Vol. II. To face p. 96.
"Hardly has one crossed the Cordillera when on all sides, on the flanks of the mountains, far off on the plains, in the valleys, the vast virgin forests show as great sombre patches emerging from fields of verdure. Varied as the vegetation which composes them, some seem impenetrable, their huge trees garlanded with lianas and loaded with innumerable parasites. These trees are not of great diameter because, being huddled so closely together, they struggle upward to seek the air and the light.
"Others, undulating in the wind, waving their palmated crests, seem like the parks of some destroyed Eden; they are often so burdened with flowers that when the wind blows it is as though the snow were falling. Some of these forests are incessantly alive with myriads of splendidly coloured birds and monkeys of every species; others, on the contrary, are so full of silence and shadow and mysterious solitude that the traveller might believe himself in a virgin world.
"Everywhere innumerable watercourses drain the country; some contain flakes of gold, but the true wealth of the country is in its vegetation, so marvellously vigorous and varied that even in America the forests of the Amazonian basin are proverbial.
"Although this region lies wholly within the Tropics, it contains every plant and animal to be found under the sun—from the cedar to the banana with its velvet leaves, which never thrives but under the Equator; from the jaguar to the heat-loving monkey gambolling in the sun, and even, in the great plains of the east, from the shepherd watching his flocks to the collector of rubber and the planter of cocoa established beside the rivers or in the depths of the odorous valleys.
"Despite these natural advantages, the greatest to be found on earth, civilized man inhabits this region only at rare and isolated points. This portion of Bolivia is still a wilderness almost unknown, into which the Bolivians of the high plateau, attracted and held by the metalliferous strata from which they strive to tear their treasure, only come by chance to tempt fortune by the exploitation of rubber. As men are everywhere prone to generalize, the territory of Colonias has the reputation of being full of mosquitoes, Indians and wild beasts, each category more dangerous than the other. There is a manifest exaggeration here. Certainly the mosquitoes are an objectionable race, but they are not found everywhere, and as for the Indians, if they have on occasion displayed a certain malevolence—possibly justified, but of which they themselves are always the first victims—they are as a rule invaluable as boatmen and collectors of rubber, and it is regrettable that they are not more numerous. Remain the dangerous wild beasts: well, they fear man far more than he fears them, and moreover they speedily desert such localities as man inhabits or frequents.
"The climate of the territory of Colonias varies according to the proximity of the chain of the Andes, the altitude, the abundance of watercourses, and the direction of the winds. The temperature in May, June and July is mild and agreeable, moderately cool in the morning and evening, varying between 53·6° and 76·6° from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and from 76·6° to 89·6° between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. during the hottest months (September to December). Rarely does the thermometer rise or fall above these extremes. The normal temperature does, however, suffer a sudden fall when the cold south winds blow that are known as surazos; they come in September and produce violent storms with great and almost daily variations in the temperature, which may give rise to affections of the lungs and throat as the sequel to sudden chills. The force and direction of the winds contribute greatly to modify the salubrity of any region; places reputed to be unhealthy have become notably healthy when the forest has been opened or closed in a given direction.
"The great defect of the climate here is the abundance of the rains. They fall continually through the whole rainy season, which lasts from December to May. The vapours of the Atlantic are brought up by the east winds, which are prevalent at this season; on reaching the Cordillera they are chilled as the air expands and loses heat with its increasing altitude; then the vapours condense and fall in torrents of rain, which often lasts for whole days together. But these rains are never cold, so they are not unpleasant as such rains would be in Europe; one braves them without thinking anything of it, as in Europe one braves a summer shower.
"When it does not rain (the dry season lasts from June to November) the climate is delightful; the middle of the day is hot, with a somewhat heavy heat, although the sky is usually covered with a diaphanous mist which tempers the rays of the sun.
"Floods are caused not only by rains in the western mountain regions, but also by local rains. They are dependent on the slope of the surface and the insignificant fall of the rivers. When the larger rivers are full the tributaries rise because their waters are dammed up or even flow backwards. The waters then become stagnant in every sense of the word, and decompose rapidly through the action of the heat and the vegetable and other detritus which they contain; at such times they produce paludian fevers; principally in April and May, when the waters begin to fall and the larger rivers receive the supplies of stagnant waters released from their tributaries. As the fall continues the mud left uncovered on the banks becomes an additional cause of fevers.
"These paludian fevers, which are prevalent more especially during the rainy season, attack more particularly the rubber collectors—an ignorant and primitive population who know nothing of the most elementary rules of hygiene. Careless or imprudent whites pay the same penalty.
"The lack of medical attendance, intemperance, negligence which results in the drinking of stagnant water drawn from pools or swamps or from the river banks; above all, the bites of the mosquito, against which no protection is employed, and which convey malaria to healthy but debilitated persons: these are the causes of the ravages occasioned by paludism in this region, as throughout the Amazon basin.
"These conditions do not obtain throughout the Territory; there are numerous healthy localities as, for example, along the middle reaches of the Madre de Dios, in all parts which lie at any altitude, and in regions not subject to floods where a portion of the forest has been cleared in order to give the beneficent breezes a free course. On the other hand, and we speak from long personal experience, any healthy individual of robust or even average constitution can maintain himself in good health, suffering, in the long run, from nothing worse than a little anæmia, by observing the following rules:
"Do not drink stagnant water unless it has been boiled; if one must drink unboiled water take it from the river, not from the bank, but from the middle of the current; do not walk or ride or exert yourself in the morning fasting; cover the loins with a belt of wool or flannel; take short but frequent baths or douches in order to facilitate perspiration and to avoid congestion of the pores; and in fever belts, or during the rainy season, take daily, as a preventive, four to eight grains of sulphate or hydrochlorate of quinine (in a cachet or compressed in tabloids) as well as a few granules of arsenic; finally, keep to an abundant and nourishing diet and do not forget that the nights being cool it is indispensable to take warm clothing and good blankets; and, most important of all, never omit the protection of mosquito-nets.
"Such is the territory of Colonias and the greater portion of El Beni, a land of magnificent vegetation; it is regarded, not without reason, as a country where tropical agriculture may have a future before it. At present this vast country possesses a population of only some 40,000 to 45,000 inhabitants, without counting its 15,000 to 18,000 wild Indians, a population of which the greater portion if not the whole is occupied in the production and transport of rubber, the chief product of the territory and the neighbouring countries."[20]
The conditions of life and the treatment of the rubber gatherers of the Amazon Valley were brought strongly before the world some years ago by the disclosures of the Putumayo, in Peru, when it was shown that terrible ill-treatment was meted out to the aborigines of the forests, in the greed for rubber. They were shown to be frequently starved, flogged to death, or tortured in various ways, their "crime" being that they would not or could not bring a sufficient quota of rubber. A powerful London company was involved in these scandals, but the directors, when brought before a Parliamentary Commission, protested that they had no knowledge of the matter.
It cannot be doubted that cruelties are still practised on the Indian folk, in the rubber-districts of Peru and Bolivia, under the curtain of the forest, although the authorities of these countries have taken measures to endeavour to prevent these.
The condition of the rubber industry in the Amazon forests are not, of course, all barbarous or uneconomic. It afforded, or affords, a means of livelihood to a considerable number of people, and created wealth where there was little other means of enrichment. It is, to an extreme, unfortunate that the industry is, in parts, a dying one—superseded in large measure by the active rubber plantations of the Straits Settlement, Malaysia and elsewhere. But it remains to be seen if, some day, under better auspices, the Amazon industry will not be revived. It also remains to be seen if the exotic plantations of Malaysia will be permanent, or whether exhaustion of the soil and other matters with what is an exotic industry there may not lead to deterioration, or decrease of the commodity and its yield, although it is to be hoped that such eventualities may not occur.
It is affirmed by experts that wild rubber is superior to plantation rubber. One of the evils of the Malaysian system is that whereby coolie labour is brought in without their women, and consequently no family life is possible among these coloured workers. In the Amazon Valley there are no such restrictions, and under better auspices the native rubber-gatherer could prosper and multiply. Herein lie important matters for the future, especially for that fortunate part of civilized mankind that rides on the rubber tyres of the modern motor-car.
Let us cast a passing glance at a rubber metropolis, here on this mighty South American river, at Manaos, a name familiar at least to the London reader of financial newspapers and to the shareholders of British concerns thereat—for British capital furnishes light, and power, and docks, and other matters, for some of these Amazon river ports.