“But he didn’t give the pump or drive the well,” retorted the boy; “There is plenty of God’s free water over there in the swamp.”
To-day the former captain of cavalry has ten wells to his credit and is trying to get the municipality to let him install an “aeromotor.”
For all his long residence, the Ohioan had by no means reconciled life to the cruceño point of view. His criticisms on this subject were biting. Though the town swarmed with “educated” loafers, well-dressed according to their ideals, it was all but impossible to get native assistants. The youths, egged on by their mothers, flocked to the already overcrowded white-fingered professions, rather than become mechanics or learn to run an engine, two occupations sadly needed in Santa Cruz. As the old man put it, “They won’t come here and learn a good, useful trade, with pay while learning; yet if you throw a stone at a dog anywhere in town and miss him, you are sure to hit a priest, a lawyer, or a doctor—with nothing to do.” The boys he could hire, of the most poverty-stricken families, would not work where anyone could see them. Agapito would tote bricks within the patio without a protest, but he would take his discharge rather than carry a parcel to or from the post-office. The mothers would rather have their daughters earn their living in the local feminine way than have their sons descend to manual labor. A “caballero,” wearing shoes, without socks, requiring his gun repaired to go hunting, could not get it to the shop until he could find an Indian to carry it there.
Bowles was an interesting example of the transplanted American. A man of education and of shrewd native wit, he had developed here in the wilderness a quaint, isolated philosophy of his own, and was one of those rare white men who have spent many years unbrokenly in such an environment and climate without “going to seed.” Not merely was he a wide and reflective reader on all subjects from the scientific to the curious, but still, at seventy-five, produced in the interstices of his labors as chief mechanic of the region authoritative articles for the Buenos Aires, London, and American periodicals. How great a feat this is only those can understand who know the enervating effect on both mind and body of long tropical residence. His staunch individualism and independence of the verdict of the world was little short of startling to those of us who live more nearly in it. Set away in the fastnesses of the earth, with only his own mind to feed upon, instead of having his opinions delivered at his door each morning by the newsboy, he had developed a thinking-machine of his own that grasped firmly whatever it took hold of, and a hard, unsentimental common sense fitted to his environment. His speech carried one back to the Civil War, and his vocabulary had quaint, amusing touches; for the words he had added to it since his migration had been chiefly from books, with rare and brief intercourse with English-speaking persons. Thus his pronunciation of many terms unknown to the world in the seventies had been evolved from his own mind amid his Spanish-tongued environment. He spoke of “alumeénum,” and called the recently discovered cause of all earthly ills “Mee-crów-bays.” Words like “poligamic,” rarely heard from any but scientific mouths, appeared in the same sentence with “ketched,” the past participle of Civil War days. Edison’s noisy invention he called “pho-nó-graph,” but the word “leisurely” he pronounced correctly, not a common American feat.
This New Year’s Day was notable to Bowles for another reason. His youngest son and last effective assistant made his first appearance in the uniform of a Bolivian soldier, and moved from home to the cuartel. Conscription is theoretically universal in Bolivia. On the first day of each year every youth within the republic who has reached his nineteenth birthday must report at the capital of his department, ready for service. Those that are not physically unfit, or have not sufficient influence, are given three months training, after which they draw lots to serve two years at 40 centavos a day. During my time there the plaza of Santa Cruz was overrun with lank country boys and sallow city youths, in most cases still in their civilian garb of baggy, road-worn linen or near-Parisian gente decente attire, awkwardly practicing the right and left face under the commands of youthful officers. By Bolivian law a child born in Bolivia is a Bolivian, whatever the nationality of the father. The Civil War veteran, who had strictly kept his American citizenship, though married to a Bolivian wife, had appealed in vain to the American minister in La Paz. Prospective immigrants to this, as to several other South American countries, should not overlook this point in the future of their children. As Bowles expressed it, “Fifteen hundred bolivianos for every son born in the country is too much tax to pay for the privilege of living in it.” When the time came for choosing by lot the recruits needed to make up the peace quota of the Bolivian army, Teutonic in its discipline and formation, this useful son of an American “drew unlucky” and was obliged to serve two years, though fate had left behind in Santa Cruz many a worthless native loafer.
But the then most widely-known gringo sojourner in Santa Cruz was an Englishman who chose to call himself “Jack Thompson.” His habitat was the departmental prison. His story was well-fitted to the “Penny Dreadful” or the cinema screen. Some years ago “Thompson” and a fellow-countryman had drifted out of the interior of Brazil into Corumbá, and offered to sell their rights to a rubber forest they had discovered. The Teutonic house that showed interest asked them to await a decision, and meanwhile offered them employment in the escort of a party of German employees, peons, and muleteers carrying £7000 in gold to a branch of the establishment in the interior of Bolivia. On the trail a German of the escort drew the Englishmen into a plot to hold up the party. A week or more inland, at a rivulet called Ypias, the trio suddenly fell upon their companions and killed three Germans, a Frenchman, a Bolivian muleteer, and the chola “housekeeper” of the chief of the expedition. The rest scattered into the jungle; except one old Indian arriero who, unable to run, managed to crawl up into the branches of a nearby tree. There he witnessed the second act of the melodrama. For a time the trio remained in peace and concord, washed, drank, and concocted a meal over jungle brush. But soon the question of the division of the gold became a dispute. The German asserted that, as author of the plan, he should take half. The Englishmen insisted on an equal division. The dispute became a quarrel. At length, late in the afternoon, when the unknown observer was ready to drop to the ground and a quick death, from exhaustion, fear, and thirst, the Englishmen fell upon their confederate with a revolver, two rifles, and a sabre. Even a German must succumb under such odds. Leaving the body where it fell, the pair divided the gold, and each swinging a pair of saddlebags over a shoulder, struck off into the trackless jungle, for some reason fancying this a surer escape than to mount mules and dash for safety in Brazil.
Manuel Abasto, a native of Santa Cruz de la Sierra
Through the open doors of Santa Cruz one often catches a glimpse of the patio, a garden gay with flowers