Would the ever-present Spirit, who wrote "Be ye angry" not understand? Would the Master of patience and forbearance, who Himself showed righteous anger, enter into it? Is the Great God, who sees these sheep left without a shepherd, Himself angry? Surely it is well to ask?
"Oh, heavy lies the weight of ill on many hearts, And comforters are needed sore of Christlike touch."
In this village I made inquiries for another servant and guide, and was directed to "Timoteo, the very man." Liking his looks, and being able to come to satisfactory terms, I engaged him as my second helper. Timoteo had a sister called Salvadora (Saviour). She pounded corn in a mortar with a hardwood pestle, and made me another baking of chipá, with which we further burdened the pack-horse, and away we started again, with affectionate farewells and tears, towards the unknown.
Next day we were joined by a traveller who was escaping to the interior. He plainly declared himself as a murderer, and told us he had shot one of the doctors in Asuncion. Through being well connected, he had, after three weeks' detention in prison, been liberated, as he boasted to us, _con todo buen nombre y fama (with good name and report). The relatives of the murdered man, however, did not agree with this verdict, and sought his life. During the day we shot an iguana, and after a meal from its fat tail our new acquaintance, finding the pace too slow for his hasty flight, left us, and I was not sorry. We met a string of bullock carts, each drawn by six animals and having a spare one behind. The lumbering wagons were on their way from the Paraguayan máté fields, and had a load of over two thousand pounds each. Jolting over huge tree-trunks, or anon sinking in a swamp, followed by swarms of gad-flies, the patient animals wended their way.
Here and there one may see by the roadside a large wooden cross, with a rudely carved wooden rooster on the top, while below it are the nails, scourge, hammer, pincers and spear of gruesome crucifixion memory. At other places there are smaller shrines with a statuette of the Virgin inside, and candles invariably burning, provided by the generous wayfarers. It is interesting to note that the old Indians had, at the advent of the Spaniards, cairns of stones along their paths, and the pious Indian would contribute a stone when he passed as an offering to Pachacamac, who would keep away the evil spirits. That custom is still kept up by the Christian (?) Paraguayan, with the difference that now it is given to the Virgin. My guide would get down from his horse when we arrived at these altars, and contribute a stone to the ever-growing heap. If a specially bright one is offered, he told me it was more gratifying to the goddess. Feeling that we were very likely to meet with many evil spirits, Timoteo carefully sought for bright stones. The people are very religious, yet with it all are terribly depraved! The truth is seldom spoken, and my guide was, unfortunately, no exception to the rule. As we left the haunts of men, and difficulties thickened, he would often entreat the help of Holy Mary, but in the same breath would lie and curse!
Sighting a miserable hut, we called to inquire for meat. The master of the house, I discovered, was a leper, and I further learned, on asking if I might water my horses, that the nearest water was three miles away. The man and wife and their large family certainly looked as though water was a luxury too costly to use on the skin. The leper was most hospitable, however; he killed a sheep for us, and we sat down to a feast of mutton. After this we pushed on to water the horses. By sunset we arrived at a cattle ranch near the river Ipané, and there we stayed for the night. At supper all dipped in the same stew-pan, and afterwards rinsed out the mouth with large draughts of water, which they squirted back on the brick floor of the dining-room. The men then smoked cigarettes of tobacco rolled in corn leaves, and the women smoked their six-inch-long cigars. Finding that two of the men understood Spanish, I read some simple parts of scripture to them by the light of a dripping grease lamp. They listened in silence, and wondered at the strange new story. The mosquitoes were so troublesome that a large platform, twenty feet high, had been erected, and after reading all the inmates of the house, with us, ascended the ladder leading to the top. There the mosquitoes did not disturb us, so we slept peacefully on our aerial roost between the fire-flies of the earth and the stars of heaven.
Next day we came to a solitary house, where I noticed strings of meat hung in the sun to dry. This is left, like so many stockings and handkerchiefs, hanging there until it is hard as wood; it will then keep for an indefinite time. There we got a good dinner of fresh beef, and about ten pounds of the dried meat (charqui) to take away with us. At this place I bought two more horses, and we each got a large bullock's horn in which to carry water, swinging from the saddle-tree. I was not sorry to leave this house, for, tearing up the offal around the building, I counted as many as sixty black vultures. Their king, a dirty white bird with crimson neck covered with gore and filth, had already gorged himself with all the blood he could get. "All his sooty subjects stand apart at a respectful distance, whetting their appetites and regaling their nostrils, but never dreaming of an approach to the carcass till their master has sunk into a state of repletion. When the kingly bird, by falling on his side, closing his eyes, and stretching on the ground his unclenched talons, gives notice to his surrounding and expectant subjects that their lord and master has gone to rest, up they hop to the carcass, which in a few minutes is stripped of everything eatable." Here we left the high-road, which is cut through to Punta Pona on the Brazilian frontier, and struck off to the west. Over the grassy plains we made good progress, and by evening were thirty miles farther on our journey. But when we had to cut the path before us through the forest, ten or twelve miles was a good day's work. When the growth was very dense, the morning and evening camps were perhaps only separated by a league. Anon we struggled through a swamp, or the horses stuck fast in a bog, and the carapatas feasted on our blood. "What are carapatas?" you ask. They are leeches, bugs, mosquitos, gad-flies, etc., all compounded into one venomous insect! These voracious green ticks, the size of a bug, are indeed a terrible scourge. They fasten on the body in scores, and when pulled away, either the piece of flesh comes with them or the head of the carapata is torn off. It was easy to pick a hundred of these bugs off the body at night, but it was not easy to sleep after the ordeal! The poor horses, brushing through the branches on which the ticks wait for their prey, were sometimes half covered with them!
As we continued our journey, a house was a rare sight, and soon we came to "the end of Christianity," as Timoteo said, and all civilization was left behind. The sandy road became a track, and then we could no longer follow the path, for there was none to follow. Timoteo had traversed those regions before in search of the mate plant, however, and with my compass I kept the general direction.
After about ten days' travel, during which time we had many reminders that the flesh-pots had been left behind, "Che cane o" (I am tired) was frequently heard. Game was exceedingly scarce, and it was possible to travel for days without sighting any animal or ostrich. We passed no houses, and saw no human beings. For two days we subsisted on hard Indian corn. Water was scarce, and for a week we were unable to wash. Jiggers got into our feet when sleeping on the ground, and these caused great pain and annoyance. Someone has described a jigger as "a cross between Satan and a woodtick." The little insects lay their eggs between the skin and flesh. When the young hatch out, they begin feeding on the blood, and quickly grow half an inch long and cause an intense itching. My feet were swollen so much that I could not get on my riding-boots, and, consequently, my lower limbs were more exposed than ever. If not soon cut out, the flesh around them begins to rot, and mortification sometimes ensues.
On some of the savannas we were able to kill deer and ostrich, but they generally were very scarce. Our fare was varied; sometimes we feaisted on parrot pie or vultures eggs; again we lay down on the hard, stony ground supperless. At such times I would be compelled to rise from time to time and tighten up my belt, until I must have resembled one of the ladies of fashion, so far as the waist was concerned. Again we came to marshy ground, filled with royal duck, teal, water-hens, snipe, etc, and forgot the pangs of past hunger. At such places we would fill our horns and drink the putrid water, or take off our shirts and wash them and our bodies. Mud had to serve for soap. Our washing, spread out on the reeds, would soon dry, and off we would start for another stage.