Up the Forked River; Or, Adventures in South America

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

CHAPTER V.

Major Jack Starland decided to make his ambassadorial trip to the Atlamalcan Republic by water instead of land, and to take as his companion, Captain Guzman, though there would have seemed to be slight choice between the two routes.

The Rio Rubio, flowing from the foot of the Andes, eastward to the Atlantic, forks a few miles to the westward of Atlamalco, the two branches reuniting twenty leagues to the eastward. The island thus formed is twenty miles across the widest part, and tapers to the east and west. As if nature aimed to provide for two distinct communities, a precipitous mountain spur, which sprawls several hundred miles north and south, ribs the territory almost mathematically in the centre, and tumbles onward, broken and disjointed, to the shores of the Caribbean Sea. The rumors that gold and diamonds are awaiting garnering in the wild solitudes have roused the earth hunger of more than one powerful nation, but the grim dragon that crouches in the pulsing jungles, on whose forehead flames the legend, “MONROE DOCTRINE,” sends them scudding back across the seas.

The western half of the island forms the Republic of Atlamalco, whose President and Dictator is General Pedro Yozarro; the eastern half constitutes Zalapata, with General Fernando de Bambos at its head. The name “republic,” as applied to the peppery provinces has as much appropriateness as if given to Russia or China. The respective population of the two republics is about the same, and but for the whimsical, intense jealousy that is the most marked peculiarity of South American countries, the two might grow rich, prosperous and of considerable strength, for no region on the globe is more favored in the way of climatic and natural resources.

Major Starland understood the delicate tensity of the relations between Zalapata and Atlamalco. They had been at war before, with the advantage at times on one side and then on the other, the final result being no decisive change in their mutual strength or in their combative propensities. The addition of a “gunboat” to the power of Atlamalco naturally made her more aggressive and demonstrative. President Bambos dreamed of acquiring two similar engines of war, when he would proceed to wipe his hated rival off the earth; but the loan which he tried to float remained inert and the northern barbarians, whose shipyards send forth most of the navies of the world, insisted upon cash or security as preliminary to laying the keels of the Zalapatan fleet. The project therefore hung fire. Though the craft that roamed up and down the bifurcated river was referred to as a gunboat, it was simply an American tug, some seventy-five feet in length, of the same tonnage and with a single six-pounder mounted fore and another aft. From New York it had sneaked southward, so far as possible, through the inland passage to the Gulf of Mexico and then puffed across the Caribbean and so on to the Rio Rubio and thence to its destination.

As intimated, Major Starland had the choice of two routes to the western Republic: one by mule path or trail through the Rubio Mountains, and the other by boat, fifty miles up the Rio Rubio: he chose the latter.

On the morning following the council of war, he and his swarthy friend, Captain Guzman, hoisted sail on their little catboat, at the wharf of the capital, and catching the favoring breeze, curved out into the stream, which was half a mile wide, and began their voyage against a moderate current. Old campaigners like them needed little luggage. The native officer took none at all, while the Major’s was in a small hand bag, which he had brought from his yacht, twenty miles away at San Luis.

The American seated himself at the stern, where he controlled the tiller, while the native lounged on the front seat smoking his eternal cigarette. Behind them the pretty little capital, with its five thousand inhabitants, distributed mostly in adobe huts, shabby and of small dimensions, gradually sank out of sight, and finally vanished behind a bend in the river. To the right, stretched the immense undulating plain of exuberant forest, with its tropical luxuriance, its smothering climate and its overwhelming animal life. The banks on either hand were flat, and so low that a continuous east wind often brought an overflow of the shores for leagues inland. Here and there the bamboo or adobe hut of a native peeped from the rank foliage, and the naked or half-dressed occupants stared stupidly at the craft as it skimmed past. The head of the family lolled on the bank, or in the shade beside his home and smoked; the stolid wife slouched hither and thither like an automaton, plodding at her work or perhaps scratching the ground, that it might laugh a harvest, though oftener her work lay in fighting off the prodigious growth which threatened to strangle everybody and everything. She took her turn at smoking, while the youngsters, most of them without a thread of clothing, frolicked and tumbled in the simple delight of existence. But all these were such common sights to the voyageurs that they gave them no more than passing attention.