Tied on the pack, it arrived at the fourth and last fortín of the Monte Grande, Guayritos, a larger clearing surrounded by matorrales or palm-tree swamps, and noted for attacks by the savages. The corporal ordered one of his three men to prepare the turtle. He split it open with a machete and, removing all the meat, spitted the liver, the chief delicacy, on a stick, while I set the rest to boiling. When it had cooked for an hour, the addition of a handful of rice and a chip of salty rock made the most savory repast of several days. All through the cooking Konanz had sat moodily by, fighting clouds of jejenes and smoking furiously for protection. When the meal was ready he refused to touch it. Evidently turtle is not eaten in the German army. But for once the inner man all but overcame the iron discipline of years. It may have been the smoke that brought tears to his eyes as I fell upon the mess; at any rate he moved away from the fire and went to tramp gloomily up and down the edge of the pascana. The thick muscles, that in life are so strong that a man cannot pull a leg from its shell by main force, were of a dark-red meat far superior to the finest chicken—unless appetite deceived me—and almost boneless. The comatose condition induced by the feast lasted with only an occasional break all night, so that I slept considerably, even though the gnats roared about my net like a raging sea on a distant cliff-bound coast, and a few hundred managed to gain admittance.
A tropical shower was raging when we finished loading. Even the soldiers were in a snarling mood. The going was so slippery that it was painful. For long distances there were camelones or barriales, as the interminable corduroy-like mud ridges with troughs of slime between them are called. Every step was perilous, until we were splashed and soaked from hat-crown down; after that a misstep and a sprawl did not matter. Skeletons of oxen were numerous along the way. When the rain ceased, the day remained thick, and the heat was heavy enough to cut with a spade. For long stretches we waded waist-deep through swamps of long green grasses. A few slight pascanas began to break the endless forest. In one of them, and scattered far beyond, we met the first travelers since entering the woods,—four rusty and mud-plastered wagons, hopelessly mired, others with their several yokes of oxen lying indifferently in water, mud, or on dry land.
That afternoon our journey seemed to have come ignominiously to an end. An immense swamp or lake a half-mile wide spread across the trail and far away in both directions into the now thinner forest, the notorious “curiche de Tuná.” We attempted to flank it, only to have a faint side path end in the impassable tangles of an even greater swamp. Wandering in this for an hour, we regained the road at last, and, putting everything damageable in our hats and strapping our revolvers about our necks, attempted the crossing. The lake proved only chest-deep, but the glue-like mud-bottom all but swallowed up the mule, and the pack emerged streaming water from every corner.
The sun was getting low when we sighted a little wooded hill above the sea-flat forest ahead. The road dodged the hillock, however, and we slushed hopelessly on through endless virgin forest. Night was coming on. The insignificance of man in these primeval woods was appalling. Suddenly a large, rail-fenced cornfield appeared in a clearing beside the “road,” but this plunged on again into the wilderness without disclosing any other sign of humanity. Darkness was upon us when a man in white rode out of the gloom ahead, and all but fell from his mule in astonishment. We had passed unseen the branch trail to the scattered hamlet of El Cerro, a score of thatched huts, constituting the first civilian dwelling of man beyond the Rio Grande.
The old stone and brick church and monastery of San José, erected by the Jesuits, typical of the architecture of their “reductions” throughout “Guarani Land”
The fatherly old cura of San José standing before the Jesuit sun-dial in the patio of the ruined monastery, now the free abode of travelers. The all-but-horizontal shadow across the dial shows 6:30 A. M.
CHAPTER XXI
SKIRTING THE GRAN CHACO
We took possession of a galpón, a thatched roof on poles, up in the edge of the jungle. But the anticipated feast was scanty. El Cerro had little to sell and less desire to sell it. Konanz was so completely worn out that he threw himself down supperless, without even swinging his “hang-net.” After a hut to hut canvass I coaxed a cerrito to sell a pound of fresh beef, which, with rice and some little red beans, made such a stew as roused even the German from his stupor. We topped it off with the succulent luxury of an empanisado, a smeary block of crude, dark-brown, unpurified sugar, wrapped in leaves and costing eight times what it would have in the jungles of north Peru. Of this we each ate fully a pound, so great was our craving for sweets. Gnats were few in El Cerro, and we slept such a night as seldom comes to the tropical wanderer.