Two of them, for that matter. For a time next morning it looked as if I should have to continue alone, “packing” my own food and possessions. Konanz liked the appearance of the soil round about El Cerro and was half inclined to settle there. We went to discuss the matter with the horseman of the night before, a Spaniard long resident in the region, I acting as interpreter. But in spite of my over-fairness in trying not to influence his plans, the German decided to push on a few days further, chiefly because the best land was largely held by absentee owners. But he insisted on resting for a day. We removed some of the grime of travel and dried out ourselves and possessions, and in the end even “fed up.” For, seeing us by daylight, the people of El Cerro regained confidence and decided that they had more to sell than they had fancied. For twenty centavos a woman brought us the first bucketful of clear water we had seen beyond Santa Cruz. I canvassed the town thoroughly and gleaned some green plantains, three eggs, and a sheet of charqui, and finally metamorphized sixty centavos into a spring chicken. Most of the inhabitants were too apathetic to plant anything to break the endless monotony of their rice diet, to say nothing of being too selfish to part with what little they did grow. Their clothing consisted of two calico garments and a straw hat for the men and a species of flying night-dress for the women; and their industry was chiefly confined to lying in a hammock in the shade. The women carried their children astride a hip, as in the Orient, the Andean custom of slinging the papoose on the back having entirely disappeared. Each family kept a smudge fire burning just outside the door, as a protection against the jejenes. Rested up and somewhat relieved from the “pinch” of insects, Konanz grew reminiscent and now and then prefaced some characteristically Teutonic anecdote with some such dreamy remark as:
“In China ve every day chip more ass two hunderd heads from der Boxers off.”
Beyond El Cerro the landscape changes. The dense Monte Grande with its glue-like loam gives place to a few suggestions of rocks and hills, and the palm-trees and frondoso vegetation characteristic of Chiquitos appear. From the “Panteón,” a bit of clearing in the jungle, with blackened wooden crosses tied together with jungle creepers standing over the graves of former residents of El Cerro, we caught a short-cut through somewhat thinner forest to the scattered hamlet of Motococito, so named from the motocú with which the roofs are thatched. Then we went on all day without another sight of humanity. Now and again the trail undulated over little rocky ridges, where the woods were a bit more open and the danger from wild Indians—if there ever was any—decreased. All day the unshaded tropical sun beat down upon us like molten lead. In the afternoon an enormous palmar,—a swamp with a sort of leaf-and-bulb growth protruding from the water and thickly grown with slender palm-trees—opened out on our left and we should have had to wade for miles chest-deep but for a new trail recently cut along the edge of the stony, wooded hills, not always out of reach of the rising waters. Birds large and small, from herons to noisy parrakeets, enlivened the vast, flooded wilderness.
About four, we made out through the salt sweat in our eyes the first cattle-ranch beyond the Rio Grande, and soon limped into the corral of the “Estancia Equito,” at the foot of a slight knoll. A large two-story house in wretched condition faced a yard overrun with swine and carpeted with the trodden droppings of animals. From the balcony above, a surly Indian-negro female grumpily gave us permission to spend the night where we were, and offered no further assistance. Konanz had dropped on his back in the first patch of shade and could not be stirred, even to unload the mule; which was as well, for when tired out he was hopelessly rattle-brained and apt to be of more annoyance than assistance. While I piled our possessions into a covered cart out of reach of the militant pigs, he complained of being ill and for the first time accepted some quinine pills. Evidently these are permitted the Kaiser’s troops, once they are visibly ailing. The meanness of the estancieros was so Bolivian that they would not even point out a water-hole. I hobbled about for some time without finding anything better than a hog-wallow, which dogs, fowls, and the Indian servants used indiscriminately. The breath of the cattle corral drove off the insects somewhat, but the inhabitants, two and four-legged, gave us no peace where I had swung the hammocks after much effort. I coaxed the German to his feet, and with half the load on the mule, half on my own back, led the way a few hundred yards down the road to some abandoned reed-and-mud shacks. It required a considerable tramp to gather dry wood, and the water, sickly warm and ill-scented, had to be carried a long distance from a swamp completely covered with a weedy bulb. Luckily, we had acquired in El Cerro the “sister” of yesterday’s chicken, which, in spite of having jolted on the pack all day under the blazing sun, was still half-alive. By the time I had “chipped” off its head, performed the autopsy with a dull machete, and finally sat down to supper—quickly to get up again under the flagellation of insects—black tropical night had fallen, and it was not easy to fetch more water to wash the dishes, without falling into the source of supply. The German had not stirred since he had dropped on his back again—except to drink a pail of soup and eat two drumsticks and a wing. Then I must fetch another sackful of water, for the sweat of the day, drying on the body, made the gnat-bitten skin so many square inches of torture. Under the circumstances bathing was no easy task. To have calmly disrobed would have been to be instantly flayed alive by the army of insects. I piled on brush until the flames blazed high, though artificial heat was not exactly required, then threw sand upon them until only a heavy smudge remained. Standing astride this, weeping copiously, mosquitos and jejenes falling furiously in massed formation upon any patch of skin for an instant unsmoked, I poured the sackful over me, and finally rolled into my hammock in the streaming moonlight between two palm-trees.
Under the mosquitero the sweat ran in streams along my itching skin; outside it millions of insects fought to reach me, not a few succeeding. Bulls wandered by, bellowing in amorous anger. Now and then one paused to sniff at me, pawed the earth savagely, and thrust his snout and horns madly into it. Long rolls of thunder sounded in the east, growing louder and nearer. The flashes of lightning became almost continuous. But the sudden coolness and the fleeing of the insects before the rising wind gave such a relief from torture that I fell quickly asleep. Suddenly huge raindrops struck me in the face, and before I could snatch down the hammock and race for one of the ruined shacks, the skies were pouring. Then I must go back for my possessions, the damageable portion of which I had taken the precaution to tie in a bundle. Konanz had gone to no such trouble, so that all he owned was scattered over the surrounding country, and such things as we were able to snatch in the flashes of lightning proved in the morning to be those that could best have stood a wetting. We swung our hammocks again in separate shacks, and enjoyed some relief from heat and insects. But only a corner of the split-bamboo roof above me did not leak like a sieve, and that was not sufficient to cover more than half my length.
The rain had spoiled a tolerable road, tons of which we carried along in the first fatiguing miles of slipping and sliding with every step. All day we slapped through “der chungle” with no other sound than the swish of our footsteps, as monotonously rhythmical as the ticking of a clock. The mule had transferred her affections to me, perhaps because I did not use a cudgel on her flanks or torture her ears with a stentorial guttural bellow at every step, and no dog ever followed a fond master more closely. Had I climbed a tree, the animal would certainly have got up after me somehow. Konanz was therefore advanced to rear-guard. The woods being a bit more open, we managed to dodge some of the sloughs by crawling around them, though at the expense of being torn and cut by cactus, wild pineapple leaves, and every known species of thorny tropical undergrowth, so that each day saw us bleeding from a score of superficial lacerations and our clothing rapidly becoming a tissue of tatters. But the mule hated to wet her dainty feet, and must be pushed bodily into each mud-hole and driven through it with loud words and well-aimed clods, even then often turning back to follow me through the underbrush. Once, in mid-morning, when I fancied her well across a slough, I heard a crashing in the brush behind me and turned just in time to see the affectionate animal emerge stark naked from between two trees, the pack stripped completely off her.
Henry Halsey, the American rancher of tropical Bolivia, and his family
Saddle-steers take the place of horses and mules in the muddy parts of tropical Bolivia. Rate of travel: about two miles an hour