Across the Andes

by Charles Johnson Post

That was human. Yet even here, before this sprawling, almost human figure, the feeble gesture, and the soft, caressing coo of final request I felt an emotion rising with a solemn dignity; it was life itself that was passing from the pathetic little body. I held back the Tacana who rushed up and the picture is still vivid of the flickering sunlight in the jungle forest, a few fallen leaves flecked with a mortal red, while a full grown white man and an Indian stood back silently in response to the fading appeal of a little, dying monkey.

For the daily hunt the canoe was moored where the jungle met the river, but every evening at early sunset the camp was made at the edge of some broad, sandy playa as far from the forest as possible. Long before camping the Tacanas had kept a shrewd lookout for recent signs of savages, and after chattering among themselves would indicate a playa that seemed proper and secure. The savages, primitive and nomadic, scarcely more than animals, offered no menace by daylight, but in the darkness lies their opportunity. With instinctive adroitness they can crawl through the jungle without a sound and be in the midst of a camp before it is awakened; but in the open spaces they are timid. They will line up fifty yards away and open with an ineffective volley of screeches and arrows.

OFTEN WE PASSED THE LITTLE SHELTER OF PALM LEAVES.

Secure in this custom, the Tacanas set no watch, and we all slept peacefully depending on any savages that might come to furnish the alarm for their own attack. Though signs of them were all about, we were never molested. Often we passed a shelter of palm-leaves by the shore that had been used by some party that had come down to the river to fish; for only in the interior and on the smaller and absolutely virgin rivers and tributaries did they have their headquarters. Sometimes there would be a tiny dugout against the bank, and their camp-fire would send up a thin, blue column of smoke against the purple jungle shadows. The Tacana helmsman would throw the canoe beyond arrow-range, while the crew would cease paddling and call “Ai-i! ai-i!” across the river, the recognized call of amity. Sometimes there would be the glimpse of a timid, naked figure darting from one shadow to the next, a head peeping from behind a tree, and perhaps a wailing “Ai-i! ai-i!” in response, but rarely more.

Once we came upon a little party working their way in a dugout against the current under the bank. The Tacanas looked to their arrows and put fresh percussion-caps on their shot-guns, but the instant the savages spied us they scuttled up the bank and remained in its shadows till we drifted past.

Day after day passed in the slow monotony of routine. The low, flat country never varied; the hot, brazen glare of the Beni’s muddy current rambled in a twisted aimless course ever to the eastward. Always at the dawn the viscocha, or hard biscuit, was soaked to edibility in hot tea, and then we started in the soft, cool stirring of early sunrise. Slowly the cool breeze disappeared, the chatter of the parrots died away, the water fowl aligned themselves in motionless, drying groups, incurious and fearless as we paddled past their sand-bars and, like the opening door of a furnace, there came the fierce heat of the tropic day. The muddy river gave no hint of its depth or channel, and sometimes the canoe would run aground and the Tacanas would tumble overboard, laughing and splashing, to ease her off and then line out, with wide intervals, as skirmishers, to locate a channel that would pass us through the maze of submerged sand-bars. Not a thought was given to the alligators that infested the river, and the Tacana who located the channel would swim carelessly about with huge enjoyment. Again would come the steady splashing of paddles and the double line of rhythmic, swaying Tacana backs; then at noon the daily hunt and the drowsy resting in the forest shade while the Tacana girls busied themselves with the breakfast where a pig, a capibarra or a row of monkeys were slowly roasting on the hot coals.

A Night Camp on the Rio Beni on the Way Out

Rapidly the afternoon wears away until cooler, more mellow glow announces the approaching sunset and then the chatter among the Tacanas as they discuss the signs for the night’s camp. The little tolditas, the mosquito nettings, would sway from their poles in the gentle breeze, a quick supper would evolve from the remains of the noon breakfast and be followed by the issue of the cane-sugar alcohol. Sometimes after dark the Tacanas would paint their faces in streaks with the berries foraged at noon, and grimace and hop about the glowing embers of the fire with shrieks of joy. Any odd grimace or ridiculous streaking caused a riotous outburst, for their minds were as simple as infants’. Once—and it gave them delirious pleasure for a whole night—they set fire to an island of charo, the cane from which the walls of their shacks are made, and all through the darkness it crackled and burst in little explosions, as though a nervous picket-line were protecting our flank.