Eight hundred miles back, through cañon and mountain torrent, over the giant passes of the inner Andes, lay the Bolivian capital of La Paz, the last civilization from the Pacific shore. Two thousand miles to the eastward from this little frontier nucleus of Rurrenabaque lay the civilization that groped its way westward from the Atlantic, while between were long reaches of desolate rivers, and primitive jungle.
The few whites—refugee mostly; two, I knew, had a price on their heads on the other side of the Andes—popped out of their cane shacks to see me off. Even in these remote parts, where distance is counted in so many days’ travel, the long river-trail to the Atlantic is reckoned out of the ordinary. My big canoe would take me only to the Falls of the Madeira, and yet it would be three months before the crew would return to Rurrenabaque on their slow trip against the current.
My Rurrenabaque host, a dried-up little Englishman who had packed alone on foot over the high passes to this interior, and whose reckless nerve will pass into ultimate legend, flapped about in half-slippered feet as he supervised the loading of my baggage on the batalon that was sluggishly swinging to its vine moorings in the current. His Cholo wife with her flaring skirts, high-heeled, fancy shoes, and pink stockings, fluttered amiably about, while a green macaw and its inseparable companion, a big, gaudy blue-and-yellow macaw, crawled affectionately over her shoulders. Such idle Tacanas, Mojos, or Leccos who incautiously and curiously approached were pounced upon by my host, whose reckless Spanish was somehow intelligible and efficacious. He impressed a little Tacana man to carry my cartridge-belt.
“Wot ho, chico, ’ere you are, grab ’old! Wot ho, sokker el rifle y los balas, ’urry hup—pronto, de prisa, vamonos!” And the naked little Tacana baby—for he was scarcely more than that—trotted proudly along under the little load. “Abaht t’ leave us, wot ho, yus! Goin’ ’ome—I’m goin’ ’ome myself, next year.”
Next year! Wherever you go, however far off the main traveled trails you may drift even into those unmapped spaces where the law is carried in a holster and buckled on the hip, you will find them, American or English, those who are scattered on the fringe of the world—and always they are going home, and always next year! Home! Their home is where they are; their lives, their affections, and the loyal little interests that intertwine and make the home are all about them. And they realize it only vaguely, when they have finally set a date for departure and it begins to loom in the future like approaching disaster in the multitude of little separations. Like my friend they may be compadre—godfather—to half the river; little disputes are laid away unto the day of their arrival, and their word is righteousness to the simple Indian mind; in the land where there is no law they are ready in emergencies to carry justice in the breech of a rifle; they have earned the trust of the weaker, white or native, and stand forth in the full cubits of their real stature—and always they are looking forward to going home, next year! Born from out of poverty and the slums, with a pathetic loyalty they dream of the land in which they have neither ties nor friends and where a fetid alley in some sweated city is hallowed in their vague desire.
THE TACANA BRIDES ADJUSTED FOR THEMSELVES COMFORTABLE NICHES IN THE CARGO.
Down on the gravel beach the Tacana crew was gathering. Each had his own paddle, a light, short-handled affair, with a round blade scarcely larger than a saucer and crudely decorated with native forest dyes. The paddle, a plate, a spoon, a little kettle, a short machete, bow and arrows, or perhaps a gaily painted trade-gun and a red flask of feeble powder, constituted his entire equipment for the many weeks on the river. Indifferent to the white-hot gravel, they pattered in bare feet and tattered clothes—for unlike the Lecco, his near neighbor, the Tacana is careless in his dress—and dumped a bunch of fresh-cut, green platanos in the bow. The soldered tins of rice, strips of charqui, and the boxes of viscocha—a double baked bread as hard as cement that does not mould in the tropic humidity, had already been stored. Two Tacana girls, still children in years, but brides of two of the boys of the crew, waded out and climbed aboard the canoe; the half-breed threw aboard the little sack of mail; I waded out; the vine moorings were cast off, and with a splashing of paddles and the last clattering farewells, we swung out into the Beni’s muddy current. The lonely little group of aliens on the beach fired their rifles in salute, their diminishing figures quivered and blurred in the heated air that boiled up from the hot gravel shore as I emptied my magazine rifle in response, and then they turned and plodded slowly back to their cane shacks.
The sun blazed down on the open canoe, and on each side the heavy jungle dropped to the water’s-edge without the ripple of a leaf, and only our progress fanned the air with a thin, hot zephyr. The Tacana brides adjusted themselves to comfortable niches in the cargo, and chattered gaily with the crew. Once in a while there was a tortuous passage choked with snags that required careful work on the part of the helmsman while the crew, perched on the thwart six on a side, hit up a rapid stroke to fifty-five and once to sixty. The half-breed and I swung our feet over the tiny deck aft and broiled.
