Every sight the traveller sees, however, is not so amusing. As darkness creeps over earth and sky, and the pale moonbeams shed a fitful light, it is most pathetic to see on the shore the dead trunk and limbs of a tree, in the branches of which has been constructed a rude platform, on which some dark-minded Indian has reverently lifted the dead body of his comrade. The night wind, stirring the dry bones and whistling through the empty skull, makes weird music!
The banks of the stream had gradually come nearer and nearer to us, and the great river, stretching one hundred and fifty miles in width where it pours its volume of millions of tons of water into the sea at Montevideo, was here a silver ribbon, not half a mile across.
Far be it from me to convey the idea that life in those latitudes is Eden. The mosquitos and other insects almost drive one mad. The country may truly be called a naturalists' paradise, for butterflies, beetles, and creeping things are multitudinous, but the climate, with its damp, sickly heat, is wholly unsuited to the Anglo-Saxon. Day after day the sun in all his remorseless strength blazes upon the earth, is if desirous of setting the whole world on fire. The thermometer in the shade registered 110, 112 and 114 degrees Fahrenheit, and on one or two memorable days 118 degrees. The heat in our little saloon at times rose as high as 130 degrees, and the perspiration poured down in streams on our almost naked bodies. We seemed to be running right into the brazen sun itself.
One morning the man on the look-out descried deer on the starboard bow, and arms were quickly brought out, ready for use. Our French hunter was just taking aim when it struck me that the deer moved in a strange way. I immediately asked him to desist. Those dark forms in the long grass seemed, to my somewhat trained eyes, naked Indians, and as we drew nearer to them so it proved, and the man was thankful he had withheld his fire.
After steaming for some distance up the river several dug-outs, filled with Guatos Indians, paddled alongside us. An early traveller in those head-waters wrotes of these: "Some of the smaller tribes were but a little removed from the wild brutes of their own jungles. The lowest in the scale, perhaps, were the Guatos, who dwell to the north of the Rio Apa. This tribe consisted of less than one hundred persons, and they were as unapproachable as wild beasts. No other person, Indian or foreigner, could ever come near but they would fly and hide in impenetrable jungles. They had no written language of their own, and lived like unreasoning animals, without laws or religion."
The Guato Indian seems now to be a tame and inoffensive creature, but well able to strike a bargain in the sale of his dug-out canoes, home-made guitars and other curios. In the wrobbling canoe they are very dexterous, as also in the use of their long bows and arrows; the latter have points of sharpened bone. When hungry, they hunt or fish. When thirsty, they drink from the river; and if they wish clothing, wild cotton grows in abundance.
These Indians, living, as they do, along the banks of the river and streams, have recently been frequently visited by the white man on his passage along those natural highways. It is, therefore superfluous for me to add that they are now correspondingly demoralized. It is a most humiliating fact that just in proportion as the paleface advances into lands hitherto given up to the Indian so those races sink. This degeneration showed itself strikingly among the Guatos in their inordinate desire for cachaca, or "firewater." Although extremely cautious and wary in their exchanges to us, refusing to barter a bow and arrows for a shirt, yet, for a bottle of cachaca, they would gladly have given even one of their canoes. These ketchiveyos, twenty or twenty-five feet long by about twenty inches wide, they hollow from the trunk of the cedar, or lapacho tree. This is done with great labor and skill; yet, as I have said, they were boisterously eager to exchange this week's work for that which they knew would lead them to fight and kill one another.
As a mark of special favor, the chief invited me to their little village, a few miles distant. Stepping into one of their canoes—a large, very narrow boat, made of one tree-trunk hollowed out by fire—I was quickly paddled by three naked Indians up a narrow creek, which was almost covered with lotus. The savages, standing in the canoe, worked the paddles with a grace and elegance which the civilized man would fail to acquire, and the narrow craft shot through the water at great speed. The chief sat in silence at the stern. I occupied a palm-fibre mat spread for me amidships. The very few words of Portuguese my companions spoke or understood rendered conversation difficult, so the stillness was broken only by the gentle splash of the paddles. On each side the dense forest seemed absolutely impenetrable, but we at last arrived at an opening. As we drew ashore I noticed that an Indian path led directly inland.
Leaving our dug-out moored with a fibre rope to a large mangrove tree, we started to thread our way through the forest, and finally reached a clearing. Here we came upon a crowd of almost naked and extremely dejected-looking women. Many of these, catching sight of me, sped into the jungle like frightened deer. The chief's wife, however, at a word from him, received me kindly, and after accepting a brass necklace with evident pleasure, showed herself very affable. Poor lost Guatos! Their dejected countenances, miserable grass huts, alive with vermin, and their extreme poverty, were most touching. Inhabiting, as they do, one of the hottest and dampest places on the earth's surface, where mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that they exist at all. Truly, man is a strange being, who can adapt himself to equatorial heat or polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on the ground, and driving away the bloodthirsty mosquitos from their bare backs. For this they use a fan of their own manufacture, made from wild cotton, which there seems to abound. Writing of mosquitos, let me say these Indian specimens were a terror to us all. What numbers we killed! I could write this account in their blood. It was my blood, though—before they got it! Men who hunt the tiger in cool bravery boiled with indignation before these awful pests, which stabbed and stung with marvellous persistency, and disturbed the solitude of nature with their incessant humming. I write the word incessant advisedly, for I learned that there are several kinds of mosquitos. Some work by day and others by night. Naturalists tell us that only the female mosquito bites. Did they take a particular liking to us because we were all males?
Some of the Indians paint their naked bodies in squares, generally with red and black pigment. Their huts were in some cases large, but very poorly constructed. When any members of the tribe are taken sick they are supposed to be "possessed" by a stronger evil power, and the sickness is "starved out." When the malady flies away the life generally accompanies it. The dead are buried under the earth inside the huts, and in some of the dwellings graves are quite numerous. This custom of interior burial has probably been adopted because the wild animals of the forest would otherwise eat the corpse. Horrible to relate, their own half-wild dogs sometimes devour the dead, though an older member of the tribe is generally left home to mount guard.