THE BOLACHAS OF RUBBER ARE THREADED ON LONG ROPES.
At this cataract the lightened batalones themselves could be run through, and the whole of three crews would be concentrated in one for the passage. Out into the eddies it would sweep with thirty paddles straining over the high freeboard, giving it, in the distance, the appearance of some huge and absurd water-bug. Six weeks it would be before they would land in San Antonio, and then two, perhaps three months more with their cargo of merchandise working back against the river. With the killing work in the blazing sun, swimming or portaging from the crack of dawn until dark, and a palm mat thrown on the sand-bar at night, it is small wonder that rarely a crew comes back from a trip with its full roster. Even their rugged animal physique is not proof against the continuous exposure and hardship. In addition, there are the savages. One expedition is still talked of where out of three batalones that started with their crews, only three men returned.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE FALLS OF THE MADEIRA AND HOME
Slowly cataract after cataract was passed Madeira, Misericordia, Riberon—with three long portages that consumed a day and a half—Araras, Tres Hermanos, Perdonera, Paredon, Calderon de Infierno (“Kettle of Hell”), which was a series of cool, shaded channels among a multitude of islands, and finally resulted in but a single portage around a tiny cascade, although in high water the Calderon de Infierno lived well up to its name; then came Geraos and Teotonio, two cataracts that challenged comparison with the rapids below Niagara, though shorter.
DRAGGING A “BATALON” AROUND A PORTAGE OF THE MADEIRA FALLS.
Between two of the cataracts from up a little tributary river there had been reports of newly discovered rubber forests; the frontier had blazed as though over a bonanza gold field; tremendous tales of the daily pick were told, thirty, forty pounds of pure rubber a day! Expeditions outfitted for a long stay were following one another to claim territory and we knew at the mouth of that river was a rough headquarters where there would be company in the night’s camp and the pleasant interchange of rumor. So we made no camp at sunset, though the crew murmured. It was pitch black, the overcast sky shrouded even the faint starlight. We literally felt our way close by the high bank, while the paddles slipped through the water with scarcely an audible drip. The little animals of the night scuttled on the bank, and out of the darkness would gleam tiny, scared eyes.
Suddenly from near the bow came the heavy lap of a tongue upon the current not a paddle’s length away. An Indian dashed a paddleful of water at the sound, and with a startled crash against the brush there was a heavy leap to the bank above, and there came the low, rippling snarl of a jaguar and the sound of scattering leaves as its angry tail whipped the undergrowth. With cocked rifles we waited for the gleam of eyeballs—to have fired without that much chance would have made the spring certain—and motionless the crew let the canoe drift past. It seemed an age!
An hour more, and we came to the mouth of the little tributary. A dozen batalones were moored along the narrow beach vaguely outlined in the camp-fires along the bank, and back of them were the rough huts that a Brazilian had already erected at this point. Here and there the feasting crews were gorging themselves on monkey and half-burned strips of tapir, while a tin can of alcohol and a gourd dipper were free to all. A short distance up the river the savages had appeared that morning, and one of their men lay dead back in the jungle, while another was in one of the huts with an arrow-hole through his breast. In the main shack a few rods off was a woman, white, pure Brazilian, who spoke in the low, soft modulations of a far-off civilization, and who, by any of the standards of all the ages, was a beauty. She wore the simple, single gown of the frontier, with an undergarment; her black hair was coiled in a flowing mass that curved low over her forehead, and over one ear was the brilliant blossom of some jungle-flower. She was playing a guitar, swinging with white, slender bare feet in an elaborate hammock against a background of rubber-traders, native adventurers, and half-breeds, where the smoking candles dimly outlined their rifles and belted cartridges. A drunken, half-savage woman, her maid probably, whined a maudlin, gibberish, and over all rose the pungent smell of rubber from the bolachas piled in the farther shadows of the hut. It was like the touch of fantastic fiction.
At the cataract of Geraos a Brazilian rubber-trader was trying to portage his batalon and cargo with a half-mutinous, lazy crew of Brazilian negroes. A couple of the crew would work shiftlessly while the rest dozed in the shade; it was the last hard portage, and we offered the Brazilian our block and tackle if his crew would help us.