At dawn of May 25 we found ourselves anchored at Caracarahy, four hundred and sixty miles above Manaos, with the first open camp I had seen in Amazonia, its tufts of bunch-grass quite green, and the joyful sight of a serra, or range of hills, dimly visible to the north. Yet the campo broke easily into dense woods in any direction. There were a few scattered barracões, or thatched warehouses, and three or four huts of natives. The place exists merely because there are falls above, this being the beginning of rising and rocky country, around which all goods must be transshipped. Here were twenty-four kilometers of cachoeiras, or rock rapids, which may be passed in three ways,—in high water by the Furo de Cojubím, a paraná or natural canal flanking the falls, but which in the dry season is a mere succession of mud-holes; secondly, in certain seasons by dragging freight in small boats up over the rock falls; lastly, by a picada, or trail cut through the dense forest. I went ashore with the bug-catcher while the captain investigated. On the boat we had rarely felt a mosquito or any other form of insect pest, but the moment we landed we were in swarms of them, especially annoying tiny flies. Later we were to find that the grassy campo was alive with mucuims, an all but invisible red bug especially active in dew-wet grass, which conceals itself in the pores of the legs and sets them to itching fiercely a few hours afterward, keeping it up for days.
We returned on board, to hear the bad news that the early rains had slackened and that it would be impossible now for the smaller boat that was following us to pass through the canal and carry us on up the river. The water must be six feet higher, and as Colonel Bento Brazil put it laconically, “We may have to wait a month or two, or it may fill up from one day to another.” There were big cattle pens here, and cowboys who tended the cattle in shipment as they grazed on the campo before being jerked aboard the batelões and carried off to Manaos, which is reached in high water on the down-trip in forty-eight hours. Late that evening the captain began filling our barge with the maltreated brutes, which, after a hard drive across the country, were swung by a winch cable about their horns from the shore corral to the boat, often breaking a rib as they struck it and now and then a leg as they were lowered into the hold. No wonder Amazon beefsteaks are tough! Cattle for the Manaos slaughter-house are almost the only down traffic from this Rio Branco region, which produces little else, being high open campo and almost the only place in the entire State of Amazonas that can do so to advantage. Here they sold for from 60$ to 100$ a head, and in the rainy season can be transported to Manaos for about 60$. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Portuguese established cattle-breeding stations here, so that even to-day the great territory drained by the Rio Branco is known as the “Fazenda National” and is federal property.
Even here there was no definite information as to whether one could cut across through British Guiana. All I learned was that, if I could reach Boa Vista, there were two or three ways of making toward the estate of an Englishman over the boundary, but even he seemed to be more closely in touch with Brazil and Manaos than with Georgetown. In the morning there appeared on board a lively little man native to the region, whom everyone called “Antonino.” He was dressed in slippers and the modified pajamas all males find most convenient in Amazonia, had not shaved for two or three weeks, and had the general appearance of a backwoodsman with a little plot and a few cattle of his own, who might be able to write his name with difficulty. In reality, he was the owner of a large fazenda far up the river on the edge of British Guiana, the boundary being a stream at his front door. Beneath his lack of shave he knew Europe well, though little of Brazil, and had an astonishing knowledge on a wide variety of subjects. What was still more important, he was going to walk or wade the twenty-four kilometers around the cachoeira next morning to his own barge-launch waiting above the falls to take him back to his ranch. I bequeathed my steamer-chair to Captain Santos, packed my valise to the screaming point, with even my private papers and twenty pounds in gold, and handed it over to a pair of Antonino’s Indian employees in a canoe half-roofed with thatch, who rowed away into the evening toward the falls.
Next morning I was disappointed to find that Antonino had hired “horses,” as they called the wabbly, starved, and degenerate descendants of those noble beasts that awaited us, eaten by vampire bats and beaten stupid by their unconsciously cruel Indian-Portuguese owners. I should much rather have walked, the cruelty of getting astride such miserable animals aside, for my greatest immediate desire was physical exercise. A broad-faced, independent Indian “guide” set off with us across open, bunch-grass country, everywhere lively with birds, the long scissors-tailed tesoura most conspicuous among them. Mammoth ant-hills stood higher than horsemen above the thin, tufty grass. Soon we entered a wide road cut through a dense forest by the state government, at a cost to taxpayers of 2000 contos! Yet it had never been more than a poor clearing with a barbed wire fence on either side, and now it was half grown up to jungle again. In the mass, an Amazon forest is deadly monotonous; in detail there was an incredible mixture of species, with the same plant rarely half a dozen times in the same spot, and all showing a striking adaptability to environment. The great trees stood always erect, as if striving, like good soldiers, to touch with the crown of the head an imaginary object above them, spreading out at the top like a parasol to catch as many of the sun’s rays as possible, wasting no branches farther down, where the sunshine never penetrates. There were many rivulets and mud-holes, with a jungle not unlike that of tropical Bolivia, except that the growth was thicker and greener, with more beautiful palms. Antonino, who had chosen the best animal, got out of sight ahead, the Indian urging me to hurry; but as I saw no need for that, I spared my wreck of a horse. Suddenly, toward noon, we heard a distant boat-whistle, followed by half a dozen shots from a revolver. The Indian redoubled his urging and I strove in vain to give my miserable steed new life. Then more whistles sounded, and the Indian said dejectedly, “There, the launch is gone.”
“Impossible,” I answered. “As it belongs to Antonino it must wait for him.”
But we soon came upon the horse Antonino had ridden, tied to the rail-fence of a cattle-corral in the woods, and I concluded that my new companion had proved a true Amazonian in thinking of himself alone. After taking down several fences and putting them up again, we came out on a little nose of land above the river—and found Antonino looking hopelessly away up it.
It turned out that Antonino, loving to boast, like most Latin-Americans, really had not the slightest ownership in the boat we had hoped to catch, and here we were apparently stranded at the Bocca da Estrada, with one small, ragged, thatched roof on poles under which to wait for days, if not weeks. Anyway, the baggage we had sent by canoe had not arrived. Antonino professed to think that the launch had stopped just a few miles up the river to overhaul its engines, but this sounded like another bluff to save his face. I quenched my thirst with a dozen gourd-cups of yellow river water, squeezing into it the juice of wild lemons, swung my hammock, and prepared for whatever might be forthcoming. It is fatal to lose one’s temper in Amazonia. A chunk of cow that had been torn off the still palpitating animal that morning had swung unwrapped from the Indian’s saddle during all the sixteen miles. This we washed, spitted, and thrust into a fire. From it we slashed slabs still oozing blood with the Indian’s terçado, as Brazilians call a machete, and these being too tough to bite, we cut off each mouthful below the lips with the huge knife in approved South American cowboy fashion, after dipping them in coarse rock-salt, tossed handfuls of dry farinha d’agoa into our mouths with it, and washed it all down with river-water tempered with the fruit of the wild lemon tree that shaded our ragged roof. Our total resources were not enough for three meals, and how long we might have to wait no man knew. To add to the pleasure of the situation, we had struck a veritable colony of puims, as the Bolivian jejene, or tiny gnat of bulldog bite, is called in Amazonia, which quickly brought back memories of the tattooed skin with which had I emerged upon the Paraguay sixteen months before.
But, strange to say, Antonino had partly told the truth. About three o’clock the canoe arrived with our baggage and two sweat-dripping Indians, and we piled in the rest of our belongings and started on up the stream as if we really believed the tale that the launch was waiting not far above. I wished to add to our speed by paddling, but there were only three pás, and the Indians laughed at the thought of a civilized man doing so. In all Amazonia, with labor so badly needed, the man above the laboring class suffers most of all for physical exercise, and the development of the region is under the tremendous handicap of the ancient Iberian caste system. The Indians surely shoveled water behind them, however, though even so we made little headway against the swift current. If one of us spoke to them, they instantly stopped paddling to listen; hence motionless silence was our only salvation.
Then all at once we rounded a point, and there, sure enough, was the craft we were pursuing, barely a mile ahead. We quickly lost it to view again, and I waited anxiously until another bend disclosed it barely a stone’s throw away and tied to the bank! I should have been less worried had I known that it would not move an inch forward for another twenty-four hours.
We found her a battered old German launch attached to the most ancient wreck of a barge that I had ever seen afloat. They were anchored to a tree before the only dwelling in the vicinity, the home of a part-Indian family of countless children and innumerable hangers-on, who lived in a clearing with several primitive thatched huts. Among them was a youth who had been blind from birth, yet who went anywhere in the vicinity, through the dense forest or across the river in a dugout log, and did the same work as the rest of the men, even to splitting wood in his bare feet. Even here in the far wilderness the women were Moorish in their attitude. When a little gasoline launch, with two thatched barges on either side all but concealing it, arrived after a twenty-four hour trip around the falls with a crowd of men and women packed like sardines, these all came ashore for a full breath and to straighten out their kinks. Barely once did they speak to us men, yet when they were ready to leave, every woman and girl of the party went entirely around the circle, limply shaking hands with each of us, though we were nearly all total strangers. This courtesy is always expected in the far reaches of Amazonia, and if the traveler chances upon a party of thirty or forty, it takes an hour or more to get away.