the seats, on the box and standing on the steps—nearly turned over on going round corners. The wheels sank up to their axles in mud.
We pulled up at the hotel door, where another crowd of loafers had assembled. I was literally dragged into the hotel—for I had become somewhat reluctant, first on seeing the appearance of the place, then on being met by waves of a nauseating odour which suggested the non-existence of sanitary arrangements and worse.
"Come in, come in!... wait here!" shouted they in a most excited manner, when I expressed a wish to inspect the palatial quarters which they had been good enough to reserve for me.
"Wait a moment!" shouted the landlord, a slumbering, disjointed, murderous-looking creature, whose violent gestures and waving of hands in front of my face were somewhat irritating. He dashed into a room on the ground floor—and we outside could hear an altercation between the loud-voiced proprietor and the plaintive moans of a half-dying man.
A moment later the half-dying man, skeleton-like, with livid eyes, a complexion the colour of a lemon gone bad, and quivering bare legs, was literally dragged out of the bed and roughly thrown out of the door.
"Here is your room!" cried the landlord triumphantly to me, as he flung out of that apartment some cheap canvas bags, clothes—which from birth had been innocent of washing and pressing—and the socks, shoes, and day shirt of the guest who had been ejected.
