Owing to bubonic plague, my stay in Corumbá was prolonged. I have been in the city of Bahia when an average of 200 died every day from this terrible disease, so Brazil is beginning to be more careful.
Though steamers were not running, perspiration was. Oh, the heat! In my excursions in and around the town I found that even the mule I had hired, acclimatized as it was to heat and thirst and hunger, began to show signs of fatigue. Can man or beast be expected to work when the temperature stands at 130 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade?
As the natives find bullocks bear the heat better than mules, I procured one of these saddle animals, but it could only travel at a snail's pace. I was indeed thankful to quit the oven of a town when at last quarantine was raised and a Brazilian steamboat called.
Rats were so exceedingly numerous on this packet that they would scamper over our bodies at night. So bold were they that we were compelled to take a cudgel into our berths! A Brazilian passenger declared one morning that he had counted three hundred rats on the cabin floor at one time! I have already referred to Brazilian numbering; perhaps he meant three hundred feet, or seventy-five rats.
With the heat and the rats, supplemented by millions of mosquitos, my
Corumbá journey was not exactly a picnic.
In due time we arrived again at Puerto Martinio, only to hear that our former fellow-passenger, the assassin, had regained his freedom and could be seen walking about the town. But then—well, he was rich, and money does all in Brazil—yea, the priest will even tell you it purchases an entrance into heaven! In worldly matters the people see its power, and in spiritual matters they believe it. If the priest has heard of Peter's answer to Simon—"Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money"—he keeps it to himself. How can he live if he deceives not? Strange indeed is the thought that, three hundred years before the caravels of Portuguese conquerors ever sailed these waters, the law of the Indian ruler of that very part of the country read: "Judges who receive bribes from their clients are to be considered as thieves meriting death." And a clause in the Sacred Book read: "He who kills another condemns his own self." Has the interior of South America gone forward or backward since then? Was the adoration of the Sun more civilizing than the worship of the Virgin?
When we got down into Argentine waters I began to feel cold, and donned an overcoat. Thinking it strange that I should feel thus in the latitude which had in former times been so agreeable, I investigated, and found the thermometer 85 degrees Fah. in the shade. After Corumbá that was cold.
PART V.
URUGUAY
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