Farther down the river is the barraca of the patrón, a large clearing in the forest back from the bank of the river. Here survives feudalism, and justice is administered according to the rough standards of his submissive domain. Somewhere you will find the stocks, with the rows of leg-holes meeting in a pair of great mahogany beams. A pile of chain-and-bar leg-irons lie in a near-by corner, and a twisted bull-hide whip hanging from the thatch above. In an open, unguarded shed beyond was piled thirty thousand dollars’ worth of rubber,—it is only a fraction of the crop,—awaiting shipment, and in the early moonlight we sat with the patrón himself, a bare-footed, cotton-dressed overlord who was scarcely distinguishable from his own debt-slaves. And he, in his turn, was in almost hopeless debt to the commission-houses, who hold him by their yearly advances in trade.
Rarely now did the tolditas swing from their poles in a night camp on a playa; on down the river it became a series of visits—sometimes the daily voyage was longer in the darkness—but vigilance was now no longer needed in choosing a camp, and every night the Tacanas carried our outfit up the bank, where we slept serenely in a rubber-shed. Coffee reappeared, and the Indian wife of the picker or patrón served it at once on our arrival, and then rolled cigarettes from home-grown tobacco. Rubber was the talk—rubber and savages. There was no outside world, and I was a curiosity. The Brazilian boundary was yet a month’s journey with the current to the east, and Rurrenabaque, against the stream, was six weeks of hard travel to the westward. To them La Paz was a vague name, the metropolis of the world, perhaps, if their primitive existence has ever stirred to the idea of a metropolis.
Rubber and savages made their universe! Were the savages bad coming down? Well—they are bad this year down the river farther—a picker was killed last week only a half day’s march from the river. One of his men shot another the other day among the cattle, but two more got away! What will be the price of rubber? The last known price is already three months old in the quotations in Manaos. Money, real money, it was useless. Never had a gold coin looked so feeble and futile as on this river, where merchandise was needed. I bought a big rubber sheet and a rubber bag, and I paid a box of cartridges, a package of pencils, and a fountain-pen such as are peddled on the streets of New York; I was supposed to have the worst of the bargain!
CHAPTER XXV
A NEW CREW AND ANOTHER BATALON
One night we made no camp at sunset, but steadily paddled in the darkness; for the journey was nearly over for the Tacanas, and their paddles dipped in happy, eager rhythm. Then the canoe was beached under what, in the dim starlight, appeared to be a cliff; the crew carried the cargo up the high bank, and there, in scattered groups of twinkling lights, spread the settlement of Riba Alta. It is purely a trading-center where the big rubber houses have their headquarters in widely scattered, high-fenced compounds. There was a church of mud, with a tiny bell; a small detail of Bolivian soldiers and their officer, who, wonderful to relate, spoke English; there were enormous warehouses stacked with goods at startling prices, with French, German, and English clerks who could chatter with the natives in half a score of primitive dialects, and then, in the cool evenings, sip huge gin cocktails from high tumblers and indulge in local slanders. In the room of each was a huge pile of accumulated newspapers from home that they carefully read, one each day, following the successive dates—and the latest was three months old! It was as isolated as a Hudson Bay post of a century ago.
I presented my letters and had a room, a hammock, a shower bath, and filtered water to drink in place of the coffee colored river, and I was disappointed, for the clear, crystal fluid was insipid and tasteless after the long weeks on the Beni. The Tacanas were to rest there a few days and then begin their long slow return to Rurrenabaque and, during that time, I arranged for the last stage of this interior journey on down over the Falls of the Madeira where a river steamer was to be met and the actual frontier had its beginning, or ending. From Riba Alta the Beni becomes the Madeira River, by the addition of the Madre de Dios, the Orton, the Mamoré and the Abuna. And a day’s journey beyond Riba Alta are the first of the Falls of the Madeira. There are fourteen of them scattered along the river for two or three hundred miles, and ordinarily only two can be run, the others being weary portages, and fourteen portages with a heavy mahogany canoe is no light, frivolous trip.
The last canoe that had come up over the falls reported that a steamer from Manaos would arrive and leave the village of San Antonio, at the foot of the last falls, in less than a fortnight, and every effort must be strained in order to make it. If I missed that, there would be six long weeks in that unkempt Brazilian village before the next transport from civilization would arrive. A railroad has now been built around the falls, starting from near San Antonio, and steamers are a little more frequent. Now that road is completed it opens up one of the greatest virgin territories of rubber in the world.
A German rubber-trader in Riba Alta was fortunately leaving for Europe, and we were to join forces. He hunted up a little canoe, about fifteen feet long, but with a disproportionately wide beam that made it look like a coracle. It was as heavy as a scow, and we stowed a block and tackle to drag it over the portages. We needed four paddles and a pilot, for speed and safety cannot be secured without a pilot. His wages were equal to those of our whole crew, a bonus of the cargo space for the return trip, a rifle, and cartridges and also the amount of alcohol necessary to get him into this amiable frame of mind. He knew the cataracts and their condition in the varying stages of high and low water like a book, he could take advantage of the speed of the current and then swing into the portage at the last moment; he shot the possible passages and chose the right bank for a portage; to miss the latter and then work slowly up stream far enough to make a crossing and not get caught in the falls is slow work; while an error of skill in choosing the cataract that may be run may fairly be considered as fatal.
The crew had to be rationed for a six weeks’ trip, down and back, while the persistent rumors of savages made a rifle and cartridges a necessity for their return. The traders in the settlement regarded it as hazardous for us to attempt the trip over the falls with so small a party, but my German friend felt that in the speed with which we could pass each cataract with a light boat there was security, and the crew were indifferent, or confident in the presence of white patróns, and so we started.
In Riba Alta there were two young savages that had been captured in a recent raid far up one of the tributary rivers. One was an Araona and the other was a Maropa. Reared in the dim twilight of the jungles, their eyes were unaccustomed to the brilliant tropic light of the open, and since their capture they would hide in the houses by day and venture forth only in the evening. Their skins were rough and calloused from the jungle growths, and clothing was a delightful novelty, though only a toy. They would array themselves in any garments they could for short play-spells, and then discard them and step blissfully forth in their comfortable nothing.